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In a world where a superhero films are dominating the box office, it’s easy to forget the seemingly quaint place the onslaught of spandex cinema came from. When Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man (2002) demolished the box office and became the first film to gross over $100 million on its first weekend, a sequel was obviously on its way. In 2004, that sequel arrived in the form of Spider-Man 2.
Though a critical and commercial success, Spider-Man 2 has the lowest box office numbers of Raimi’s trilogy. However, it received a higher critical acclaim than any other live-action Spider-Man film on Rotten Tomatoes, boasting a 93% approval rate. A small part of its lower box office is because my father, after taking me to see the first one, broke his promise to take me to the second one (I’m not bitter or anything).
The fact of the matter is, Spider-Man 2 was once the gold standard of superhero films, the example of how excellent they could be with the right people behind them. Now, it’s been sidelined in the current clutter of the genre. It’s largely cast out of public and online conversation, as if we’ve gotten a better live action* film featuring the wall-crawler since. Hot take: we…
