The virtues of Spider-Man 2

Spider-Man and Doc Ock (Tobey Maguire and Alfred Molina) battle atop a New York City el train in Spider-Man 2

Last week I spent a day at home with a sick kid, my eldest son. He’s seven, and enamored of Spider-Man, so I thought a sick day on the couch warranted finally showing him the ultimate in Spider-Man movies, as far as I’m concerned: Spider-Man 2, which is now twenty years old. My son loved it, and took in every minute with a wide-eyed openness to enjoyment that I long to rediscover for myself. What I did rediscover, though, was how good this movie is.

I’d always enjoyed it and remembered it fondly, but after letting more than a decade pass without watching any more than the subway train chase that leads into the final act, I was stunned.

First, on a technical level, it holds up. Some of the special effects are better than others, but if CGI has improved since then it hasn’t improved much. If anything, the CGI in Spider-Man 2, still being somewhat experimental in 2004, is better integrated. And having been shot on 35mm film by a great cinematographer, the movie looks wonderful—even on the old DVD my son and I watched, the warmth of the color palette in scenes with Aunt May or Mary Jane and the palpable coolness of nighttime scenes look wonderfully filmic. None of the recent Marvel movies, which all have the dull, lusterless clarity of digital cinematography, can compare.

I could praise other aspects as well: the acting (from all but James Franco, anyway), or the perfectly balanced tone, or the meticulously structured script, or the obvious fun Sam Raimi is having throughout with snap-zooms and histrionic open-mouthed screams from bystanders.

But what stuck out most to me was the richness of its themes. On top of everything else, this is a legitimately moving drama. The film opens with Peter Parker struggling to fulfil his obligations in every aspect of his life except his role as a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, and his frustration grows as he loses the respect of an admired teacher, loses his job, loses an old friend, and seems set to lose Mary Jane forever. He briefly gives up his crime-fighting and, though gaining superficial success in the rest of his life, he can neither win Mary Jane back nor escape the feeling that he is not following his calling.

Spider-Man 2 dares to suggest that vocation and duty are more important than following dreams, and that doing the right thing might mean abandoning a cherished hope.

This underlies two points of grace in the story. First, when trying to earn a living and succeed at school and provide for Aunt May and win Mary Jane back on his own strength he fails, but by embracing his duty as Spider-Man he finds fulfilment and love. As much as we might desire autonomy and individual success and wish to escape duty, it is duty that most powerfully connects us to other people and gives everything else in life meaning. To paraphrase CS Lewis, when Peter aims at happiness he doesn’t get it, but when he aims at duty he gets happiness thrown in.

Second—and this is only a half-formed observation—I was struck that the turning point in the film comes not during an action scene, but in a quiet dining room conversation in which Peter tells Aunt May the truth about the night Uncle Ben was killed. Peter does so despite the discomfort of facing his lies and the petty desire for revenge that contributed to Uncle Ben’s death, and despite the risk of losing Aunt May. She forgives Peter, but not because he deserved it. This feels awfully close to the sacrament of confession. Certainly Peter’s life is more characterized by grace afterward than it was before.

After watching Spider-Man 2 I went to the kitchen to make lunch for myself and my son and idly looked up the late Roger Ebert’s review. Four stars, introduced with this wonderful paragraph:

Now this is what a superhero movie should be. “Spider-Man 2” believes in its story in the same way serious comic readers believe, when the adventures on the page express their own dreams and wishes. It’s not camp and it’s not nostalgia, it’s not wall-to-wall special effects and it’s not pickled in angst. It’s simply and poignantly a realization that being Spider-Man is a burden that Peter Parker is not entirely willing to bear.

It’s striking that, this early in the superhero movie glut, a year before Batman Begins and four years before Iron Man, Ebert accurately described the overwhelming majority of superhero movies to come, whether the CGI vomit of the later MCU or the mordant navel-gazing of Zack Snyder, and exactly what it is that set Spider-Man 2 apart. Better artistry, certainly, but serious and sincerely explored themes of duty and love as well.

It seems trite to point out, but it’s impossible to imagine such a movie being made today.