5) Sam Raimi – Spider-Man Trilogy
Before Sony’s The Amazing Spider-Man sucked so hard that it forced Marvel to step in and sort the property out, Sam Raimi did very nicely with a Spidey trilogy of his own.
Spider-Man 2 is the pinnacle here, a glorious showdown between misunderstood villain and just-as-misunderstood hero, but all of Raimi’s Spider-films feel near-enough like they’ve been ripped from the comic pages themselves. There’s a child-like glee and fun sensibility to them that’s rare even for the best of the MCU.
Raimi’s Spider-Man movies aren’t always totally successful – Tobey Maguire is a fairly weak lead (especially in comparison to subsequent Peter Parker Andrew Garfield), and even the superior first two are occasionally hampered by their own cartoonishness. Meanwhile, Spider-Man 3 had too many cooks in the kitchen, and it shows that Raimi didn’t quite have the creative final say that he did previously.
Still, the eye for a set-piece and especially that playful humor is present and correct – in what other superhero movie would you have an extended comedy skit featuring Raimi’s longtime pal Bruce Campbell as a French waiter?
