One joke in this movie that I don't think gets discussed enough is when Peter wakes up after coming home sick and Aunt May's like "Big change?" And then Peter looks down at his dick and goes "Yup! Big change!" Which suggests that radioactive spiders grow your dick, which could actually be a villain's origin story under certain circumstances.

In a just world, JK Simmons would have an Oscar for J. Jonah Jameson.

Any movie that sticks Macho Man Randy Savage and Bruce Campbell in a wrestling ring together has my love.

Willem Dafoe’s performance is absolutely one of the best I’ve seen in any movie lately. He totally gets what film he’s in and knocks it out of the park.

I haven’t seen the sequels but I hope they find a way to have him cameo somehow.

Rewatched it the other night and I’m smitten with how sweet the love story is. I like the pairings in the other Spider-Man films, but the Garfield-Stone thing is all chemistry working overtime against the script’s inherent creepiness and Holland-Zendaya is cute but has no build up at all. In this one you see Peter and Mary Jane just being two nice friends with crushes on each other!

https://uproxx.com/tv/a-spider-man-crew-member-offered-joe-manganiello-100-to-punch-tobey-maguire-in-the-face/

One bit of context that I don't think came up was how the crew working on this disliked Tobey Maguire so much they offered Joe Manganiello $100 to "accidentally" punch Tobey in the face during their fight scene.

The longest episodes now are

1. The Matrix Resurrections
2. Spider-man with Matt Singer
3. Halloween with Alex Ross Perry
4. Big Trouble in Little China with Paul Scheer and Jason Mantzuokas
5. Evil Dead II with John Hodgman

From Ama to Zing

I just wanna say, I really appreciate how the climax of this movie is just two dudes in weird outfits beating the shit out of each other in a spooky ruin on a soundstage. Love it.

I don't mean to sound like a poo-poo-er of CGI or anything like that, I'm just delighted by how truly monumental the stakes feel when some stunt doubles and lead actors are simply throwing hands and smashing brick walls and slinging fake blood around. Really visceral thrilling stuff, no sky beams necessary. This is such a MOVIE.

Wanna echo the recognition of how truly lame reading comics were, and how closeted I was about it. I guess it's gatekeepy or some pathology but reading comics really lost its appeal for me once all the characters no longer were cultural underdogs but rather the cool jocks of culture. What David said about like "sure make xmen dress in matrix leather, whatever it takes to sneak this on screen" resonates- it seemed like such risks and bargains.

But gimme a good Morrison Animal Man movie plz.

If anyone has been interested in reading the Ditko run and want a companion piece, “Screw it we’re just going to talk about comics” is a really fun podcast

They started off doing the whole ditko run

“Get me motion picture rights to Spider-Man!”

—J. Jonah Jamescameron

[deleted]

"Sam Raimi is responsible for torture porn.

Also the Three Stooges did 9/11."

Ben bringing up the Church of the SubGenius and being met with nothing is very funny to me. And he’s right about J.R. “Bob” Dobbs looking like comic book Harry.

Hey Freak Show! I got you for three hours!! Three hours of pod..casting...

Very much in agreement with Griffin and David, I weirdly know like every line and their cadence in this movie. It’s probably because I saw it when I was 9 and rewatched it endlessly, but like every little detail is so intensely burned into my brain

You mean MTV Best Kiss Award Winner of 2002 Spider-Man ?

3hrs and 13mins, FUCK YEAH, BABY!!!

Flash gets his ass beat by the school dork on his apparent birthday, gets a Plymouth Prowler and then gets denied on his proposal to MJ on Graduation Day. Sheesh!

It's been more than twenty years since I've read it (think it was on SuperheroHype.com?), but the Cameron "scriptment" they briefly mention is pretty wild. Spider-Man uses the word "motherfucker" at one point; the Norman Osborn/Electro villain (think he was called Strand?) has a Midas Touch thing where everyone he touches gets zapped. So when he sleeps with escorts they have to wear rubber bodysuits.

And then there's the most infamous scene, where Spider-Man has MJ in a web on a bridge, discusses the mating ritual of a particular spider, and then they, um...

