Superb adaptation; has a lot of parallels with Smallville

Rating: 9/10 (11 June 2005)

Sam Raimi's Spider-man has a lot of parallels with Alfred Gough's and Miles Millar's Smallville television series which chronicles the adventures of a young Clark Kent. Both Peter and Clark are high school students struggling to fit in. Both have a love interest that seems out of reach; Mary Jane for Peter and Lana Lang for Clark. Both budding superheroes come from modest households and yet also have warm and caring adoptive families. Both of them have rich best friends who flirt with the darker side of human nature; Harry Osborn and Lex Luthor. Eventually both their best friends will become their nemeses. And the fathers of their best friends, Norman Osborn and Lionel Luthor, both extend genuine fatherly admiration for Peter and Clark respectively.
As for the movie itself, Spider-man is an excellent translation of comic book to silver screen. Along the way there were some liberties taken, like the fact that Peter's ability to shoot webs is another result of the genetically modified spider's bite rather than his manufacturing of web shooters as was shown in the comics, but all in all the spirit of the source material is maintained. The action sequences and CGI were thrilling upon first viewing in the cinema and they hold up fairly well today although it has to be remembered that technology pushes ever forward. But the action scenes are only a secondary pleasure of the film. The primary pleasure is in watching the relationship between the characters unfurl. At the risk of sounding like a sap, I thought Tobey and Kirsten did a marvelous job in showing how young Shakesperean romantic love develops. I truly felt the euphoria that such an emotion generates. To use a cliché, the two had great chemistry. The warmth and caring of the Parker household was also very touching and the tragedy of Ben Parker's demise, frankly, gets to me every time. To me, however, the most intriguing relationships are the ones between Harry and Norman and Harry and Peter. The viewer can empathize with Harry's yearning for love and recognition from the senior Osborn and the jealousy he must feel at his father's interest in Peter. The scene where Harry concedes that his father was 'right about M.J., right about everything' and Norman admits that he 'hasn't always been there' for his son was played to great effect by James Franco and Willem Dafoe. The relationship between Peter and Harry is also a marvel (no pun intended) to watch unfold. We see their almost brotherly camaraderie at the field trip turn into understated awkwardness and tension over Harry's interest in Peter's girl. The mutual empathy over the parallel losses of their fathers briefly brings them together again until Harry swears a vendetta against Peter's alter ego meaning they are now enemies. Great stuff! I can't wait to see how this develops in further installments of the franchise. All the secondary characters are well cast also. Special mention must be made of Bonesaw (played by real life wrestler Randy 'Macho Man' Savage) and J. Jonah Jameson (played by J.K. Simmons who to a degree reprises his role as Sheriff Pearl Johnson in The Gift which not coincidentally was also directed by Raimi). If I have one minor quibble it would be that I wish that the Peter's first love from the comics, Gwen Stacy, could somehow have been written in. She is such a great character. Then again, to do so would probably dilute the Pete-M.J. story arc. The two-disc editions have a wealth of info and special features, more than enough to satisfy the most ravenous curiosity over the film.