I Do What I Want Here

Barry & Iris

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.

And it pissed me off so badly that I spent the ENTIRE WORK DAY today compiling evidence from every project my team has ever done for her, pulling past emails she’d sent us, putting together an entire case proving that she had been the problem all along. That she got projects mixed up, that she’d made requests that were nonsensical, literally everything you could possibly imagine. Screenshots of emails, reports we’d submitted, EVERYTHING.

This woman in particular has been terrorizing my team for years, her name is almost a slur in my office, I had simply had ENOUGH of her.

I put all of this evidence together and sent it to all of my bosses at 4:30pm. Then I took a long break to eat a sweet treat and drink some tea.

After my break, my bosses all called in an emergency meeting with me and they said they read my report and fucking loved it. And I sat on a teams call with my boss’ boss as she wrote my nemesis the scathing email I had always fantasized about sending, using the evidence I’d compiled, and hit send.

Like, on the one hand you have Grimhilde, Maleficent, and Ursula, powerful sorceresses; Facilier and the Horned King, masters of infernal power; and of course Hades, a literal freakin’ god.

Then you have ones like Frollo and Lady Tremaine, who don’t have any physical power but more than make up for it with status and influence.