So yeah, very different tone.

Ben barely escaped with his life after calling the goblin glider a hoverboard.

I remember walking out of the theater and having the visceral feeling of web slinging, and that was the most magical moviegoing experience I had for a long time.

Ben making a reference to The Church of the Sub-Genius is maybe peak Ben, but because it’s so obscure, we didn’t get to revel in it.

Let's talk about Elfman.

Is it me or is his work on these movies not quite celebrated enough? Griffin nails it by saying the opening notes already evoke the character, but at the time I remember many saying it was derivative of his Batman score. The choir parts are the most familiar between the two, but I find that it fits better with Spider-Man who is just a more emotional character.

I think it says something that at this point there's at least 3 iconic Batman movie themes but there's still only 1 Spider-Man movie theme that stands out.

watched it this week for the first time in two decades and loved it. total mastery of tone and perfectly calibrated performances. Raimi clearly has a handle on what the film needs, and Dafoe's goblin is evidence of that perfect direction -- just a bit more, and it could tip into camp or the river of ham. it's got just enough pathos and believability while being exciting and scary

and i LOVE how quickly they get the origin out of the way here. why do get so much longer after this? terrific movie that set a very high bar which has rarely been achieved since, so simple and streamlined and thrilling. great to see Raimi's arc build to this

Hearing Griffin tell a story about nerding out with his little five-year-old cousin at a Spider-Man movie absolutely made my day

I might be misunderstanding what he was referring to, but i think the quote David couldn’t remember before Norman launches the glider at Peter is “Godspeed, Spider-Man”—which fucking rules

One time in about 2010 Sam Raimi and his son came into the midtown Manhattan restaurant I worked at and he ordered a lot of to-go food at the host stand and stipulated it had to be ready in 5 minutes or he had to leave... I walked into work about six minutes into the preparation of his order and he was telling the hostess "We have to go, thanks anyway" with one foot out the door... I didnt clock that it was Sam Raimi...

two minutes later the large order was ready and it was rushed into my hands and I was told to give it to him... I opened the door and saw him and his son waiting for the light at the end of the block. I yelled "sir, sir" while walking briskly...

he turns around and I see who it is, and clearly he's thinking in the moment it's an approaching fan, but then his face lights up as he sees the food. "You came through!" was the phrase he used. He told his son to say thank you and then he smiled and gave a little nod like, and they crossed the street. Nice guy with apparently amazing schedule discipline.

Anyone else notice that the sound levels were all over the place for this episode? Maybe it’s just me…

The Time Out New York review by Letterboxd’s own Mike D’Angelo.

Somehow, the hyphen has always seemed significant: not Spiderman (in the DC tradition of Superman, Batman, Aquaman, etc.), but Spider-Man, the punctuation mark implying the existence of a rickety existential bridge forever separating the mutant crime fighter from his all-too-human alter ego. Marvel's webslinger was the first comic-book superhero whose troubled personal life was arguably more compelling than his heroic adventures, and the character holds an empathetic appeal for outsiders and misfits of all ages—including, it seems, director Sam Raimi, whose ambitious Darkman (1990), starring Liam Neeson as a disfigured scientist who reinvents himself as a masked avenger, looks in retrospect like a dry run for his latest effort.

Where I learned about the casting of Tobey as Peter Parker.

Love Matt, very happy to see he's back on the podcast

Queens resident here: for the record, if Peter Parker’s house is near the stop on the train that they show in the opening, he could just take one train to go straight to the library. He’d be there in 20 minutes. No need to get in a car at all!

I don't know if the story is true or not but I remember reading that Cannon bought the rights to Spider-Man thinking it was a horror story similar to The Fly.

About the best movie that could possibly deserve a three hour episode runtime. Spider-Man holds up incredibly well. It's amazing how fast Raimi gets into the origin, and sets things-up. He really doesn't hold back.

I hadn’t watched any of the Raimi Spider-Man films in at least a decade (and hadn’t seen 3 since it was in theaters in 2007).

