… From an artistic point of view this movie is garbage since it has no merits(*sigh* no I do not write this merely to impress, I fully grasp the concept of artistry as I believe any thinking individual rightly should). The gravest of all sins committed, even above that attrocious rethinking of the classic Green Goblin costume, is that the studios saw fit to assign David Keopp scripting chores on such a major motion picture. He is an unoriginal man likely to have a boring life since he sees fit NOT to imbue his work with any noticible personal touch, rather he seems content merely to regurgetate what he’s seen in other movies ( and not doubt the tenets of screenwritting as preached in Robert Mckee, and Syd Field books).
The screenplay is crassly, so stupidly, so utterly banal, and shameless one wonders if in fact the writer (writers I should say…) were fully conscious of their actions , intending to pass this off as a malicious joke on the American public. You will find, thinkers, that there is NOT ONE single original idea in the whole of this expensive Xerox. One need not reach far back into the annals of film history to see from which works it pilfered thus I will not name them, having full confidence in your film memory.
The direction is boring, as is Tobey Maguire in the lead. Kirsten Dunst resgisters, but only as a non-entity. Her character was sorely underwritten.
The cacophany of sound that Danny Elfman passes off as a score shows how the poor the material is, since even the man who wrote the great score to Batman cannot work wonders without first being inspired.
One more grave failing is perhaps the cornerstone of its appeal to the masses. Spiderman is an ‘accessible’ hero( unlike Superman who is perfect for ex.). The ‘accessible’ superhero is an awful concept since it DESTROYS all that is worthy in the hero by giving him flaws, the underlying message being one of reassurance to the average that they may continue about their way, complacent, unmotivated to strive for greatness, since even those men we laud as our champions share our same basic failings, and may be prone to caving into temptation at any given time. This is the anathema of nobility. Sadly, it’s popularity has spread in our culture not like AIDS to which there have risen many pleas for a cure, but like a disease much liked in its giving both the great, and the small a common bond.
To provide a balanced review, I will write that on the plus side, William Dafoe is quite good as Norman Osborn, and is the only one in the cast who plays his role, however lousy, with something approximating true conviction. It is he alone that raises this movie ‘several rungs in hell’ for me; it is the only thing about this movie in which I do not find much fault.
At this point you may wonder, “What did you expect? Shakespeare”? Yes. We all should, as a collective body demand only the very best in order to recieve it. Telling ourselves that we should settle for what we’re given in order to not offend others, or simply shrugging our shoulders will lead only to our film industry’s downward spiral( or rather continued downward spiral) allowing for mediocorities like this to arise like so many weeds, in place of say American Beauties, or Magnolias ( which are at the very at least have a view point dictated by their authors and not everyone else, a concept rendered beautiful by our society’s protestations to even a single man declaring himself seperate and of an unlike mind)…

To see how bad they let us down. i was expecting much more. I wanted my money back after seeing the film. The best part was the first hour. After that it went down hill.

Granted the first say 15 minutes of this movie was ok, but the rest has led me to label this movie one of the biggest disapointments and over praised movies ever. As a casual fan of spiderman I thought the visual effects seemed childish to the mastery of the visual art as presented in Star wars attack of the clones. Further the love story was even worse. The best movie of 2002 was not Spider Man. That honor i would humbly give to Atack of the clones or the Oedopian Minority Report.