A great start to the franchise.

Rating: 8/10 (4 July 2014)

Having already proved himself more than capable of creating a fun comic-book style movie with Darkman (1990), Sam Raimi finally had a crack at the real thing in 2002 with Marvel's Spiderman—and he did a remarkably good job, delivering a slick, action-packed, major-studio, summer blockbuster that genuinely feels like a superhero comic-strip brought to life, with colourful cinematography, perfectly nuanced performances and the director's playful visual style very much in evidence (as opposed to those dreary Nolan Batman films that take matters far too seriously).
Starring Tobey Maguire as the titular web-slinger, Spiderman is an 'origins' movie, and as such takes a while to get the slam-bang action, but the characters are so well defined and the script (by David Koepp) so smartly written that boredom is never an issue. I've never been much of a fan of comic book movies that dwell too heavily on the whole 'tortured soul' aspect of their central character (as in Nolan's miserable Batman films), and with Spiderman being one of Marvel's classic 'emotionally troubled' heroes, there was serious potential for this to be a rather joyless affair. Thankfully, Raimi handles the personal trauma in such a manner that it never drags the enjoyment factor down. This is pure entertainment all the way—a real corker of a superhero film that still has the power to wow well over a decade after its original release.