Spider-Man 2

Maybe it has something to do with Sam Raimi's skills as a director, or with Tobey Maguire's very human central performance, but the Spider-Man films are by far the best of the superhero genre.

A sequel that not only outstrips its predecessor but has a perversity and quick-wittedness that hardly seem to belong in a comic-book movie.

Spider-Man 2 is better than just dark, it's touched by authentic teenage paranoia and neurosis.

This is a better picture than the first because it makes its characters human, doesn't camp it up and refuses to believe that Kerpow! Kerching! is more than a constituent part of the proceedings.

Alfred Molina makes a more baroque supervillain than Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin, but the other stars seem happy to be giving us more of the same. Sam Raimi's direction, on the other hand, is even more fluent and well paced.

The web-slinging sequences are bigger-better-brighter-faster than the already spectacular ones in 2002's Spider-Man, and at the same time, the film's smaller emotional moments are denser, richer and more resonant than those in the first.

Rewatch SPIDER-MAN 2 (2004) for the studio's 100th anniversary.

Deeply earnest in its delivery, Sam Raimi perfectly portrays the central “why” of Spider-Man. Truly one of the best in the genre.

Simply put, they just don’t make 'em like this anymore.

This is the ultimate Spider-Man movie, and it’s one of the best-ever superhero films we’ve ever gotten.




Narratively lumpy as it sometimes is, "Spider-Man 2" marks Raimi’s return to the pure cinema of fun.

Still one of the best superhero films of all-time.