I recently read an article on Yahoo about Sam Raimi wishing he was able to make Spiderman 4 where a commenter claimed that the ‘emo Spiderman scene’ from the third installment was “one of the worst scenes in movie history.”
Ah, yes, we have here yet another uninformed and closed-minded spectator.
He is not the first, nor the last, and there are thousands of people who absolutely abhor not just the scene, but the entire film.
And I, my god, am so sick of it. I’ve had to defend my love of Spiderman-3 while also being sure to note after each sentence that is is not a perfect film and there are some serious missteps – but let me tell you one thing, the ‘emo Spiderman’ scene (nor any scenes related to the emo Spidey plot line) is not one of them.
I know, I know — shocking.
I’m sure you know what scene in particular I’m taking about, but you should give it another watch anyway.
To someone who completely missed the themes, character arcs, development, and plot of the previous two films, yes, this scene would be seen just as that Yahoo commenter saw it.
But to someone who knows who Peter Parker is, they’d see how this scene is a culmination of every goddamn theme that came before it and demonstrates an aspect of Peter’s character that makes him so great as our very human superhero.
So come along with me as we revisit the films and I finally say my peace about this completely under-appreciated and misinterpreted scene.
1) The scene is cringe, but it’s supposed to be!
Do you not hear that ridiculous jazz number playing in the background?
Do you not see the women passing him giving him this look of “Who the fuck do you think you are?” and “Ew, gross!”?
Do you sincerely, honestly think that this scene was meant to be taken seriously, when the music and faces of everyone Peter interacts with in the scene completely contradict that?
The audience is supposed to cringe like the aghast and sometimes disgusted people around him. You’re supposed to be like, ‘Jesus Christ, Peter. Get it together. Stop now. Oh god he’s really going to dance? No, oh please, oh GOD he DID IT!!’
And why would you be supposed to cringe for our hero? Because our hero is a loser, and the symbiote is exacerbating and capitalizing on his long-suppressed insecurities and feelings of rejection and being ignored most of his life. And this shouldn’t be news to you, but to most people, our beloved Peter Parker is a socially inept doofus. Brilliant scientist and student, kindred masked hero Spiderman, loving nephew of Aunt May and the late Uncle Ben, but also a young guy who has been bullied and friendless much of his life, and spent a considerable amount of it pining over some gold-digging biddy next door.
How do we know all this about our web-slinging hero? Oh goodness. Where do we start? Allow me to pull out some examples from Spiderman 1, 2, and in scenes up to that point in Spiderman 3, where it is clearly, unquestionably illustrated that Peter has no idea how to communicate with women or how to speak up for himself, and has been struggling with his self-confidence and identity.
A Sampling from Spiderman 1:
Silence When Bullied
Poor guy can’t catch a break from anyone. From the moment the movie starts off, we hear Peter telling us straight up how shit everything is for him.
Who am I? You sure you want to know? The story of my life is not for the faint of heart. If somebody said it was a happy little tale… … if somebody told you I was just an average ordinary guy, not a care in the world… … somebody lied.
Raimi is great at showing how everyone shits on Pete no matter how undeserving he is of the treatment (and he really brings it home in Spiderman 2). He starts in this first installment by showing us Peter running after his bus for school, where the bus driver himself, an adult, is intentionally not stopping to let him on and is laughing with the other kids on the bus as he does it.
When Peter gets on the bus, no one lets him sit next to them – even those we would traditionally consider ‘dorks’ – and he gets tripped and MJ just gives him a look. Wouldn’t this fuck up your ego a bit, too? How low must you be on the social ladder where not even the ‘dorks’ and other ‘losers’ like you?
Wanting to Buy a Shitty Old Car and Join a Wrestling Ring For Cash
He thinks that in order to impress Mary Jane, he has to buy a shitty old car because her shitty jock boyfriend has one. All the brains in the world, and he thinks that the key to some girl’s heart is basically trying to become the big hotshot douchebag her boyfriend is? Lol. Clueless, brah.
Failing at The Simplest of Conversations
When he gets his spider-senses, he saves Mary Jane from slipping and breaking her head open in the cafeteria. He grabs her, catches the food on the lunch tray, and she looks up at him and says, “Wow, nice reflexes! Thanks!” He gives her a feeble, “Thank you.” And then she continues, “Hey, you have blue eyes. I never noticed with your glasses.” And he just stares at her. Just. Fucking. Stares. No words. Nothing.
Then minutes later, he gets into a fight with Mary Jane’s big douchebag bully boyfriend. After he punches his lights out, a bully, ironically disgusted, says, “Jesus, Parker, you really are a freak.” Ouch. “Freak” is a terrible word.
Does he say anything in response? NO. He runs away.
A Sampling from Spiderman 2:
“Oh Boy, Yeah.”
Mary Jane and Peter are talking to each other in their backyards and she says warmly, “It’s so good to see you,” like she means it.
