{"id":7990,"date":"2015-12-03T15:06:43","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T20:06:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/?p=7990"},"modified":"2016-03-07T15:08:13","modified_gmt":"2016-03-07T20:08:13","slug":"top-comic-book-adaptations-no-30-spider-man-sam-raimi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/2015\/12\/03\/top-comic-book-adaptations-no-30-spider-man-sam-raimi\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Comic Book Adaptations: No. 30 – Spider-Man (Sam Raimi)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"spiderman\"<\/a>Sam Raimi\u2019s Spider-Man had to work. Thankfully for the millions (and millions!) of comic-book lovers, it did.<\/span><\/p>\n

By the time the film was released in 2002, comic book adaptations had gone through a rebirth and then fallen back into campy nonsense with the late 90s Batman movies. <\/span>X-Men <\/span><\/i>had successfully shown that these adaptations could be \u201ccool\u201d again in 2000, but like the Batman films that came before, it was forced into a kind of grounded reality that we will (spoilers) get into with the next entrant on this list.<\/span><\/p>\n

Spider-Man couldn\u2019t be shoehorned into a darker, more Matrix-inspired costume or (like Storm and Rogue) have his most fantastical powers taken away. \u00a0It just wouldn\u2019t make sense.<\/span><\/p>\n

Spidy had never been on screen before and as silly as it sounds to boil an entire blockbuster flick down to one thing, we needed to believe the web-slinging or nothing else would have mattered. And they nailed it. In my estimation, this makes Raimi\u2019s <\/span>Spider-Man<\/span><\/i> the first in a class of fantasy-style adventure comic-book adaptations that would eventually bring us The Avengers. <\/span><\/p>\n

Because of the technological advancements made by this film, superheroes were no longer resigned to one-on-one fist-fights in tight corridors. Now they could swing from the rooftops and give audiences shivers as the battles took to the sky.<\/span><\/p>\n

In terms of faithfulness to source material, casting a 30-year-old (looking) Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker falls somewhere between having a Batman that kills people and giving us a 6\u20195 Wolverine. Somehow, the re-boot featuring an even older looking Andrew Garfield managed to double down on this mistake robbing the webhead of one of his most distinguishing characteristics: he is just a kid.<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally having a teen-Spidy – and putting him in the MCU with the Avengers and the Defenders where he belongs – is why I have faith that the best Spider-Man adaptation lies in our future. But the importance of the commercial success of this very first effort should not be understated. <\/span><\/p>\n

Raimi, Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Willem Dafoe, and the rest of the team proved that bright colors, massive scope, levity, just the right amount of campiness, and a whole lotta CGI was the perfect recipe for a summer escape.<\/p>\n

Complete 35-part list for best comic book adaptations ever!<\/p>\n

Part 1 – Daredevil<\/a> \/ Part 2 – The Dark Knight<\/a> \/ Part 3 – V for Vendetta<\/a>
\nPart 4 – The Flash<\/a> \/ Part 5 – Sin City<\/a> \/ Part 6 – The Crow<\/a>
\nPart 7 – Agent Carter<\/a> \/ Part 8 – X-Men: Days of Future Past<\/a> \/ Part 9 – Captain America: The Winter Soldier<\/a>
\nPart 10 – Guardians of the Galaxy<\/a> \/ Part 11 – X2: X-Men United<\/a> \/ Part 12 – Iron Man<\/a>
\nPart 13 – The Avengers<\/a> \/ Part 14 – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)<\/a> \/ Part 15 – Superman (Richard Donner)<\/a>
\nPart 16 – Hellboy<\/a> \/ Part 17 – The Incredible Hulk<\/a> \/ Part 18 – X-Men: First Class<\/a>
\nPart 19 – Spider-Man 2 (Sam Raimi)<\/a> \/ Part 20 – Thor<\/a> \/ Part 21 – Ant-Man<\/a>
\nPart 22 – The Dark Knight Rises<\/a> \/ Part 23 – Spawn<\/a> \/ Part 24 – Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – Season Two<\/a>
\nPart 25 – Avengers: Age of Ultron<\/a> \/ Part 26 – Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan)<\/a> \/ Part 27 – Captain America: The First Avengers<\/a>
\nPart 28 – Batman (Tim Burton)<\/a> \/ Part 29 – X-Men (Bryan Singer)<\/a> \/ Part 30 – Spider-Man (Sam Raimi)<\/a>
\nPart 31 – Smallville: Season One<\/a> \/ Part 32 – Hellboy II: The Golden Army<\/a> \/ Part 33 – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, 3<\/a>
\nPart 34 – 300<\/a> \/ Part 35 – Man of Steel<\/a>\u00a0\/ Extra Part – Final Thoughts<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sam Raimi\u2019s Spider-Man had to work. Thankfully for the millions (and millions!) of comic-book lovers, it did. By the time the film was released in 2002, comic book adaptations had gone through a rebirth and then fallen back into campy nonsense with the late 90s Batman movies. X-Men had successfully shown that these adaptations could<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":7993,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2404,338],"tags":[2773,1697],"class_list":{"0":"post-7990","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-comic-book-movies","8":"category-comic-books-2","9":"tag-comic-book-adaptations","10":"tag-spider-man"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}