I never bought into the fanboy ranting that proclaimed Batman Begins as the best superhero movie of all time. I mainly adhered to the tried and true maxim "to each his own," but I also had a number of reasons why, while I enjoyed the movie, a lot, even, I don't consider it one of my all time favorites. Most of my reasons had to do with the time Bruce Wayne actually donned the mask.
I've heard similar criticisms about the Spider-Man movies, and pretty much wrote them off to that aforesaid maxim. There was one critic on one site who just kept ranting about how untrue the movie was to the character and how fake the special effects looked (which I found true for the first and much of the third installment but not the second) but most of his ranting just seemed like irrational fanboy hate. Fortunately I actually met someone who could actually articulate what it is he really disliked about the movie: the complete absence of Spider-Man's witty quips.
Now that The Dark Knight is, even adjusting for ticket price differentials, on its way to becoming the highest grossing comic-book movie of all time, it's dawning on me that there are a lot more fans who would have plunked down some more money to watch the Spider-Man movies again if the mythology had been tweaked more because I know for certain that as a comic-book character Spider-Man is at least AS popular as Batman.
Apart from Heath Ledger's death which was probably good for many of the glowing reviews as well as a few tens of millions in grosses (the way Brandon Lee's death arguably enabled his swansong The Crow to make about forty million more dollars than it probably would have had he lived), TDK benefits from being the most faithful page-to-screen comic-book adaptation ever.
Thinking about it now, the problems I had with the script and story devices are problems I would have with the comics in general. I had thought to devote a generous portion of a blog post to a discourse on why Nolan's and Ledger's purportedly "realistic" Joker is a caricatured, inadequate representation of evil considering that most evil in this world, even the worst kind, is motivated by some personal gain and not some insatiable penchant for destruction, but I stopped myself because I realized that this was how the latter-day Joker was written: as the never-ending chaos that perpetually foils Batman's never-ending quest for order in Gotham City. I understood at last why Christopher Nolan "gets it" completely and while Sam Raimi, as noble as his intentions and efforts are (at least in the first two movies), does not.
As a big-screen comic-book hero, Spider-Man could easily match if not exceed Batman in terms of outright popularity. After all, the box-office records set by the first movie stood for years and Sam Raimi's magnus opus will still be the first movie to ever make $100 million on its opening weekend. But there is still a cache of fans that won't give it repeat business because as a page-to-screen translation, something has been lost. The guy who mentioned it a couple of years ago was right on the money: he's missing his snark.
Spider-Man's witty dialogue is what makes him more entertaining than Batman, Superman, Iron Man, the Hulk and all of the superheroes, adapted or waiting to be adapted, together.
Out of the mask, Peter Parker is a luckless loser without money or much of a career to speak of, which is a very compelling aspect of the mythology considering what an intelligent person he is. Raimi gets that. In fact, Raimi's Parker is as close to Stan Lee's vision as you could hope to ever see on the big screen.
But when he puts the mask on, Peter Parker turns into something else altogether, and that's not a bad thing. Spidey guru Peter David put it best in a relatively recent Spider-Man comic book when he, through Spider-Man, explained that being in a mask was somehow "liberating" which enabled him to talk the way he did.
I used to dismiss the possibility of a movie Spider-Man wisecracking by rationalizing that it would be much tougher to choreograph the soaring action scenes, especially those of the second movie, with such dialogue, but recently, I saw something that convinced me otherwise: the new cartoon series The Spectacular Spider-Man. This may be a Saturday morning cartoon, but in many, many respects it's written with much more nuance than many of the movies (especially the third one) and well and truly opened my eyes. I'd absolutely love to have a season of this on DVD, as the dialogue and characterizations are wonderfully faithful and even a little updated, the action is off-the-wall FANTASTIC, and quite crucially, the fight scenes FEATURE the trademark quips.
It was upon watching this that I realized and finally came to acknowledge Raimi's shortcomings in adapting Spider-Man's adventures for the big screen. He GETS Peter out of the costume but doesn't have a clue how he's supposed to act when he's wearing it.
When in costume, Spidey is SUPPOSED to be cocky. He's supposed to have a swagger to him, and it's not SUPPOSED to be a bad thing, the way Raimi made it out to be in the third movie. His one cocky line "I guess you haven't heard, I'm the Sheriff round these parts" in Spider-Man 3, apart from being utterly painful to hear, strongly suggested that Raimi didn't or doesn't believe that Spider-Man should make wisecracks. I understand now why that would bother fans.
Well, here's the thing, Sam: if you profess to love Lee's and Ditko's Spidey as opposed to the later stuff by other creators, then you should know, by just perusing your first or collected editions, that the wiseass as Spider-Man is as integral to Lee's scripts as his money problems and responsibility hangups. This was not added on by later writers; it was an idiosyncrasy conceived by Lee himself. Try to understand, Sam: it's not a superfluity at all; in fact, in enriches the character's mythology by creating a fascinating dichotomy within him.
Spider-Man is a supremely confident and assured superhero who spends most of his time trapped in a loser/wimp's body. It is in donning his mask that he is able to set this side of himself free. When he is Spider-Man suddenly the money problems and other inadequacies in his life fall away, and he is able to bask in the glory of being super-powered. In fact, this scenario was deliberately engineered by Lee because in suggesting that Peter gets "high" on being Spidey, he presents an interesting dilemma of responsibility where Spider-Man might be shirking his other obligations to the likes of Aunt May by playing superhero.
The cockiness, confidence and wisecracks, in short, are an INDISPENSABLE part of the Spider-Man mythos, just as much as the luckless loser that Peter Parker is.
While the action sequences in the Spider-Man films (especially the second one) are really cool to watch, they do not project enough of that confidence, if at all.
Come to think of it, ROBERT DOWNEY JR. does a better job of selling Spider-Man's snark...too bad he plays IRON MAN, who isn't really known for it. Maybe he should trade his red and gold for a little red and blue? Well, maybe if he were twenty years or so younger...
Spider-Man 4 is due out in a few years, and Hollywood and fanboys being the way they are, the pressure will probably be on to equal if not exceed the heights that TDK is now scaling. Heck, the pressure will even be on to equal if not exceed the standard of quality Marvel's very own studio has set with Iron Man. I'd rather not think in those terms, but considering the first three movies have demonstrated the law of diminishing returns whereas the latest Batman movie has squarely defied it, Raimi might want to and quite frankly SHOULD reevaluate his narrative approach to arguably the most beloved comic book hero of all.
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