Easily my favorite of the year... when I saw it.

Rating: 8/10 (18 June 2002)

Despite the hype, I actually expected the movie to be good -- not great, not bad, just good. I expected the acrobatics to be cheesy and annoying, and (most of all) I expected the villain to be so cheesy that I wouldn't believe in his threat. The "Green Goblin" just didn't appeal to me in the trailers. I compared the villain to Montgomery Burns (The Simpsons) in my head on several occasions before seeing the movie, just for the childish, it-could-never-happen feeling he gave me.
However, after actually watching the movie, all of that subsided. Tobey was great, Kirsten was great, Willem was great. Given that Spider-Man is a fantasy/action flick, Raim and friends actually made a darn good movie -- easily my favorite of the year (was there ever any doubt?) at the time...
At least until Star Wars was released. Now I'm faced with the problem of deciding whether I liked Episode II for Episode II, or because I love the idea of the entire Star Wars universe so much. Either way, Spider-Man is much better as a standalone film, and hopefully it has kicked off a healthy string of successful Spider-Man films in the future.