direct orders of "you really really need to kill this guy" ignored: 1

here is why they are good

Spider-Man saves people. These movies were refreshing because they reawakened the understanding of a superhero as someone who serves their community and does good in a way that an ordinary person could not do.

Spider-Man is part of a community. Spider-Man's relationships with others are absolutely central in each movie, whether that is with Aunt May, MJ, his acquaintances and friends, or random strangers he interacts with. The relationship of reciprocity between the people of New York and Spider-Man is an especially important theme in the second film, exemplified in the scene where the passengers on the train carry an unconscious and unmasked Spider-Man to safety and give him his mask back. Spider-Man is strong enough to stop the train from crashing, but he collapses in the aftermath, and his wounded body has to be supported by the hands of the many anonymous people whose lives he saved.

I just absolutely adore how "weakness" is treated in these films. There are many scenes where helpless people are threatened or held hostage and have to be saved by Spider-Man, but these people are almost always given some level of agency, and sometimes help Spider-Man in a crucial way. For example, Aunt May hitting Doctor Octopus with her cane, the New Yorkers on the bridge throwing objects at Green Goblin, and the people on the train protecting Spider-Man with their bodies when Doctor Octopus threatens him. In the second movie there is a scene where Peter Parker, having rejected his identity as Spider-Man, is trying to save a little girl (barely older than a toddler) from a burning building. When he nearly falls through a collapsing floor, the little girl, who has been carried in Peter's arms the whole time and was paralyzed with fear, reaches out to grab onto Peter's hands and tries to help pull him up, even though she doesn't have the strength to. This scene is so good, it makes me want to cry.

Spider-Man is actually dorky and awkward in a way that feels genuine.

Spider-Man messes up in ways that feel realistic and goes through genuine character growth. He actually has character flaws and has to work through them.

The way socioeconomic class affects the characters is shown.

There's something just very campy and dramatic and Shakespearean about the plots. MJ breaking up with her fiance on her wedding day and meeting Spider-Man in his apartment in her wedding dress. Harry preparing to kill Spider-Man with a dagger and then stumbling back in shock as he unmasks him. Eddie in the church looking like death warmed over begging God to kill Spider-Man. The love triangles, the hidden identities, Dr. Osborne hallucinating in a room full of creepy masks and then Harry having hallucinations of his dead father... everything is a little over-the-top in a way that is like we're not self conscious about the innate silliness of this story.

I love the way Harry pouts and broods and has such a bitchy Byronic hero look.

Y'all know I love a character who is a science experiment gone wrong and these movies delivered beautifully.

I appreciate the way it's sort of implied that Aunt May knows Peter is Spider-Man but there's not a big reveal, you could really interpret it either way.

I think of that part from TTC when he meets Annabeth’s stepmom and expects her to like turn into a raving lunatic at the mention of her name and is surprised when she doesn’t. And it’s easy, I feel, to read this in retrospect as Percy just not understanding the nuances of bad parental relationships. But I think this is what it actually is: Percy’s experience with a bad stepparent is Gabe. And that’s how Gabe always reacted at the mention of Percy’s name. And Gabe would have left him to rot without any question or remorse. So of course that’s what he expects from the stepparent Annabeth has been complaining about as long as he’s known her, and she deemed bad enough to run away from.

And yes, compared to Luke and Thalia and Annabeth, Percy is somewhat better off solely because of Sally. Except he, too, was deadly serious when he said he’d rather live on the streets than live with Gabe, and if not for camp that would have been his only option at this point in his life—the same as it was for them. Percy truly CAN relate to the feeling of camp being his only safe haven because this is also true for him. Percy probing Thalia about her history with her mom is not a kid who comes from a stable home trying to relate to her and failing: it’s a kid who grew up sharing living space with an alcoholic, and is able to tell at the age of 12 years old “when an adult has been hitting the happy juice.” And this is of course not even to talk about his constant awareness of money and his mother working odd jobs just to put food on the table—experiences that Thalia, Luke, and Annabeth don’t have. So I think it is just so unfair to view him in retrospect as the kid who is so privileged that he can’t understand trauma rather than what he actually is: a kid who was only ever one bad day away from being in just as bad of circumstances as any one of the other demigods, and who at points in his life, actually was in their circumstances. When Percy meets May Castellan he is not just reflecting on how bad Luke’s life sucked, he has experience and trauma of his own, and he feels a heavy sense of “how easily this could have been me.”

Percy being not outside of the problem, but inside it, is fundamental to the series. He’s not just championing Luke’s cause: it’s also his own! Because who is more exploited by the Olympians than Percy Jackson? This is a kid who has almost been put down like a dog by them ! They took a vote on it in front of him!

Leo and Frank and Hazel’s moms are actually dead and they stayed dead. But Percy watched the Minotaur squeeze his mom to death right in front of his eyes and had to process her death and blamed himself for his failure! Of course he is going to relate to them on a fundamental level, and again, he was so very close from having been in exactly Leo’s situation.

Ah, the good old days of comics. Back when our heroes would do some objectively pretty messed up things in the name of solving the case but wouldn't dare swear.

unfavorite anime fan activity is when they act like they were thrown in world war one trenches because they chose to watch shounenslop and ecchi instead of literally anything else and then one (1) magical Japanese creator redeemed their race by virtue of being the only artist who isn't a pedophile fascist, as we know the Japanese inherently are.

“What if the justice I had pursued all this time was wrong from the very beginning?

Even if it was… I’ve already crossed the point of no return”

Different Sherlock portrayals as cats. Because I can.

House is the uncontrollable crazy cat.

Robert Downey Jr. cat is the flaunting type.

BBC Sherlock is the brooding cat.

Elementary Sherlock is the cuddly one.