Swinger
After the WTC Twin Towers fell, Spider-Man's producers
and creators found themselves in something of a pickle. It seems
that during one of Spider-Man's (Tobey Maguire) many battles
with his arch-nemesis, the Green Goblin (played as fiendishly
schizophrenic by Willem Dafoe), we were to be shown a web Spidey
had spun between the Twin Towers to snare the villain, and which
accidentally catches a passing helicopter instead. Not only was
the image a key element in the film's final movement, it had
also already been released to theaters in a teaser trailer and
was featured in the mass print marketing that was set to
commence.
Wisely, execs decided to nix the trailer, rethink their ad
campaign, and re-edit the film's last reel. So the web trick
gets repeated in a less "controversial" location and the
showdown between Spidey and the Goblin centers on their battle
royale on and around the Queensborough Bridge. Elsewhere in the
film, familiar NYC landmarks abound -- the Flatiron and Empire
State Buildings, for example. Additionally, as something of a
tribute to New Yorkers, a scene was added during the battle in
which spectators gathered on the bridge throw rocks and garbage
at the Goblin. One citizen tells the green meanie: "You mess
with one of us, you mess with all of us!"
That filmmakers were so concerned over how their treatment of
Marvel's all-American, boy-next-door superhero and his
relationship to his (and our) beloved NYC would play for a
post-9/11 audience speaks to the way in which comics have
historically responded to, reflected, and helped produce the
tenor of their times. This relationship between comics and real
world is further complicated by standard superhero mythology
that demands the hero always save the day, which, in this case
came up against an event from which seemingly no one could
protect us. Marvel itself recognized this conundrum with its
in-house reaction to the events, Marvel Comics: Heroes,
which depicts Spider-Man swinging past the WTC ruins as
distraught New Yorkers cry, "Where were you?"
The Spider-Man comics have never shied away from tackling timely
issues. Perhaps most famously the series was the first within
the comic industry to take on drug abuse and addiction. In 1971,
in The Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 1: 96-98), Peter Parker's
best friend Harry Osborn (here played by James Franco) becomes
addicted to pills and has a seriously bad trip on LSD. This
occasions some pious moralizing on the part of Parker, but
nonetheless Marvel took a chance on representing what was
becoming at the time a real problem for U.S. culture, and did so
long before G. H. W. Bush's "war on drugs." The series even went
so far as to try to demystify the racial and economic politics
of drugs and drug abuse in the U.S. by having wealthy white
Harry as the abuser, and peripheral characters remind readers
that drugs "aren't just a ghetto hang-up! They hit the rich same
as the poor." Heavy stuff for the "funnies."
Sam Raimi's Spider-Man leaves this sub-plot out, even
though it is a major part of the original source material. This
is the famous Gwen Stacy story-arc from 1971-73, in which the
Green Goblin kills Peter Parker's first true love, the blond,
blue-eyed Gwen. It's a significant moment in Spider-Man lore,
and die-hard fans and comics aficionados will undoubtedly be
disappointed by its excision from the film. But, as Raimi says,
for all her importance to such fans, Stacy is a less familiar
character to casual or even non-comics readers, while "Mary Jane
(Kirsten Dunst) had more longevity and more weight in the comic
books."
This omission isn't the only change Spider-Man makes to
the original material. The film essentially condenses about 10
years of comics publication. S-M takes the origin story
from Spidey's debut in 1962's Amazing Fantasy 15 and
weaves it into the above-mentioned Gwen Stacy story from the
early '70s. The film also re-introduces Mary Jane Watson as
Peter's childhood neighbor, when in the comics, he doesn't meet
her until years later, when he enrolls at Empire State
University.
Along with restructuring Petey's love life, Raimi and
screenwriter David Koepp update some smaller details. Here, for
instance, Parker becomes Spider-Man after being bit by a
genetically altered spider, rather than a radioactive one. And
the explanation for the Green Goblin's costume and genesis is a
particularly clever critique of military spending and federally
funded "scientific" research.
