Sam Raimi’s orig­i­nal Spi­der-Man is a great New York movie

“You mess with Spidey, you mess with New York!” More than any oth­er super­hero, Spi­der-Man is New York. He’s the kid from Queens, the blue-col­lar nerd who got bit­ten by a radioac­tive spi­der and became the world’s most famous teenage crime fight­er. In Sam Raimi’s 2002 film, a ran­dom man in the crowd hollers the above line as a group of New York­ers pro­tect Spi­der-Man (Tobey Maguire) from his arch neme­sis The Green Gob­lin (Willem Dafoe). It’s a sin­cere moment, unbur­dened by the self-reflec­tive seri­ous­ness found in the genre’s con­tem­po­rary efforts.

Iron­i­cal­ly for a film often cit­ed as kick­start­ing the mod­ern super­hero movie trend, Raimi’s Spi­der-Man is a bland super­hero movie by today’s stan­dards. It lacks a world-rul­ing plot, a big CGI finale and it doesn’t trade off ⁹⁄₁₁ imagery. It is sim­ply a sto­ry about a guy, the girl he loves and the city he shields from harm. It wasn’t Raimi’s inten­tion to make a cin­e­mat­ic dis­ser­ta­tion on the dif­fer­ent types of hero­ism. Nor for that mat­ter was he attempt­ing to make a gener­ic super­hero movie. He set out to make a Spi­der-Man movie, and mak­ing a great Spi­der-Man movie requires mak­ing a great New York movie.

As such, Raimi’s ver­sion of New York is a place where fan­ta­sy and real­i­ty meet. There is no doubt that Spi­der-Man is a fan­ta­sy, as Peter reacts to his overnight trans­for­ma­tion with a goofy grin because he’s devel­oped shred­ded abs. He and the rest of New York don’t freak out at the idea of a guy swing­ing between build­ings. In this city and the world Rai­mi cre­ates with­in it, that seems per­fect­ly nor­mal. The direc­tor injects real­ism into the sto­ry by hav­ing his char­ac­ters work mun­dane jobs to meet mun­dane ends like pay­ing rent. They lead reg­u­lar lives, and we are giv­en hints of their every­day activ­i­ties. In this film, New York is more than a set­ting, as Rai­mi gives his sup­port­ing char­ac­ters lives out­side of Spi­der-Man and The Green Goblin’s ide­o­log­i­cal conflict.

Peter Parker’s love inter­est, Mary Jane (Kirsten Dun­st), isn’t con­cerned with the guy fly­ing around her head in span­dex because she has her own prob­lems. She works as a wait­ress, strug­gles at audi­tions (“They said I need­ed act­ing lessons; a soap opera said I need­ed act­ing lessons”) and has a boyfriend who is more con­cerned with main­tain­ing his social sta­tus than her. She is shown get­ting on with her life, which Spi­der-Man keeps inter­rupt­ing. MJ might be the peren­ni­al damsel in dis­tress and she might not exist out­side her rela­tion­ship with Peter, but Rai­mi lets her live her own life.

Har­ry Osborn (James Fran­co), as best friend of the hero and son of the vil­lain, is the char­ac­ter with the clos­est ties to the film’s cen­tral con­flict – but even he is more con­cerned with get­ting a girl­friend and impress­ing his father. Har­ry is always defined by his wealth (“His father will fire your father”) and spends the film try­ing to prove he is worth more than what he inher­its. Like so many of the sup­port­ing char­ac­ters, he is only forced into the over­ar­ch­ing plot when the sto­ry requires it.

Not want­i­ng to cre­ate a stylised New York, Rai­mi even sours the sug­ary fan­ta­sy that says this is a place where all your dreams come true. In one of the most impor­tant scenes in his entire Spi­der-Man tril­o­gy, MJ starts pay­ing atten­tion to the always earnest Peter as they set out their hopes and aspi­ra­tions. It would have been easy for MJ to become a famous actress and for Peter to work his way through col­lege, but that isn’t Spi­der-Man – he’s the hero who can’t catch a break, and Rai­mi takes great plea­sure in mak­ing both MJ and Peter hus­tle to make a liv­ing. They are relat­able because they deal with real problems.

Raimi’s atten­tion to the sup­port­ing char­ac­ters, to how they inter­act with Peter, results in an authen­tic depic­tion of New York which Spi­der-Man and his super­hu­man abil­i­ties occa­sion­al­ly punc­ture. There’s a brief pause, then life con­tin­ues. By the time we see Spi­der-Man swing­ing between New York’s icon­ic sky­scrap­ers at the end of the film, Rai­mi has suc­ceed­ed in bring­ing the city and the peo­ple who live in it to life. This world of taxi dri­vers, stock­bro­kers and ordi­nary work­ing folk is inte­gral to Spi­der-Man, and we want him to save it.