Part 1 (of 8) of my Spider-Man movie re-watch marathon in preparation for No Way Home. Because this is the first, in this post I'm going to include a bit more background. I saw the first two Sam Raimi Spider-Man films plenty of times growing up, as we owned them both on DVD. Plus they, along with X-Men, were the first big superhero films of my life time. The other six movies (Spider-Man 3, Amazing 1 & 2, Homecoming, Far from Home, and Into the Spiderverse) I've probably only seen once or twice. As such, I expected these first two to be the most nostalgic experiences, which certainly proved to be the case here. So.... how did it hold up?

Well, it was a mixed bag. Before I get into the details, I'll say that I'm not updating my score based on this viewing. When I first joined Trakt (or more accurately, IMDB) I gave all movies I had seen previously scores from memory, and for this movie that score was an 8/10. This movie is a product of its time and so even though I certainly don't think it's as good as a modern movie that I would score an 8, it still deserves a huge amount of credit and so I wouldn't feel right lowering its score. Now, for my brief takeaways.

**THE BAD:** Lots of cheese. Rapid pacing takes away from dramatic moments (i.e. flashbacks to scenes that happened less than five minutes ago). Love triangle and everything to do with MJ was kind of a mess. Tobey Maguire unfortunately has to do a lot of heavy lifting in the acting department, and for me not enough of it lands.

**THE GOOD:** Willem Dafoe absolutely kills it. His green goblin laugh is iconic. J.K. Simmons absolutely kills it. Everything he says is iconic. Surprisingly, some of the effects hold up well enough. There's some PlayStation 2 level graphics on display here or there, but once Spidey gets his proper suit, the webslinging and fight sequences look quite solid, even leaving me impressed in a couple of moments.