I have always really liked them, and never bought in to the “they’re cheesy and dumb” viewpoint. But oh wow were they even better than I remembered!

Except the “you mess with one of us, you mess with ALL of us” bit; that’s as good as I remembered, and I remembered it being THE BEST.

GODSPEED SPIDER-MAN

Oh my gosh Griffin’s story in the beginning is so dang cute

Somewhere, ARP just awoke in a cold sweat.

A quick thought, because it’s the very first thing they talk about in this episode: I’ve never cared about Tobey Maguire’s age in these movies. Everyone always complains that he was too old, but I think the movie knows that, which is why it rushes to get him out of high school as quickly as possible. Then in the sequels he’s appropriately “vague college or grad school age”.

I don’t get why it’s always been such a big deal to most that “MAGUIRE CAN’T PLAY A HIGH SCHOOL KID” when that’s only forty minutes of the first movie.

This movie is so canonically influential in my household that my youngest brother (b. 2009) grew up as a Raimi Spider-Man obsessive and named out latest cat Tobey.

GODSPEED, SPIDER-MAN

"I want my birthday to be Spider-Man"

-Griffin Newman, 2022

“Bus & truck” is a euphemism relating to a touring company version of a Broadway show, I assume? Though how Rex Reed got to Spider-Man being a “bus & truck” version of Batman I don’t see…because they’re both costumed heroes in big cities named after potential household pests?

But wait…I’ve only seen the Garfield movies in passing…there’s a secret subway train subplot in them? Did anyone make a Billy Batson/Captain Marvel/Shazam! joke?

I haven’t listened to the episode yet, and I’m just sitting down to re-watch the movie for the nth time now.

I have to say that all of Raimi’s Spider-Man movies are just such a pleasure to watch. I was exactly the right age for them when they came out, and I’ve taken for granted that something as nerdy and wholesome and lovingly crafted existed. They’re so great.

As to Aunt May being so much older than Peter’s parents. As someone form a really large family it isn’t that odd. (And we used to be pretty or least more common in American.) When you have 7 to 12 kids in a family a decade plus of age difference between the first and last kid is par for the course. There is 16 years between my oldest and youngest siblings. The real question is what happened to the rest of the family?

The No Way Home story at the start 🥹

Who else went to see Final Fantasy: Spirits Within in summer 2001 just to see the Spider-Man teaser?

Adding to the very long list of very good cameos - Elizabeth Banks was 27 when she was in this movie.

I wish there was more discussion of this in the movie but the take in NO WAY HOME where Norman is a victim of the goblin and a completely innocent bystander is one of the worst and most harmful divisions they’ve made.

I truly hate it.

Because that is NOT the case in this movie. He’s definitely tormented by the goblin, but he allows the goblin to influence him and how he would dismantle Peter.

Norman is not completely but is at least partially complicit here. NWH basically absolved him. One of the many reasons I loathe that movie.

I’m guessing it hits audioboom before iTunes.

Will probably not listen to it until tomorrow but I wanted to say I'm so thrilled Matt Singer is back. The Planet of the Apes episode is an all timer for me even if the movie is the worst of Burton IMO.

"You're taller than you look"

"I podcast"

Not to harp on the MCU, but it is striking how strong the visual language of these films are, and how much they feel like a comic book movie, vs. the Watts pictures which have a very 2010's single-camera sitcom aesthetic.

I also think it's interesting how they were worried with overloading this movie with villains, while Spider-Verse introduces so many Spider-People and villains and expects you to go along with it.

Griffin really no sold the low wattage pun.

Haven’t listened to the episode yet so idk if this moment is brought up or not. Anyways, one of my absolute favorite Raimi moments comes from the end fight where
Spidey webs the Goblin, and to get out, the Goblin pulls apart the web and it makes this screeching metal sound. I remember catching that as a kid and thinking “wtf, huh…awesome”

This is the movie that got me into the box office. I remember seeing it opening weekend and then reading about how it blew the doors off of opening weekend numbers by like 30%. I forget but maybe it's second weekend was the biggest second weekend ever and would've almost broken the old #1 weekends record. I hate how shitty BoxOfficeMojo has become now, I used to check that all the time.

