This Week In Retro: Spider-Man (2002) & The Avengers (2012) (Patreon)

May 3, 2002/May 4, 2012: Superheroes in New York? Gimme a break!

by Diamond Feit

The timeline of my life syncs up closely with the birth and rise of (commercial) video games, which no doubt made the medium more attractive in my eyes. Children are easily distracted by bright lights and loud sounds, after all, and in the late 1970s nothing was brighter or louder than an arcade. Yet before I realized that video games were in my life to stay, I developed an early fascination with superheroes. It wasn't just an interest in comic books: Christopher Reeve and Lou Ferrigno delivered star-making performances as live-action incarnations of Superman and The Incredible Hulk. However, even they were late to the party, as any kid in the 1970s had already been inducted into the Spider-Man fan club from birth.

Spidey had an unfair advantage thanks to two televised interpretations which frequently aired in reruns across the United States at that time. The first was a cartoon version originally produced in the 1960s, now best known for its catchy theme song and for generating an infinite number of memes. The second, but no less influential, was a goofy live-action take on Spider-Man created by the Children's Television Workshop for The Electric Company. In these skits, Spidey never spoke aloud, settling instead for physical word balloons and thought bubbles to communicate with viewers. The Electric Company targeted young readers, so what better way to test their developing abilities than a mute superhero?

With his star power red-hot at the start of the 80s, Spider-Man zipped his way into video games, his first title appearing on the Atari 2600 sometime in 1982. It would not be his last interactive experience, as the web-slinger continued to headline games for years to follow, mostly side-scrolling beat-em-ups or platformers that allowed his agility to take center-stage. When Capcom turned the Infinity Gauntlet saga into a fighting game (a storyline that featured nearly every hero in the Marvel Universe), Spider-Man made the cut and became a fixture in the many VS games which followed.

With an array of comic book, television, cartoon, and video game credits to his name, the consistently popular Spider-Man could seemingly do no wrong, but there remained one gigantic hole in his media footprint: The silver screen. Superman and Batman had made big bucks at the box office, and even lesser-known comic sensations like Blade, Judge Dredd, and The Phantom all got their shots at American multiplexes, but Spidey remained sidelined in development hell as the rights to the wall-crawler bounced between studios for over a decade.

All that changed 20 years ago this week as Spider-Man, at long last, got his movie. More than that, he got a hit movie, a picture that premiered at just the right time in American history to become a juggernaut, firmly planting the Marvel flag upon the world of cinema.

Even though Spidey's origin story was pushing 40 at the time of the movie's release, Spider-Man tells the tale of young Peter Parker becoming a superhero with few changes. The spider that bites Peter is genetically enhanced rather than "radioactive," but its venom still transforms the meek high school student into a hyper-agile gymnast capable of gripping almost any surface and lifting objects of remarkable size. In a departure from the source material, the spider also grants Peter the ability to produce adhesive webbing directly from his wrists. By making his famous web-shooters a biological function rather than a technological innovation, Spider-Man frames Peter's metamorphosis as a metaphor for puberty.

Even though Spider-Man famously works alone, the Spider-Man film works double-time to introduce the many characters that shape his life. Peter lives with his elderly Uncle Ben and Aunt May, is friends with Harry Osborn, and has eyes for Mary Jane even though she's dating Flash Thompson. Harry's father Norman is a highly successful businessman whose own scientific experimentation enhances his strength but destabilizes his mind, leading him to a life of crime as the Green Goblin.

Seeking to monetize his newly-developed skills, Peter tries his hand at professional wrestling, creating his costume and gimmick to work the crowd. His in-ring success has tragic consequences, however; when a crooked promoter stiffs Peter of the money he was promised, Peter declines to stop a burglar from making off with the box office receipts, only for that same fleeing fugitive to shoot and kill Uncle Ben in a carjacking—a crime that only takes place because Ben was waiting to give Peter a ride home. Realizing that "with great power comes great responsibility," Peter vows to use his gifts to serve the public rather than his personal gain, and thus the superhero Spider-Man is born.

When crime-fighting doesn't pay the bills, Peter finds work as a freelance photographer for The Daily Bugle, selling superhero selfies to famously demanding editor J. Jonah Jameson. Jameson distrusts Spider-Man and considers the masked vigilante a "menace" but still recognizes that coverage of the wall-crawler sells newspapers. In hindsight, Jameson using his position as a media mogul to profit off of the activities of a man he despises is a cautionary tale for all of us: Whatever the size of your platform, amplifying voices that you disagree with is tantamount to reinforcing said opinions. To put it another way, retweets always equal endorsements.

