"“You mess with Spidey, you mess with New York!” More than any other superhero, Spider-Man is New York. He's the kid from Queens, the blue-collar nerd who got bitten by a radioactive spider and became the world's most famous teenage crime fighter. In Sam Raimi's 2002 film, a random man in the crowd hollers the above line as a group of New Yorkers protect Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire) from his arch nemesis The Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe). It's a sincere moment, unburdened by the self-reflective seriousness found in the genre's contemporary efforts. Ironically for a film often cited as kickstarting the modern superhero movie trend, Raimi's Spider-Man is a bland superhero movie by today's standards. It is simply a story about a guy, the girl he loves and the city he shields from harm. It wasn't Raimi's intention to make a cinematic dissertation on the different types of heroism. Nor for that matter was he attempting to make a generic superhero movie. He set out to make a Spider-Man movie, and making a great Spider-Man movie requires making a great New York movie. As such, Raimi's version of New York is a place where fantasy and reality meet. There is no doubt that Spider-Man is a fantasy, as Peter reacts to his overnight transformation with a goofy grin because he's developed shredded abs. But even with his newfound powers he still suffers loss. He and the rest of New York don't freak out at the idea of a guy swinging between buildings. In this city and the world, Raimi creates within it, that seems perfectly normal. The director injects realism into the story by having his characters work mundane jobs to meet mundane ends like paying rent. They lead regular lives, and we are given hints of their everyday activities. In this film, New York is more than a setting, as Raimi gives his supporting characters lives outside of Spider-Man and The Green Goblin's ideological conflict."

"When Spider-Man was proposed to me originally it was like, ‘Really, you’re going to make a movie from a comic book?’” Dafo said. “It was like I was slumming it, you know? I didn’t see it that way, but some people were like, ‘Really?’"

"Imagine "Superman" with a Clark Kent more charismatic than the Man of Steel, and you'll understand how "Spider-Man" goes wrong. Tobey Maguireis pitch-perfect as the socially retarded Peter Parker, but when he becomes Spider-Man, the film turns to action sequences that zip along like perfunctory cartoons. Not even during Spidey's first experimental outings do we feel that flesh and blood are contending with gravity. Spidey soars too quickly through the skies of Manhattan; he's as convincing as Mighty Mouse."