20 Years Later, ‘Spider-Man 2’ is Still the Most Human Superhero Movie Ever Made [Retrospective]

In a recent red carpet interview, Sam Raimi was asked about the possibility of Spider-Man 4—that is, a continuation of Raimi’s own Spider-Man series with Tobey Maguire in the central role—as well as what shape it could take if it came to fruition. Raimi’s answer was typically astute: “I think if we were to make a fourth Spider-Man film, we’d probably have to figure out the journey that Tobey Maguire and his character would be going on, and what obstacles he had to overcome to achieve that growth personally,” Raimi said. “And I hope that the villain would be chosen based on a representation of that obstacle.”

Raimi’s Spider-Man films have always worked off this dichotomy of Peter Parker’s personal struggles intertwining with his exploits as the quippy web-slinger. As opposed to the pandering references, broad-strokes character arcs, and franchise synergy the character would later become victim to as studios pivoted their superhero strategies in light of crossovers and multiverses becoming in vogue, Raimi’s Spider-Man films always prioritized complex character interiority first and used the typical adornments of a blockbuster comic book movie to bolster those emotions. The first film is an exciting origin story, often zany and endlessly creative thanks to Raimi’s understanding of how to translate comic book panels to the screen, but it’s also never afraid to slow down for quieter domestic, romantic, and otherwise personal melodrama. It’s an intro to a franchise that was happy to end on a somber, downbeat note, with the hero having inadvertently made himself the enemy of his unknowing best friend after killing his supervillain father, while also forcing himself to reject the girl of his dreams in the graveyard post-funeral while ruminating on the sacrifices he will surely have to continue to make in the future. 

Raimi and screenwriter Alvin Sargent would commit to this throughline for Spider-Man 2, a film that follows the successful sequel formula of continuing to build on what was established in the initial film while deepening the core emotions and relationships sustaining the story’s heart. Upon release, this felt like a natural next step for the franchise, a team of filmmakers fulfilling a promise. Twenty years later, it feels like a revelation. 

The central conflict of Peter’s life in Spider-Man 2 is one that’s dryly funny in its relatability to the everyday working-class person: he’s poor, and he can’t have shit. Spider-Man has taken over all his free time in between work and school, and he’s got the candle at a healthy burn at both ends. He can’t do anything on time: he’s late delivering pizzas for his job, he’s late to class, and he’s late to his best friend/star-crossed lover Mary Jane Watson’s (Kirsten Dunst) new play. Any small comfort or sense of security is taken away from him, from being fired from the pizza joint, being on thin ice with J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons) at the Bugle for not providing pictures of Spider-Man due to the paper’s slander of him, getting the $20 bill that his struggling Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) tearfully gave him for his birthday ripped away by his landlord because Peter’s a month behind on rent; hell, he attends a fancy gala and he can’t even get a drink from the waitstaff. He sees the image of the woman he spurned everywhere he goes—MJ is the model for a new perfume advertisement. The universe seems to be playing an endless assortment of cruel pranks on Peter Parker. 

Peter’s, frankly, shitty life leads him to question the past two years he’s spent as Spider-Man, and the film’s heart lies in his inner turmoil in understanding his own identity. It literalizes it into a tangible element of tension: quickly into the runtime, Peter fails to produce webs while out on a swing, evidently facing a bad case of superhero power dysfunction. It’s not just that he’s lost confidence in being Spider-Man, it’s that he’s not sure it’s what he wants for himself at all. Spider-Man 2 has the recognizable overarching structure of your typical comic book movie—Peter, of course, finds himself at odds with the mad scientist Doc Ock (Alfred Molina)—but there’s a surprising amount of this blockbuster superhero sequel that’s dedicated to Peter Parker and not Spider-Man. In following up the first film, Raimi and company make the audacious decision to have our hero quit the gig altogether, burnt out and reluctant about what the responsibility will take on his personal life. It’s taking a cue from the comics, specifically the “Spider-Man No More!” storyline, but it’s a daring angle to take an immediate sequel for a mega-budget franchise. It gets to the compelling question at the heart of the best superhero movies: what does it mean to be a hero?

That doesn’t mean Spider-Man 2 completely robs the audience of the action spectacle most would expect from it, but it’s always anchored within the specific details of Peter’s class status and internal dilemmas. The film begins not with Spider-Man taking down criminals, but with Peter trying and failing to make his pizza delivery on time by ditching his moped and delivering as Spider-Man. Later, the thrill of an exciting car chase sequence is tempered as Peter is forced to once again disappoint MJ by not being there for her. 

