051 Spider-Man (2002) Part 1

Retro Grade Podcast

“YOU MESS WITH ONE OF US, YOU MESS WITH ALL OF US!“

Just in time for the 20th anniversary of one of the greatest super hero (origin) movies from one of the greatest directors to ever tackle the genre, we at Retro Grade Podcast have decided to cover Spider-Man from 2002, directed by Sam Raimi, starring Tobey Maguire, Willem Dafoe, and Kirsten Dunst. Although there have been several Peter Parker’s since 2002, none of them captured the duality of the Spider-Man like the first one. The duality of how fun and unfun being a hero is. For every win Spider-Man has, Peter Parker gets a few L’s, and this is what makes the character so endearing, relatable and somewhat inspiring.

We talk about the Willem Dafoe’s classic portrayal of Norman Osbourne, the Green Goblin. There’s a lot of ways to play a villain, and the way Dafoe chooses to rides that fine line between silly and scary, bouncing back and forth between making him more entertaining than any villain in the MCU (until he reprised the role of course.) He turns all of his dialogue into classic one-liners that we still laugh at today.

We get into the way Sam Raimi’s iconic, campy and visual style permeates through the fact that Spider-Man is Hollywood Blockbuster made for mainstream audiences. His style lends itself to the comic-book genre in a way that we haven’t really seen since. Needless to say, we are beyond excited to see his return to the genre in Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness!

Because there is so much to talk about with the making of this movie and the movie itself, we decided to do another two-parter similar to our Godfather episodes. So stay tuned for our Making Of special, to hear us talk about how the movie was made and how the national tragedy of 9/11 shaped the making of Spider-Man!
Music is from Triune Digital and audio clips pulled from movies we will be reviewing in other episodes.

Artwork by @jannelle_o