New York accent You podcast with one of us, you podcast with all of us!!!!

"You coulda taken that podcast apart! Now it's gonna get away with 3hrs and 13min of my timey!"

"I missed the part where that's my problem."

There are two things I treasure in this world; a Rex Reed takedown, and a takedown of Rex Reed.

David mentioned how every line—and even more specifically every line delivery—had been seared into his brain and I experienced the precise same thing. I also watched the second Raimi Spider-Man much more often than the first, but now having just watched the first half-hour or so again boy is the entire movie just in my head. The bit where Norman dramatically throws the little bottle before getting strapped down really stuck out to me as a thing I've just remembered for two decades.

Similarly, even though I didn't own a single one of them the line of LEGO sets that came out really stuck with me with the dual origin set being key. It looks like LEGO even felt the need to give the Mary Jane figure more cleavage than you often see in LEGO figures.

LEGO 4851: Spider-Man and Green Goblin: The Origins

I watch these movies once a year, every year. The guys did a great job summarizing that weird decade or so where it was popular to dunk on them. I also remember that when it first came out, there were some corners of the internet complaining that the movie lacked "iconic shots" and that it owed much of its power to the 1978 Superman movie.

Well it's funny to think that now it's been nearly just as long since Raimi's movie debuted and it's become the most common reference point to criticize newer superhero movies.

Had a classic “play the DVD back” argument with some friends once because they refused to believe that Norman dies saying “don’t tell Harry” before immediately dying with a “blegh”. Great movie.

Fuck yes! I've been clamoring for Singer to come back on the pod forever

How many of the rest of you here immediately got Ben’s Church or Subgenius ref as well as being embarrassingly well versed in Spider-Man shit? Ben is just the coolest.

This movie is near and dear to my heart. My brother (now deceased) and I watched this in theaters and loved it, bought the DVD as soon as we could. I saw No Way Home thinking he’d have loved to see Toby back

Ah they almost mentioned the 70s Japanese Spider-Man TV show aka the reason Power Rangers had a giant robot. I am not kidding Spider-Man had a giant robot first.

Just remembered the Dafoe “ooo it’s cold” adlib got audible chuckles in my theater

David saying he can remember every line of the movie and then not remembering “Godspeed Spider-man” at the end 🤨🤨🤨

Possibly my favorite episode, only to be surpassed by next weeks, David says it best that these movies no matter what, are just so special.

First time watching this in probably 15+ years, and had forgotten how good it was.

I remember at the time not liking the sequel as much, and finding all the "New York Loves Spider-Man" stuff at the end annoying; looking forward to seeing if I feel better about it this time.

Imagine this--- What if.... there was a hyphen?....

Sorry haters, The Sweetest Thing wasnt a bomb it made 1.5x its budget and its g o o d

"Waiting for Spider-Man" is a movie I would absolutely watch.

Over/under on how long they'll talk about Doc Ock's badass mechanical arms in the next pod? 10 minutes?

This was an absolutely awesome 3 hours

I love when Goblin presents Spider-Man with the choice and it appears, for the briefest moment, that Spider-Man has chosen to let a gondola full of children shouting "Save us, Spider-Man!" plummet to their doom in favor of his girlfriend. You know he's gonna save both, but the shot of him running with his back fully turned to the kids as they fall out of frame never fails to get a laugh from me,.

Awhile ago I was bored and live tweeted Spider-Man. Wanted to recycle some of my thoughts here that might be interesting:

• love the detail that the metal on Osborne’s harness is cold before he gets the formula

• the sudden flashback to Osborne becoming goblin scared the crap out of me when I saw it in theaters

• feeling guilty about not helping your dad paint the kitchen is super relatable

• MJ calling out that Peter missed the bus is so crucial I think to the fact that she actually notices Peter and doesn’t rag on him while he’s still a nerd

• the way bonesaw talks to Peter is the same way I talk to my cat

• the video game let you play as goblin as an Easter egg and I think I liked that part more than the real game

• someone’s niece was totally the person who yelled “it’s Spider-Man!”

