I've never had so many thrills at a movie before..

Rating: 10/10 (5 May 2002)

There's so much I could say about this movie and it wouldn't be enough. Let me put it to you this way. After seeing it last night I wanna see Spiderman 4 (after seeing this one 10 more times). And I thought XMen was a well made comic book movie, but this one had an amazing comic book feel to it, requisite episodes and all, and not just had the feel, but felt like you were inside the comic world and seeing more than the blocks would show you. You saw the meaning of ZOOM and KABLAM. The story was an excellent coming of age as you saw Peter evolve into the hero that is Spidey. Something I particularly liked was how Peter was Peter, but once in Spidey's suit, had Peter's voice but which felt exactly right as Spidey's too (kudos to Tobey Maguire). I had only seen a bit of the Spiderman cartoons when I was a kid in the 80s, but the villains had always seemed stupid and too whimsical/fantastical to really care about. Not so here. Willem Dafoe was superb at creating a real menace, A REAL MENACE! Something that was unpredictable and could snap at any moment, adding tons of suspense to any scene where Norman was in control, especially the one where he hugged Harry. In superhero movies you always know that the hero will beat the villain and that there's usually an Achilles heel, but not so here. Here the villain was clearly the stronger of the two, and while our hero has spider-strength and all, he's still human and less armored. It makes you appreciate the victory all the more. As for the score, it was generic (no themes). In a good way. Compared to something like FOTR where most of the emotion came from the score, the score stayed in the background save for some Green Goblin touches, letting the emotional quality of the story take center stage. I came to the movie needing a respite from life stresses, and heavy as they were, I got sucked in by the story. Not to mention it may have been formulaic, but I couldn't tell. I'm not up to snuff on the whole Green Goblin mythos, but it was great to see the chaotic villain calling the shots in a wild and fastpaced world where anything could happen. Even when things were predictable and you could tell what was going to be said, something that followed brought the cliche back into reality (the scene where MJ & Peter talk outside their houses for instance).
Here is the cultural mythology we've been lacking for some time, and while we're living in a golden age when comic book movies are all the rage (with some Marvel-icious stuff like The Hulk and Daredevil coming soon to a theater near you), it's a shame that only now are all these wonderful stories coming out of the ghetto. Heroes with a solid moral code instead of all the Stallone/Schwarzenegger/Willis/Gibson crap that we've been fed the last 20 or so many years. I'm also thankful that studios are getting great directors like Raimi with real respect for the material instead of hacks like Schumacher.
In summation, I loved everything and the details made it come alive. To quote my favorite line: Woooohooooooo!!!!