For 17 years I have carried this, the heaviest burden of all: knowing that everyone was wrong about a movie. I have carried this burden as nobly as I could, knowing that there are people in the world who have it much harder than I do (Stargate fans, probably) but injustice must be answered, not with silence, but with the truth. And here it is: for almost 20 years, everyone has been wrong about Spiderman 3.
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Sam Raimi’s 2007 sequel to the greatest superhero film ever made has had an interesting ride over the years. It was immediately considered the weaker entry in Raimi’s fairly spectacular trilogy, and that’s still a fair assessment. (Again: Spiderman 2 is the best.But recently, its reputation has grown, as fans’ distaste for the film’s wacky angles and uncool take on the dark Peter Parker has evolved into an appreciation for what Raimi did and the big-hearted, sweet way he portrayed the character.
That’s a good thing. There’s a lot to like Spiderman 3and Tobey Maguire’s dancing was never the problem that a million late-2000s memes made it out to be. The real problem was much bigger, and much less superficial: it didn’t make Uncle Ben’s death Peter Parker’s fault.
Spiderman 3 begins his entire emotional arc with a retcon, as Peter learns that the new villain Flint Marko/The Sandman is actually his uncle’s son Real murderer, and the thief from the first film is merely his accomplice. This revelation sends Peter into a rage spiral that makes him susceptible to the alien suit trying to bond with him, and causes him to destroy nearly all of his personal relationships.
Images: Sony Pictures
I can see how a storyteller would come to this and why they would want to do this. I just think it’s a disastrous choice for a story about basically any version of Peter Parker. More than the spider bite, more than the costume, more than “with great power must come great responsibility,” the fundamental truth about Peter Parker is that he will never get over it. He blames himself for what happened to Uncle Ben, and the terrible thing is that he’s right. He could be to have has done something, and so he swears that he will never again stand by and do nothing.
People often say that Spider-Man is popular because he’s relatable, or he’s working class, or because he wears a full body suit and in the lily-white world of ’60s comics you could imagine yourself under that mask. Those are all important, absolutely, but I think the real reason is guilt. Spider-Man’s staying power comes from the self-loathing baked into his origins, the difference between a teenage coming-of-age story that rings true and one that doesn’t.
You’ll notice something funny about Peter if you ever reread those old Steve Ditko/Stan Lee comics: he’s a little wimp. He’s angry at the world for rejecting him as a nerd, drunk on his newfound powers, even after the terrible accident that forces him to become Spider-Man. If his story were told today, he’d surely find his way into certain online communities that would indulge his worst impulses and rot his discontent into something truly toxic.
The same goes for Peter from the 60s, but something terrible happens and it’s all his fault. There’s no way to shift the blame, he just has to live with it. And he does. Every damn day of his life, from that moment on.
The great thing about those comics is that eventually the moodiness starts to ebb away. He dresses up in a ridiculous costume and pretends to be a better person than he feels he is, and it starts to show. He becomes that better person.
Image: Sony Pictures/Everett Collection
The reality of comic book superheroes is that they are static. The more compellingly they are suspended in an endless second act, the more successful they will be. Movies, however, end, and adapting superheroes to their structure can result in compelling new reading experiences on a character once they are allowed to have an ending. Spiderman 3 doesn’t quite give Peter Parker an ending, but it does close the book on his coming of age: over the course of three films, Peter graduates from high school, goes to college, starts a career, finds love, and nearly loses everything in an overwhelming fit of selfishness — from which he must rebuild his life with humility and hope that the people he cares about will still have him. It’s a great storyline, but it doesn’t delve into who Peter is without that guilt, and what drives him now. (Maybe the hypothetical Spiderman 4 (If you had wanted to address this, you might not have done so, because you would be returning to a story that has already ended.)
That’s a question that can’t go unanswered. The Neverland of comic book superheroes and corporate IP dictates that characters grow or change slowly, if at all, and eventually everyone gets tired of it and grows out of it. Spider-Man sticks around, perhaps because he’s the rare character who’s better at suspension. And while it does go against that in one critical way, Spiderman 3 acknowledges this even in the ending, as Peter and MJ dance on the edge of forgiveness in the face of an uncertain future. They’re no longer children, but their adult lives are theirs to own. Will there be another Spider-Man? Who knows? This is where we leave off.
A well-adjusted adult would simply forgive themselves and Continuebut Spider-Man isn’t a story about becoming a well-adjusted adult. It’s about facing your worst day, when you’re the worst version of yourself, and doing something about. About refusing to wallow in the unfairness of the world, and bringing something better into it, just because you can. And that kind of work never ends. It’s an aspiration. Every day that Peter Parker does it, he really is The Amazing Spider-Man.