Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy has the strongest moral arc in superhero movies

polygon.com:

All eight Spider-Man live-action movies are returning to theaters this spring, in a series Sony is calling Spider-Mondays . We’ve updated and reposted this essay on Spider-Man’s best movie arc in conjunction with the re-release.

By the end of Sam Raimi’s 2002 movie Spider-Man, secret superhero Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) isn’t any better off personally than he was at the beginning of the film, when he was an awkward nerd without superpowers. Peter’s Uncle Ben is dead, and his Aunt May is struggling. His would-be mentor Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe) became a villain and died while trying to murder Peter, and Norman’s son, Peter’s former best friend, Harry (James Franco), seems prepared to follow in his dad’s footsteps. And Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), the love of Peter’s life, has admitted she returns his feelings, but he can’t reciprocate. He walks away, knowing that “with great power comes great responsibility.” If he stays true to his morals, he can’t stop being Spider-Man, and he can’t allow the role to endanger those he cares about.

Cue the ending: a thrilling web-slinging sequence, an American flag consuming half the background in a post-9/11 “We will be strong!” bit of iconography. There’s a smash cut to the credits, then Danny Elfman’s incredible Spider-Man score juxtaposed with “Hero,” the lead single from the soundtrack, shouted by Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger and Saliva’s Josey Scott.

It sounds messy, like a clumsy assortment of 2002 culture closing out the superhero blockbuster that went on to inform all the superhero blockbusters that followed it for the next 20 years. And honestly, it kind of is. The inclusion of catchy tie-in album music coupled with such an obvious cultural nod both date the film and render it a victim of its own franchising. But it’s a testament to the strength of Spider-Man’s character arc that all this noise doesn’t drown out the story sequence of a young man learning he must do what’s right, even if it’s rarely easy. It’s the