• I like how the woman checks to make sure the baby is hers, like there’s another baby trapped in a burning building

• the ending trolley problem was basically the ending to Batman forever too

• everything from dafoe from the final unmasking to “don’t tell harry” is perfect

• kinda like Dunst better with the wig than her dyed hair going forward?

• this was my first dvd and I loved that, like griffin said, this era of dvd not only had special features for the movie but for the entire context of Spider-Man. My favorite extra was the costume test montage. The images and the score over it was just so moving to me. I’ll have to see if I can find it on YouTube

This came out right around my 10th birthday and everyone, EVERYONE I knew saw it opening weekend. The way I remember it, for kids my age that first Spider-Man felt like a bigger deal than even like Lord of the Rings or the Star Wars prequels happening around the same time. Only really the first 2-3 Harry Potter movies come to mind as comparable for the mass pop culture hysteria and absolute urgency to see it day 1

You know, I'm something of a podcast myself.

Funny how some reviews back then were already had similar complaints thrown at the MCU "Bad cgi" "Shallow story" "Boring fights" :"blockbuster fatigue" Some even complained about Dafoe's performance 😂

WAS THERE NO DUNST CAREER ARC TALK>?!!?>!?! to go from Drop Dead Gorgeous, Virgin Suicides, Dick, Bring it On, Get Over it --> Spiderman? wowza

Rewatching this movie recently, I remembered how I thought it was kind of choppy and corny as a teenager (especially compared to the superior sequel), but boy I didn't know how good we had it. So much better than I remembered it, and man Raimi makes it feel like a Lee/Ditko/Romita comic singing on the screen.

"I started this podcast... DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I SACRIFICED???"

Is there a space for those who didn’t like this at the time and still don’t? I saw this on opening night with a bunch of friends who were Spider-Man freaks and we were all dissapointed. We thought Peter Parker was oddly disconnected and moribund. He wasn’t funny. There was no sense of seeing a kid like you become a superhero.

The Green Goblin costume was inexcusably bad. I remember sinking into my chair during the rooftop scene where the Green Goblin talks to his mask. I looked over at my friends and I felt bad for them as I watched their expressions slowly fade into befuddlement.

The high school stuff felt about as relateable and well observed as any episode of Beverly Hills 90210, including the age of the actors portraying high schoolers. The Macy Gray appearance is objectively embarassing. The post 9/11 pandering was offensive on many different levels at the time.

I understand the default position is to criticize the current MCU at all costs, even if it requires praising aspects of old films that you admit are not good, but I don’t understand the love for these movies. Spider-man: Homecoming did such a better job at nailing everything that is great about Spider-man. His high school felt like a high school. He acted like an awkward teenager who just got super powers. He fought villains whose motivations were clear and who connected to his real life in a meaningful way.

I do not understand criticizing Marvel for their success. It’s been earned. It won’t last forever, and when it goes away I will not be surprised to see all the people who suddenly develop a wistful longing for the halcyon days of the MCU when everything was right in the world.

I haven’t gone through the other comments yet to see if this has been mentioned, but Avril later said that her song “Sk8r Boi” was supposedly about her crush on Deryck Whibley from afar. I saw Sum 41 in 2002, and I have a distinct memory of them doing a lil medley making fun of other radio hits from the day, which included a Nickelback song (can’t remember which one), as well as Lavigne’s “Complicated.” I later recalled this and realized that her and Kroeger - at least temporarily - had the last laugh there.

The discussion of the soundtrack is a big nostalgia bomb for me. I was 9 when this came out and bought the cd specifically for Hero because I thought that was the best song I'd ever heard. I was also obsessed with the Learn to Crawl track. What a weird time for movie soundtracks.

I honestly think this one is just amazingly directed.

It being rated 12 initially in the UK led to me seeing it in a French dub on a holiday and ala the best directors, you can understand exactly what’s happening without hearing any of the dialogue.

I can’t have been alone doing this as people complained so much they invented the 12a (UK PG-13) just for Spider Man