One of the grandest movie experiences in my life.

Rating: 10/10 (3 June 2002)

As an avid fan of the comic book super-hero "Spider-Man", I found myself disappointed watching the trailer during the theatrical showing of The Lord of the Rings. To me, Spider-Man appeared to be corny and hokey, along with cheesy visual effects and ridiculous costumes such as The Green Goblin. To me, awaiting the film as long as I had, the pain was too large to bear. I had been waiting since 1992, when James Cameron announced his screenplay. Since than, I myself have been patiently waiting and hoping for a good Spider-Man movie. But when I saw the trailer in December, I felt slightly cheated... ...Than fast forward to May 3rd. I went to the movies with my friends to see "Deuces Wild". But, one of my friends misinterpreted our intentions to see Deuces, so he went in to see the titled, "Movie of the summer": Spider-Man. To be honest, I didn't want to see Deuces Wild, at least not with the missing eight dollars from my wallet. To me, Deuces Wild was a "Wait-for-video-movie" if you know what I mean. With this, I felt bad and didn't want him to go in the theater all by his self, so I quickly exchanged my ticket and got a seat to see it with him. I was going to see it the next day with my mother, but I guess I couldn't wait that long. So, I saw Spider-Man and left the theater with a love for a movie I didn't know that I could ever have.
To me, this was the best super-hero movie I had ever seen. It's story was so compelling that when Peter Parker donned his spandex costume, it seems not only irrelevant, but unnecessary. This movie was so attentive that it followed and loved it's characters, not berating and using their misery to feed the mindless cliche-filled plot. The movie cared about what they were and who they were to become. Unlike every other comic book based movie I've ever seen, this one didn't use the characters to simply feed the story itself. Spider-Man's story was the characters.
Without doubt, this has to be the classic comic book movie brought to life for all time. As far as comic books translated to film are concerned, Spider-Man is and always will be, "THE DEFINITIVE COMIC BOOK PICTURE OF ALL TIME!!! Even though many didn't like the visual effects and saw them as the films fatal flaw, I LOVED THEM. First of all, it's a motif to the graphic novels. It isn't meant to be realistic. A comic books reality is it's own little world and it would only be fair to include some aspect of that comic into the film. The human side was convincing and realistic. It pulled it off and hit the nail on the head better than a lot of Oscar winning movies even. One of the central themes that runs through the film is about teenagers and their inabilities to express their true feelings to one another. Films like American Beauty fail to explore this degree of emotions simply because the synopsis focuses on the proverbial dark side of these situations. Comics, on the other hand, are an "Expedient exaggeration" of the real life world we live in. A satire if you will. Come on! How many maniac criminals would dress up in a green metallic suit and a dinosaur mask with "pumpkin bombs" and a futuristic one-man glider with super-sonic jet speed in real life?
I left the theater gleeful, fulfilled and waiting to see it again the next day with my mother.