About two-thirds of the way through Spider-Man 2, Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire), who recently declared himself “Spider-Man no more,” finds himself in a familiar situation. Without any forethought, let alone Spidey-Sense, Peter dashes into a burning building just as he had in the film’s 2002 predecessor, Spider-Man, to save a baby. Things go much differently in round two. Peter’s huffing from the smoke. His once heroic superhuman strength, which he used to fight the Green Goblin in a burning building last time, is gone. By the end of the scene, the toddler he’s supposed to rescue ends up saving Spider-Man. When he finally escapes his death trap, he overhears some firemen talking about the poor bastard still inside. It’s not the only scene to mirror and reconfigure a moment from Spider-Man to highlight the second movie’s themes.
Spider-Man 2 isn’t just the best superhero sequel ever. It’s the best superhero movie ever, period, because it’s a sequel that uses its previous installment to build character and emotion. Director Sam Raimi, working off a script by Oscar-winner Alvin Sargent, restages beats and plot points from Spider-Man to show actual character growth in Spider-Man 2. Spider-Man 2 doesn’t merely expand the universe around Spider-Man, but the one inside him.
To Sam Raimi, “sequel” has never been a dirty word. But the filmmaker behind two of the big screen’s best follow-ups also doesn’t play by the rules. When bringing back the Three Stooges-inspired slapstick specters of Evil Dead, he made a pseudo-remake of the movie and then some with Evil Dead II. More violent and bloody than his first go-around, he also used the bones of his first effort to expand its ideas. Raimi speeds through a restaging of the plot of his debut in Evil Dead II before essentially telling the same story with the added benefits of something resembling a budget. It’s an approach he’d bring to the tangled web of Spider-Man in 2004.
“It was recognizing what we wanted to do and couldn’t, or didn’t realize what we should have done until after the movie was deep into production, and that’s the great advantage of a sequel, being able to do those things, not to repeat your mistakes, and create what you think the heart and soul of the thing is,” Sam Raimi tells Tobey Maguire in the Spider-Man 2 audio commentary. “We did that too in the performances and how we plotted scenes out. I think we got to the core of Peter Parker.”
2002’s Spider-Man signaled an immediate shift in Hollywood. The film that launched a thousand superhero movies was also the first to make $100 million in its opening weekend. Even in today’s beleaguered box office landscape, more than two decades after its release, the Spider-Man $100 million opening is still a measure of success for tentpoles. And just about everyone who saw the film remembered it. They had no choice. It’s hard to overstate how immediately iconic Spider-Man was and how strange it is now that its most memorable moment was a kiss. But the upside-down kiss was like The Matrix’s bullet-time: endlessly parodied, referenced, and discussed seemingly as soon as it hit screens.
By 2004, the rules of superhero sequels had already been written. The Batman and Superman franchises more or less moved away from continuity, especially by 1995, starting a new adventure and, with Batman at least, a new actor behind the mask every time. No fewer than two villains ever appeared in sequels, and that doesn’t even include grey-haired or bald-headed schemers like Lex Luthor or Max Shreck. 2003’s X2 kicked off superhero cinema’s sequel era and proved follow-ups could be good, but it too added many new characters. With Spider-Man 2, Sam Raimi wasn’t interested in bringing in the comic canon as much as he was building his own.
Raimi isn’t shy about his pride in his original Spider-Man. Some of the first images in Spider-Man 2 are illustrations by comics great Alex Ross, recapping the first movie and priming the viewer for the remix. However, the qualities Spider-Man 2 borrows from Spider-Man vary in size. There are some light callbacks, like Electric Company-obsessed street buskers singing the ‘70s theme. Others are plot-based. Spider-Man is again dealing with a mad scientist, drunk off power, pushing forward scientific breakthroughs despite the obvious risks of becoming a supervillain. But even in these cases, Spider-Man 2 goes deeper and pulls more empathy out of these characters. The buskers are no longer just part of the city’s milieu; they express its residents’ feelings. “Where have you gone, Spider-Man?” the busker sings to the same theme tune after Peter relinquishes his power. As Doc Ock, Alfred Molina tops Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin, but he’s also getting more to play. Ock has a wife, with whom he discusses poetry, a dream, values, and morals. Moreover, he’s more sympathetic because his role feels more specific than Norman Osborne, an absentee father and billionaire looking to get back at some shareholders for firing him.
Some moments in Spider-Man 2 rejigger our expectations, too, hoping to use what we’ve seen before to deepen our understanding of these characters. When New Yorkers once again attempt to save Spider-Man from the Big Bad as they did in the first movie, they are immediately discarded and told by Spider-Man to stand down. Instead, the real moment of connection between Spider-Man and his fellow New Yorkers is a gesture of appreciation: Two kids returning his lost mask. The callback to the upside-down kiss is meant to re-establish Mary Jane’s relationship with Peter, one that solidifies her love for him and sets up the finale. Restaged in a dry apartment, Raimi uses the first film’s most iconic moment as a key to Spider-Man 2’s romance. Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) has her fiancé, John Jameson (Daniel Gillies), lean his head back on the armrest of a couch and recreate the kiss. “Wow, I’m back on the moon,” Jameson says. “You up there with me?” Mary Jane looks like she’s going to puke. This guy isn’t Spider-Man, and she knows from the kiss.
There are plenty of moments like this, big and small. Peter and MJ’s conversation over the fence, Aunt May’s words of encouragement before a final battle. Peter’s re-training in Spider-Man 2, with its glorious “I’m back/my back” joke, parodies Peter testing his powers in the first movie. These aren’t marks against the film’s originality. After all, Spider-Man had been dealing with all these issues in some form or another for 40 years before Tobey Maguire donned the mask. Raimi speaks the language of the first movie to create something more complex, which Peter thinks he can handle but is more than he can bear.
While Raimi’s remixing continued into Spider-Man 3, his succumbing to other side-effects of sequelitis (too many villains and side characters—not to mention that scene where he hits MJ) doomed it. Still, some of the most memorable moments of that film are mirrors of Spider-Man 2. The much-maligned but funniest moment in Spider-Man 3 is Dark Peter’s version of the “Rain Drops Keep Falling On My Head” sequence. Since Spider-Man 2, Raimi’s made one original film, the hilariously grim Drag Me To Hell. The rest are parts of wider franchises. Doctor Strange And The Multiverse Of Madness and Oz: The Great And Powerful couldn’t capture the same sequel magic as Spider-Man 2 because Raimi’s working with another filmmaker’s tools.
Spider-Man 2 isn’t exactly a remake of Spider-Man, just as Evil Dead II isn’t exactly a remake of Evil Dead. These movies match what we expect from a follow-up because the director isn’t looking to expand the franchise’s potential. Raimi’s improving on what he’s already done, making the amazing Spider-Man an even more sensational Spider-Man 2. There have been eight Spider-Man movies since 2004. But because Spider-Man 2 was so invested in making us care even more deeply about dorky Peter Parker and Mary Jane’s rising star, the movie continues to stick around.