His fights are otherwise directly tied to the duality of the identities of Peter Parker and Spider-Man. Peter burns his mask while trying to stop a runaway train, which causes him to have to accomplish the feat with his true identity revealed. After fainting, the train passengers all come together to agree that they will never reveal his secret—they’re just happy to have Spidey back. Additionally, though Peter is given time to brawl with Doc Ock elsewhere in the movie, the climax veers more into the personal despite the set-piece of the fusion energy reactor that is threatening to demolish New York City. This scene isn’t really centered around a fight because this isn’t Spider-Man’s battle to win—it’s Peter’s. He removes his mask and talks to Otto Octavius as the gee-whiz science geek who looked up to Otto enough to write a paper on him. It’s not a battle of strength and brawn but a battle of humanity winning out over Doc Ock’s AI supercomputer tentacles that have taken over his free will. Peter doesn’t kill Doc Ock, Otto sacrifices himself to redeem his own personhood. 

Spider-Man 2 is a film unafraid of putting earnest characterization and internal drama at the forefront of events, all the actual action acting as extensions of character dynamics and relationships. It thrives off a certain theatricality to its drama, much like that of MJ’s work with her role in The Importance of Being Earnest (the play itself a tongue-in-cheek nod to the fact that Peter’s created identity causes him to flake on his other obligations). Such a title feels indicative of Raimi and Sargent’s approach to character, as the film never backs down from earnest pathos. Much of the dialogue is imbued with a corny type of wistfulness, with characters constantly vocalizing their emotions with the utmost sentimentality. At one point, Peter stares out the window of his ramshackle apartment and narrates his inner monologue, practically giving a dramatic aside to the audience: “Am I not supposed to have what I want? What I need? What am I supposed to do?”

Such sincere commitment to character feels far removed from the now years-long entrenchment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s style of pure plot building and world extension, movies that are too focused on what they’re selling to audiences next that they forego engaging narratives for endless wind-ups and teases (this is to say nothing of how Raimi and cinematographer Bill Pope’s shooting style of their Spider-Man films is far more tangible, creative, and memorable than the flat green-screen assisted and VFX-drenched set-ups of the MCU films). Even Maguire wasn’t spared from the MCU machine gobbling up his character, nuances and all, in the crossover film No Way Home, though the signs of studio tinkering and attempted brand refinement were seen as early as Spider-Man 3, the black sheep of Raimi’s trilogy that suffered interference from Sony but nonetheless has more personality and panache than much of the superhero fare out of the 2010s. 

At the 20-year mark since Spider-Man 2’s release, and after the drastic shifts within the landscape of superhero cinema between the rise and relative fall of the MCU post-Avengers: Endgame and the perpetual floundering of the DCEU, the question of what audiences want from superhero movies now becomes a pertinent one. If box office numbers are to be believed, it could be a return to formula. As part of the 100th anniversary celebration of Columbia Pictures, Sony is re-releasing every Spider-Man film in theaters on a weekly basis. On the first day of its reissue, Spider-Man 2 was #2 at the daily box office, ahead of a plethora of new releases. 

But, I realize that an argument made for the general public’s desire to return to the days of Raimi’s version of a fearlessly emotional Spider-Man that’s predicated on a successfully marketed re-release of beloved movies is one that’s immediately moot. It’s clear the public is eager to devour the new iterations of the character just as much as the old, on top of the fact that people are prone to indulge in nostalgia, a concept that studios have seemingly gotten wise to as they’ve been rereleasing movies in line with anniversaries—Shrek 2 and The Phantom Menace also recently had successful theatrical reissues. It would be disingenuous to make a broad statement saying that the people are clamoring for this specific vibe of a Spider-Man movie again. People may be clamoring for a Spider-Man 4, but that’s just as easily a result of audiences looking for comfort in the past, the same as ever.

Instead, I’m simply holding out hope that anyone who returned to the cinema to experience or re-experience Raimi’s masterclass in superhero melodrama is reminded of the not-so-far-away time in history when these movies were genuinely interested in the depth of these characters, as opposed to using them as devices to usher an expanded universe along with snarking quips and empty gestures toward character development. When the thrill of seeing Spider-Man zip around the city or webbing up criminals was anchored by a real sense of pathos and authenticity regarding the guy under the mask. Spider-Man 2 is the work of a director and writers dedicated to the world of Peter Parker, and saw an endless expanse within his own internal universe which rivals that of any multiverse. In all of its unabashedly corny pontificating that sits with its awe-inspired, skillfully directed action set pieces, it’s the definitive statement of Spider-Man on film, the one that recognizes the joys and tragedies that construct his humanity.

Spider-Man 2 was released on June 30, 2004 by Columbia Pictures. It is currently available to stream on Roku and FXNOW.