A big reason Spider-Man works so well is the kinetic hand of director Sam Raimi at the helm. The Michigan-born auteur had long dealt with the fantastic in his past films like The Evil Dead trilogy, and had dabbled in superheroes with his original creation Darkman. When Peter discovers his precognitive "spider sense," Raimi treats the audience to a wild sequence of every external stimuli Peter is able to process, from a fly buzzing its wings mid-flight to Flash Thompson's incoming fist. Peter's initial forays into wall-crawling and web-swinging are just as energetic; with no costume or mask on hand, Tobey Maguire's full-body acting and beaming visage make his visible excitement all the more infectious.

When the moment arrives for Peter to finally don his spider-duds, it is a glorious recreation of the famous red and blue costume lifted straight from the comics. Better still, no one in the film derides the iconic outfit or tries to "explain" it, letting the costume speak for itself. Spider-Man arrived in theaters less than two years after X-Men brought Marvel's motley crew of mutants to the big screen, but they had ditched their famous, colorful ensembles in favor of all-black jumpsuits. Spider-Man could have likewise redesigned his outfit to incorporate more black as was the style at the time (he's certainly worn his share of alternate palettes) but ultimately tradition won out over trendiness.

Spider-Man's widespread acclaim in the face of its unapologetic faithfulness to the source material proved that comic book movies could appeal to the masses without leaning into self-parody or camp. Combined with the ongoing success of the X-Men films, this laid the foundation to bring the Marvel Universe at large to cinemas. It was a huge gamble to bet on niche-level heroes like Iron Man and Thor carrying films all by themselves, but Marvel stuck to their guns and audiences showed up.

Which brings us to ten years ago when Marvel's grand plan came to fruition with the release of The Avengers. After five previous films established all the key players and their supporting characters, The Avengers sees Loki return from the void with a scheme (and an alien army) to take Manhattan. Again, there was no guarantee moviegoers would be willing to do their homework and invest time in getting to know all these separate heroes beforehand, but even when viewed in a vacuum The Avengers does a remarkable job of introducing and giving screentime to its sprawling cast. Every character gets at least one scene with every other character, with some immediately bonding as new-found buddies, some butting heads, and others straight-up brawling. By the third act, however, the team assembles in midtown to save New York City from utter destruction and sends Loki away in shackles.

Like Spider-Man a decade earlier, The Avengers makes precious few changes in selling its 60s-era superhero squad to a 2012 audience. Iron Man remains a tech-savvy billionaire playboy, Captain America a recently-defrosted World War II supersoldier, Thor a demi-god from the very real realm of Asgard, and Hulk a scientist whose gamma ray experiments triggered a nasty anger management issue. Black Widow retains her Cold War Soviet-born backstory but becomes a founding member of the team rather than a 1970s new recruit, and Hawkeye is reimagined as an agent of SHIELD rather than a carnival-trained masked marksman. Sadly, despite being present in Avengers comics from the start, the diminutive Ant-Man and Wasp would not appear until they were granted a spin-off film years later.

I cannot recall the specific settings in which I saw Spider-Man or The Avengers, but I know both times I walked out of the theater elated that characters I had loved since childhood were now legitimate pop-culture icons. Better still, these big-screen versions of my favorite superheroes retained their comic book origins and features, surviving Hollywood's famously nitpicky development process and appearing on-screen nearly exactly as I remembered them. Both films dominated the box office in their respective releases, demonstrating that even comic-ambivalent audiences will accept these characters without any tacked-on updates, gritty overtones, or surrogates asking a thousand questions to make sure no one sitting in the theater gets left behind.

There is an extra thread connecting these two blockbusters, a personal factor that has always kept me more invested in Marvel's superhero cadre than the DC crowd: These are New York stories about New York characters. Tony Stark was born in Manhattan, just like me. Peter Parker is from Queens and Steve Rogers is from Brooklyn, two boroughs with deep connections to my friends and relatives. Thor is, well, Thor is from another planet but he could walk through the East Village in full armor and no one would think he looked out of place.

