Along Came a Spider

You and I both know that Spider-Man is going to kick some serious ass today. We know the movie will rock the box office and, for various reasons, its sheer success will leave filmmakers, audiences and oblivious film executives breathless, clinging to their armrests, with all the power of an angry storm. The trailer alone, with its eye-popping effects, sleek and postmodern world and hot-as-hell, upside-down kiss between Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man/Peter Parker and Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane Watson, is enough to leave us all drooling for more. What the trailer establishes from the outset is that Spider-Man is the man, hands-down.

It’s not that hard to figure out why this film is going to work. If you are an oblivious film executive working with any kind of film, you get yourself a strong script, a talented director and a stellar cast, maybe inject a load of mind-blowing effects, and you have yourself a blockbuster. If you are trying to get a Marvel franchise off the ground, you might need a little something extra—and that little something is what will make Spider-Man succeed when other comics-based films have the unfortunate habit of landing belly-side down at the box office. For every Blade or X-Men, which made an impressive $157 million, there are at least two films that end up like The Punisher, whose nameless and skull-less vigilante left audiences yawning.

Until recently, Marvel Comics failed in every attempt to bring its roster of superheroes to the big screen. The Fantastic Four flopped somewhere in the 1980s, as did Captain America and The Punisher. Executives in the world of comics and the world of film scratched their heads. Marvel comics were popular. What had gone wrong?

There was reasonable assurance that converting Marvel’s comic-book heroes to live-action heroes was a smart thing to do, given the solid fan base clamoring for film versions of its favorite comics, as well as a ready-made lineup of characters, story lines and personal histories. I read only one issue of The Amazing Spider-Man but what really sucked me into the Marvel world was my brother’s stack of superhero trading cards, with profiles, stats and full-fledged character bios on the back of every one. Most of the heroes, and even some of the villains, had just that—character. Marvel’s repeated box-office failures became, then, something of a mystery.

Only in 2000 did Marvel and Fox finally hit the right formula with X-Men and get their first whiff of sweet-smelling success. Apparently, X-Men had that little extra something. Scratch, scratch. It is this simple. A comic-based film needs a truly super superhero. He needs to be the kind of guy every girl wants to date, and every guy wants to be. A superheroine needs sex appeal oozing from every inch of her vinyl suit and a superpower image that screams‚ don’t mess with me!

Figuring out which superheroes have this kind of appeal gets marginally tougher. A lot of heroes are already popular with the comic-book crowd. But some heroes have that all-important mass appeal. What makes, say, Wolverine infinitely more attractive than Mr. Fantastic? I posed this question to a few diehard fans and they pretty much focused on the samething: the superpower. It has to be spectacular. What guy doesn’t want rip-roaring brawn, the ability to heal himself and 12-inch retractableclaws? On the other hand, Mr. Fantastic can-what, stretch himself?

But, of course, it goes beyond mere mutant talent. There is something to be said for translatability, or cheese factor. There are a slew of popular Marvel heroes who will never do well on the big screen because when you dress a live actor in red, white and blue-striped tights, put wings on his headpiece and a star on his forehead, he will look ridiculous. The Incredible Hulk, as incredible as he may be, runs the risk of becoming the angry Green Giant. The heroes who do the best onscreen are the ones who are dark, mysterious, and potentially dangerous. A lot of them associatethemselves with various species of icky animals-Batman, Spider-Man and Nightcrawler (who will appear in X2, the upcoming sequel to X-Men). Wolverine, given all his qualifications, has a cheese factor of zero. Wolverine is cool. Wolverine is attitude incarnate.

Image-wise, Spider-Man does have a small cheese factor. He is not quite dark and mysterious in his red and blue tights, but there are two things that save him from a Captain America brand of cheesiness. One is his plain likability. Spidey’s a trickster who likes to toy with his victims but not destroy them. He has a heart. He is the underdog who got a shot at greatness, and so many scrawny geeks can look at him and hope that someday, a genetically mutated dragonfly/wasp/scorpion will bite them. Spidey is the likable dork who got the girl. You see now why Maguire was such the perfect choice.

His other saving grace is the faint trace of tragedy that lurks beneath Spidey’s happy-go-luckiness. Going through my brother’s Marvel trading cards, the heroes I kept coming back to were the beautiful ones whose stories were laced with some kind of sadness, heroes like Rogue, Phoenix, Wolverine and Cloak and Dagger. The best kind of superhero struggles with a crippling weakness, a desire he/she can never fulfill, or, like Spider-Man, a tragic past that motivates his heroic deeds. Spider-Man fights criminals because they killed his dear Uncle Ben. So swoon, people, swoon. To the relief of comics-fans everywhere, director Sam Raimi seems to understand this essential appeal Marvel’s beloved frontman. In all likelihood, Spider-Man will explode in a mélange of all things stunning, wowing, even endearing. I don’t think any of us will be disappointed.