However, lest we forget, it's now sixteen years since the first Spiderman film and the trepidation remains - has it aged well or not? Let's have a butchers, shall we?...
The film begins with Peter Parker as his school's resident eight stone weakling who's bullied by the jocks and generally lives a bit of a miserable life. He's had a crush on the girl who lives next door to him, Mary-Jane "MJ" Watson for years but has never had the guts to tell her. At school, the only kid who he's really friends with is Harry Osborn who's a similar outsider due to the fact that he started later at the school than the other kids after being expelled from boarding school. Harry's dad is Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe), a genius scientist who runs his own company, Oscorp. Norman actually likes Peter and sees his potential as a bright scientist of the future.
We join Peter and Harry on a school trip to a scientific institute where it turns out that Harry has feelings for MJ as well. However, she's dating uber-jock Flash Thompson and is clearly slightly blind to our heroes' affection for her. Peter manages to persuade her to pose for a photo for the school magazine (which he's the official photographer for) but while he's doing so, a rogue radioactive spider (part of the lab's super spider breeding progamme) drops down from the ceiling and bites him.
Peter returns back to his house where he lives with his retired Uncle Ben and Aunt May feeling decidedly woozy and collapses on his bed. Upon waking he realises that he can see without his glasses and has suddenly developed a huge muscle mass that wasn't there before. At school, he realises that he can also shoot webs from his wrists which leads him to inadvertently provoke Flash Thompson by web-slinging a canteen tray into his head. Flash attempts to beat the living daylights out of Parker but isn't counting on the latter's new Spidey-skills which he uses to make short work of the school bully.
Meanwhile, we find out that Oscorp have been working on a new potion to give people superhuman strength but unfortunately their formulas haven't quite worked out properly with some test subjects being subject to mania and psychosis. At a meeting with the government, Norman finds out that another company has been piloting a similar formula and have moved ahead of them in the race to win the contract. Desperate, he and his chief scientist step up the research that night with Norman using the potion on himself. Unfortunately, it backfires badly and he springs out of the reactor and attacks the scientist, killing him. The next morning he wakes up with no recollection of the previous night's events...
High on the potential of his new abilities, Peter starts spending more of his time swinging across rooftops and practising firing webs than he does helping Ben and May around the house but when they try to confront him about it (including Ben's immortal line about great power bringing great responsibility), he blows them off.
Much to Peter's dismay, MJ is still dating Flash and when he sees her getting into a brand new car with him, he decides that the key to getting the girl is getting a car himself. The cheapest he can find in the used car adverts in the paper is $3000 which coincidentally is the amount a local wrestling company are paying new wrestlers.
Pete decides to give wrestling a go and makes up a new spider-based costume for himself under the masked pseudonym of the Human Spider. However, the ring announcer (none other than Bruce motherf**king Campbell!) can't be arsed with the words and shortens his name to Spiderman. He finds himself thrown in a cage match against the brutal Bonesaw McGraw (none other than the late great Macho Man Randy Savage!) and after taking a beating with a steel chair recovers to win the match with a monkey flip into the steel bars.
However, the promoter stiffs Peter out of his winnings and only pays him $100. Leaving the offices, he hears the promoter being robbed by a thief with a gun. Rather than stopping the guy, Peter simply lets him escape simply saying "Not my problem" (the same words the promoter used to him a few minutes previously). However, on leaving the venue, he finds that Uncle Ben (who'd come to pick him up) has been shot dead by a carjacker.
Changing back into his wrestling outfit, Peter gives chase and corners the killer in a warehouse where, after the guy tries to first stab him and then shoot him he realises it's the same guy he let go in the promoter's office earlier. Enraged, he throws the guy out of a window to his death before doing a runner as the cops arrive.
A few months later, Peter, MJ and Harry have all graduated. Harry is obviously working at Oscorp and Norman offers a job there to Peter as well but he declines and ends up signing on while fighting crime as Spiderman to honour Ben and doing the occasional bit of freelance photography for the Daily Bugle newspaper where he gets the gig after bringing some pictures of Spidey in to the editor J Jonah Jamieson. MJ meanwhile is struggling trying to make it as an actress and working in a diner during the day. She's also started going out with Harry which Peter only finds out when he runs into her on the street and talks to her.
Meanwhile, Norman's new alter ego the Green Goblin has sunk the rival company's bid for the government contract by invading their test on his hoverboard and bombing their HQ! When the other directors at Oscorp attempt a coup from within he ends up sabotaging their Union Day Parade and using his pumpkin bombs to turn them all into skeletons! When MJ is put in danger, Spidey swoops in to save her setting him on a collision course with Gobbo. How does it all play out? Ah, there's only so far I'll go with the spoilers with these things folks, if you've not seen this already then you're gonna have to track it down and watch it to find out...
There's a few movies down the years that deserve the phrase "game changer" when it comes to Marvel and this is definitely one of them. Quite simply, "Spiderman" has aged very well and is just as much fun to watch today as it was way back in 2002. With great performances from all involved, a script which treads the line between action, humour and genuinely touching expertly and a real epic feel about it, this has finally ended "Men In Black"'s seven week run at the top to become the new standard to measure all others by. There would be two more Spiderman films starring the Maguire/Dunst/Franco trio before the series was needlessly rebooted (but more of that angst when we come to it) but for now, I really can't recommend this film enough if you're unlucky not to have seen it yet. Definitely a comic book classic in every sense of the word.
FINAL RATING: 🕸🕸🕸🕸🕸🕸🕸🕸🕸 (9/10)
CURRENT MARVEL FILM TABLE
1. Spiderman (2002) (9/10)
2. Men In Black (1997) (8/10)
3. X-Men (2000) (8/10)
4. Blade 2 (7/10)
5. Blade (1998) (7/10)
6. The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988) (6/10)
7. Conan The Barbarian (1982) (6/10)
8. Conan The Destroyer (1984) (6/10)
9. The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk (1989) (6/10)
10. Men In Black 2 (6/10)
11. Doctor Mordrid (1992) (5/10)
12. The Punisher (1989) (5/10)
13. Doctor Strange (1978) (5/10)
14. Nick Fury: Agent Of SHIELD (1998) (4/10)
15. The Fantastic Four (1994) (4/10)
16. Red Sonja (1985) (4/10)
17. Captain America 2: Death Too Soon (1979) (4/10)
18. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)
19. The Death Of The Incredible Hulk (1990) (3/10)
20. Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge (1979) (3/10)
21. Howard The Duck (1986) (2/10)
22. Captain America (1990) (2/10)
23. Captain America (1979) (2/10)
24. Generation X (1996) (2/10)
25. Spiderman Strikes Back (1978) (2/10)
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