Spider-Man's abilities perfectly compliment the city he calls home, as the abundance of skyscrapers and bridges guarantee he always has a spire or trestle overhead to swing from. He's not universally liked (Jameson is not his only detractor) but he presents himself as "your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man'' and that makes him a hero to millions of New Yorkers. You can see all of this on-screen in Spider-Man, with cutaways to regular people reacting to the web-slinger with both joy and disgust. In the finale he must rescue both Mary Jane and a gondola full of passengers (from a very real tramway which is still operating); Spidey only succeeds when the people of the city help him to counter the Green Goblin's plans.

The Avengers have always lived in New York City but the nature of the team and their many enemies means their activities take them around the world (or beyond). With scenes spread across multiple continents, The Avengers movie could have easily set its third act alien invasion anywhere on our planet without losing the audience. Certainly, with his stated goal of world conquest, Loki should have centered his attention on a capital city like Washington DC or a major military hub. Yet he chooses midtown Manhattan, both to take advantage of Stark's power-generating skyscraper and to ensure his antics earn him a wide audience. The movie reflects this choice by including major landmarks in the extended battle that follows, with the famous Avengers "assembling" moment taking place right outside Grand Central Station and Thor using the (gorgeous) Chrysler Building as a lightning rod to hold back the alien forces. You don't have to love New York to feel worked up during these scenes, but it helps.

When I say Spider-Man "premiered at just the right time," I am reflecting on the fact that May 2002 was just eight months after the national tragedy of September 11, 2001. Shooting on the film predated the real-life disaster, and the film's initial teaser trailer even included a chopper full of bad guys webbed up between the Twin Towers. As the first big movie of the summer blockbuster season, Spider-Man arrived when audiences were hungry for feel-good entertainment, and having a superhero keep New York safe while uniting the city against a villain certainly qualified.

Ten years later, The Avengers premiered long after our national 9/11 hangover had ended, and plenty of other films in the previous decade had directly or indirectly addressed those events. However, with nearly an hour of explosions across Manhattan, The Avengers absolutely invokes memories of that day with multiple shots of dust-covered civilians and first responders fleeing from danger. The aliens never use jet airplanes in their attacks, but they do bring gigantic flying serpents who ram into skyscrapers without a care, demolishing the aforementioned Grand Central. After our heroes win, part of the on-screen media coverage includes crowds mourning at improvised memorials on the streets of New York, an all-too-real memory for those of us who were there in 2001.

The world is a different place in May of 2022. Superhero movies haven't gone away (quite the opposite) but the proliferation of CGI and chroma key technology means that any film can be shot anywhere with the backgrounds, costumes, and even actors added after the fact. The most recent Spider-Man film ended with a battle atop the Statue of Liberty that might as well have taken place on Mars. This past week I saw Doctor Strange (another New Yorker) spend most of his multiverse-hopping adventure fighting foes in distant temples that do not exist anywhere on our Earth. That film was directed by Sam Raimi but even his unique sensibilities can only shine so bright in a Cinematic Universe™ where every film needs to have a certain amount of conformity.

20 years ago, Marvel was a legitimate underdog, a company fighting for survival and respect in a media landscape that viewed comic books as the lowest of low art (save for perhaps video games). 10 years ago, Marvel had become property of the Disney corporation but still, The Avengers represented a huge risk that could have easily gone sour and destroyed the nascent MCU—one only has to look at DC's revolving door of reboots and remakes to see what happens when superhero films flop. Today, Marvel sits atop the heap as the only "safe bet" in Hollywood, leading to comical images like this list of 70 screenings of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness at just one Times Square cineplex. If there's a more monkey's paw level of wish fulfillment, I don't know what it could be.

I suppose I'm part of the problem; with rare exception, I make it my business to see Marvel movies in theaters even during a pandemic while also tuning in to the latest Marvel streaming series on Disney Plus. I still think superheroes are fun, though, and while I can't say that everything I watch is great, it's not like I'm sitting through trash while telling myself it's "important." I'm old enough to know about the sunk cost fallacy and I am fully capable of abandoning a series once I lose interest. Yet I am also aware that nothing I've seen lately has hit me as hard as Spider-Man or The Avengers did all those years ago. They definitely hold up, for the record, as I'm always happy to revisit these superhero films when I'm in the mood to fondly remember the city of my birth.

How often does that mood hit me? That's my secret, Captain: I'm always homesick.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts on Twitter and playing games on Twitch.