Sam Raimi still might be best known for his work on The Evil Dead trilogy (and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that), but there's no denying the influence that his mostly excellent Spider-Man trilogy has had upon the realms of comic book movie filmmaking. With the original flick, first released in 2002, Raimi crafted a relentlessly entertaining and - at the time - genuinely remarkable adaptation of a beloved comic character. It could have gone horribly wrong, and yet the director's sense of humour, visual style and deft skill with SFX made it a triumph. With Spider-Man 2, Raimi took what he learned making the first film and unleashed what is quite possibly the greatest comic book movie of all-time. What could have ended up as a severely overblown sequel emerged as one of the most frantically fun and balls to the wall exciting comic book adaptations ever. What Raimi seems to understands better than most is that a comic book movie should feel like a comic book - and with a character as inherently ridiculous as Spider-Man, there's no use trying to pretend otherwise (we'll just ignore Spider-Man 3).
Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.
