I freakin love it too!
I feel like yelling 'Suck it Raimi fans!' but if I did that, I might get in trouble.
I vividly recall sitting in the movie theater in 2002 at the age of 22 for the first showing of Spider-Man in Manchester/England. Watching trailers waiting for the film to start... I can't really put into words how excited I felt. It was as if my whole life had been building towards that day. Sounds pretty OTT but as a super fan of Spidey, it was literally the equivalent of a boxer walking down to the ring to face the world heavyweight champion, or the competitors of the men's 100 meters lining up for the Olympic final!
The moment I had dreamed about was finally here!
I became a Spiderfan at the age of 2 while watching 'Amazing Friends' and had collected the comics since the age of 10. I remembered all the film adaptation false starts, all the times it was said that Spider-man the movie was coming, particularly when James Cameron said after T2 his next film would be the ol' web head, in which Arnold would be Doc Ock! Weird. Alas it never happened.
So I'm sitting in the theater on my own at 11.00am on a Thursday waiting for the film... and then the black screen before credits that reads 'Spider-Man' in white.
Argghhh!!!! SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I remember watching it intently, it taking up my full attention. Mesmerized.
If someone had keeled over and had a heart attack a few seats away from me I probably would not have even noticed, let alone cared.
After the film, I walked out of the theater thinking (telling myself) it was great. How could it not be? Its Spider-Man the movie!!! But the fact was there was a significant portion of discontent within me that would take two years for me to even acknowledge. I told myself that the film was a 10/10 or at the least a 9/10, but the fact was deep down inside, subconsciously, I thought much less of it than that. I just did not know yet.
There was stuff about the film which I thought was great- Willem Dafoe, the speech GG gives SM atop the Bugle, the webslinging scene at the end... Hmm that was about it.
But amongst the stuff that rubbed me up the wrong way, primarily those being 'It's all about a girl' (-No Raimi, you just missed the whole point of Spider-man! IT IS NOT ALL ABOUT A GIRL, IT'S ALL ABOUT PETER PARKER!), The 'Green Goblin' costume- FAIL, the horrible raised webbing/ padded suit/ painted on muscles Spidey costume, Kirsten Dunst- Mary Jane?!, .....
Amongst it all
. The main thing that really ticked me off was Tobey Maguire.
As PP in all 3 films he had no backbone, came off like a total drip and wuss with zero personality. In effect NOTHING like PP, and as Spidey had the same weak voice and none of the webslinger's trade mark humor.
It wasn't until after watching SM2, that I could finally admit all these things to myself. SM2 played out like some lams ass MTV movie and the only good bit was the train fight at the end. What the heck was all that stuff about making Octavius into this likable normal guy at the beginning? We never saw any of that in the comics and those scenes were boring as hell to watch and only served to dilute the character and fluff out the film.
It was a bitter pill to swallow; - that the films I had waited my whole life for, had Spidey miscast amongst many other crappy issues. Like making the focus of the series a corny movie-ized romance story.
NOW FINALLY IT IS OVER!
NOW FINALLY WE HAVE A SECOND CHANCE TO SEE SPIDEY PORTRAYED CORRECTLY IN A MOVIE.
So I'm pretty damn happy about the reboot and glad it's happening now rather than later. The main thing I am concerned about is the guy who gets cast as PP/SM playing those roles with more vibrancy, personality and backbone. If we can see Spider-Man's & Peter Parker's personality's portrayed correctly this time, the new film will be 10x better than Spider-Man 2002 by default.