There has been a long history of comic book characters being turned into movies. They include such massive flops as Captain America and The Punisher, but recently have gotten better, with movies such as X-Men. Part of this is that the special effects are capable of recreating the powers of superheros now, without looking totally fake. This is where Spider-Man comes in. We had the wall-crawling down pretty well in the old TV series, but now the swinging between buildings and the web spinning look good. Spider-Man is full of special effects, but they're blended in well. The webs blend into the real scenes better than most CGi, an even when we cut to entire figure CGI, the motion is great. When Peter swings down the canyon of the city, he moves like he ought to.
  This is not to say that the movies is all special effects. If it were, the movie would suck. There's a good storyline too. Of course, there's a very long comic book history to draw from. A little of it seems rushed, but then, we are having to set up a rather complex character and his origins into two hours. They did a good job overall, remaining true to Spder-Man's history for the most part. There are a couple of changes that are kind of irritating, tho. (See below)
 Over all, I enjoyed the movie. There were no long slow downs in the plot. The action scenes were well scripted, and there was a story to support everything pretty well. No, it's not high-drama, on the order of King Lear; It's a Comic Book, and as such it's a lot of fun.

* Warning: Spoilers *

 

-  Why is Peter so nerdy? My memory of him was that he was handsome enough, he just had the serious scientific bent, so he spent his social life in the lab.
- Spider-Man's powers came from a radioactive spider, originally. Why did they change this to a gengineered spider instead? It serves no purpose to me, but dosen't really change much.
- Natural web-spinners waste Peter's scientific mind. That Peter is smart, now is just a weak plot device for why Norman Osborne likes him more than his own son. Very lame. Besides, the web-shooters that Peter makes in the comics are both cool and handy tools for changing the plot. Running out of fluid at the wrong moment is a handy twist.
-  The whole wrestling bit is rather cheesy, but it's part of the officaly story. Randy Savage always was over-the-top.
-  The Green Goblin's mask. I understand why they did it. It would be very hard to transform Willem DaFoe's facy into the leering face of the Goblin with latex prosthetics and still make him able to talk and convey emotion well. However, the mask covers up too much and makes the Goblin much more of a static figure.
-  It's a good thing there is a very long list of villans in Spider-Man's history.