Spider-Man

On our Batman & Robin episode, we mentioned how part of the fallout of that film was that suddenly these adaptations were a little apprehensive about getting too comic book-y.

To that end, movies like Blade and X-Men wound up taking some pretty extreme liberties with their source material. They were dark... they were fairly humorless... and there was this sense that the people behind them were maybe a little embarrassed of their origins.

It was into that landscape that Sam Raimi's original Spider-Man was released - a film so loud and proud in its faithfulness to the comics that it took a lot of us by surprise. Not only did it stand in stark contrast to its contemporaries, it also laid the groundwork for the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know it today.

But that was sixteen years ago. Where does this one fit in now that this character has appeared in eight live-action films where he's been played by three different actors? Does it still pack the same punch that it did back in 2002 or has the genre evolved too far past this point?

Topics include: a tribute to Stan Lee, other filmmakers who were approached about directing this and what their version might have looked like, the era of Spider-Man comics that Raimi was drawing from and how those differed from some of the more modern interpretations, reservations about the Green Goblin's costume and other ways they could have taken it, how we feel about Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst in the lead roles, why these movies were always in such a hurry to get Peter out of high school, how this set the template for the Marvel films that followed it, and much more!

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