2002's movies: Spider-Man sticks the landing and Chicago has it (the Oscar) coming

 

While X-Men (2000) had recently stood upon the shoulders of Batman and Superman to announce the arrival of a new generation of super-hero movies, Spider-Man is, for me, the starting point for everything that would follow in the genre. 

The top-grossing movie of the year, it tells a perfectly re-told origin story, nails the casting, and does what the best CGI-infused movies do, especially in these still nearly-early days, which is to keep them at a distance to obscure the uncanny valley as best as possible. In that way, Spider-Man is among the best heroes to animate because the face can't screw it up - even now in 2026, it's still the face that screws it up.

Always happy to re-watch this eminently re-watchable movie.

Thanks for a diligent, data-recording friend, I know that I saw this movie in January of 2003, so not that long before it would win the Oscar for Best Picture. Since it was part of a multi-movie day, I'm going to guess that it was paid at least in part by cereal box coupons which covered a lot of movies around that time. I don't think I've seen it since.

First of all, it's cool that a modern-era musical won the Oscar. It was, like Spider-Man, wonderfully cast, and I'll admit that I'd completely forgotten about the marionnette sequence which looked fantastic. Really, it's all style and the conceit of playing around with what's real and what's a musical of the mind was a terrific way to make a musical make sense when they didn't anymore in the movies.

Something funny about my viewing: I watched it on Crave and, as is usual for me, I had the closed captioning on. For whatever reason, the people (or program) in charge of creating the captions was feeling rather wholesome. While colloquial cursing was coming through loud and clear in the audio, the demure closed captioning hit me with phrases like "My eye," "Rats," "Gosh darn," and my favourite: "Joan of Arc" in place of "Jesus Christ". 

It reminded me of Anchorman bloopers featuring Ferrell riffing of made-up exclamations like "Hot pot of coffee!"

Another sidenote: I remember singing Razzle Dazzle in an ensemble in a musical drama program sometime in late elementary school, but I don't expect that I knew or cared what show it came from. The next time I saw a song from the show was when my son was starting high school and was part of a night of arts performances. The musical that year, which he wasn't involved with, was Chicago, so they put on their version of Cell Block Tango. 

I couldn't help but think of every dad in the theatre that night looking like this...