But these are superficial changes; unlike other film superhero
treatments -- like the Superman franchise and Joel
Schumacher's last two Batman movies -- Spider-Man
is remarkably faithful to its source. One of the most engaging
aspects of the Spider-Man comics is their focus on an ordinary
teenager who develops extraordinary powers while dealing with
normal teen angst and growing up in an increasingly complicated
world. The film takes on Peter Parker's difficulties with high
school unpopularity and well as absent parents and extended
familial relations. This last part is given added urgency and
poignancy in Peter's relationship to his best pal's father,
Norman Osborn, who becomes something of a surrogate father to
the boy and later, the maniacal Green Goblin.
It's a tangled story to be sure, and the best thing about
Spider-Man is that the film takes its time telling it.
Spider-Man doesn't get caught up in its own snazzy
special effects, although there are plenty of those throughout
and they are impressive indeed. Through Maguire's performance,
we get a real sense of P.P./S-M's coming to terms with his newly
acquired powers and responsibilities, and his conflicted loyalty
to his best friend Harry and love for MJ, whom Harry is dating,
sporadically, for most of the movie. Spider-Man even
lavishes a good amount of screen-time on Peter's boss at the
Daily Bugle, J. Jonah Jameson (played most excellently by J. K.
Simmons, the Neo-Nazi prison rapist of HBO's Oz). Here
he's an aggressive, miserly blow-hard who will manipulate any
story to sell a few more papers, just as he always has been.
The only real disappointments are the film's treatment of gender
and race, but as a nearly incessant whiteness and not so
progressive gender politics have plagued the comics industry for
much of its history, perhaps it's no surprise they get replayed
here. The central character of color in the film is Macy Gray,
who plays Macy Gray performing at the "World Unity Festival" in
Times Square. And MJ is sadly flat, primarily dancing around the
edges of the story in order to be saved by Spidey. Kirsten Dunst
has acknowledged the limitations of her character in interviews,
and admitted that most of her acting consists of repeated
screaming.
This is unfortunate. Marvel's Spider-Man series was one of the
first comics to incorporate characters of color into its fantasy
world, both as central and peripheral characters, so it is a bit
of a let down (at least for me) that race is so underrepresented
in the film. And Mary Jane Parker, nee Watson, in the
comics is quite independent and financially supports Peter after
they are married, so that he can continue to "serve" the people
of New York.
Nevertheless, and as the story goes, with his introduction in
1962 Spider-Man changed not only the comic industry but the way
readers related to superheroes and the place of comics in
American culture more generally. Historian Bradford Wright
asserts, in Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth
Culture in America, that after his debut Spider-Man quickly
became the "quintessential Marvel superhero." Unlike other
costumed icons, Spider-Man was a "real" teen with "real" teenage
problems who was directly located in the "real" world of New
York City. In tackling current events and social ills that other
comics, much less other media, were hesitant to broach (like the
Viet Nam war and drugs) Spider-Man changed the way young people
interacted with popular culture and made sense of the world
around them. In 1965, Esquire reported that in a
nation-wide poll, college students ranked Spider-Man among their
favorite revolutionary icons, alongside figures like Che
Guevara.
The exceptions I have noted notwithstanding, Raimi's
Spider-Man is clearly indebted to and appreciates the
comics history of this "revolutionary" superhero, and the film
could quite possibly (and hopefully) introduce a new generation
of readers to this "Amazing" icon. I have always thought that
Spider-Man was the coolest of all the masked avengers. Forget
Superman, too sanctimonious. Forget Batman, too rich and
right-wing. But a nerdy, book-worm teenager as superhero, who
continues to protect the innocent despite the fact that the
public often despises him, or at the very least, considers him a
threat to public safety, here was something different, something
"real." As a kid, I always wanted to be Spider-Man. I still do.
— 2 May 2002