How does Peter reply? First off, his eyes get all musty, like he’s fallen into a trance, and he just goes, “Oh boy yeah.” Oh, god, no.
Then she comes closer, like literally begging for a kiss, asks, “Oh boy yeah, what?” all sultry. She’s asking him to make a move and yet, this boy, this frickin’ boy, all he says is, “Nothing.” *facepalm*
Peter, please. Spare me. You have no game, dude.
Later, inspired by his visit to Dr. Octavius and his wife to read poetry and recite it to Mary Jane in order to win her affections (really, is this much better than his attempt to win her heart by buying an old-school jalopy? Can’t this boy just say that he likes her already??????), he gets a literal stack of books from the library and starts reading up on dead romantic poets and their archaic testaments of love.
He meets Mary Jane later after a performance of her show, and after stating what he’s been up lately (“I read poetry now,” which was to Peter’s surprise, anti-climactic) and becoming flustered when she has no idea what that means, he tries to save some face by luring her in with his favorite quote:
Day by day he gazed upon her,
Day by day he sighed with passion…
Jesus. That’s uncomfortable, Pete. The words “gazing upon her” are referring to that giant billboard he sees every day with her face on it, by the way.
Must I repeat this? THE BOY HAS NO GAME. Also they are completely incompatible and I hate it.
In the final scene of the movie, when he ‘gazes upon her’ as he’s holding back the big-ass dome building from falling and killing her, he has his mask off. She finally sees that he is Spiderman. You know what he says to her when they lock eyes?
“Hi.”
*shrieks* You know what she says back?
“Hi.”
God, I really hate them together.
More proof from Spiderman 3:
That God Awful, Unoriginal Proposal
His – read: SPIDERMAN’s – idea of the ideal proposal to the love of his life is a fancy restaurant with a ring in the glass? COME ON. Also, the timing, absolutely terrible. Completely unaware. After the kiss? After speaking to hotter-than-the-sun Gwen Stacy, a person who actually likes and appreciates Peter for the brilliant doofus dork that he is (instead of chiding him and being condescending all the time like SOMEONE ELSE IN THE ROOM *ahem*).
And I’d be so pissed if I was Mary Jane, not just because she sucks, but if my boyfriend was the one-and-only Spider-man and he proposed to me in an unoriginal way like this. I would also like to point out that he didn’t even have the lame ring-in-the-glass thing set up til he arrived that evening! Shameful, Pete. You really have no clue. Perhaps MJ is the type to be impressed and wooed by this kind of display of affection, but given Peter’s brains, newfound love of poetry, and, I don’t know, SUPER HUMAN ABILITIES as SPIDER-MAN, you’d think he’d have picked some other way to propose to the love of his life.
He has no idea that Gwen Stacy is into him
At the restaurant, the gorgeous and smart Gwen Stacy greets Peter and MJ at their table and while asking Pete about the photo of her pic with Spiderman (who is Peter) she puts her “painted fingernails” all over his shoulders. When she leaves, MJ is pissed, and Peter is completely ignorant to the fact that A) he, who is Spiderman, kissed Gwen Stacy, and B) that Gwen Stacy, who says he’s “brilliant” (whereas MJ tells him, “You’re such a nerd”), genuinely likes him!!!
Pete, really!
The Second God-Awful, Poorly-Timed Proposal
So MJ and Peter have a huge fight, don’t see each other, and then she calls him after a long while – forced to by the spited Harry who’s out for revenge – and sounds cryptic as hell on the phone then hangs up without saying “I love you…” And he reads this all as a sign that he should propose again.
Pete, these are RED FLAGS. Something is up, dude, where are your Spidey-senses?? Or just, I don’t know, common sense??
He goes to the bridge in the park, looking like he popped out of a Sears catalog with the glasses, tucked in shirt and all, with a bouquet of flowers and this doofy, smiling face. This boy really thinks everything is okay!
It’s as if Peter got all of his ideas of romance from the 1950s Goofus and Gallant comics.
His transformation nears its tipping point here: he’s got no moves, he’s got quite a few chips on his shoulder thanks to being under-appreciated and ignored his whole life, his best friend “stole” his lame girlfriend, and this all leads up to the power-kick he feels in Spiderman 3 that the symbiote exploits –– which brings me to my next point.
2) He is ‘Emo’ Because He Literally Is Not At All Evil In Any Way Shape or Form
A meteor brings down a freaky black symbiotic slime that crawls about with an evil mind and will of its own, gets on Peter, and transforms our tussled Pete into a… over-confident cocky douchebag that dances on the streets and puts his feet on desks and uses cheesy pick-up lines? … Like, that’s it? That’s really all this alien substance of pure evil could do to innocent, selfless, block-headed little ol’ Peter??
On the other hand, the symbiote, once expelled from Peter, lands on the hand of actual selfish douchenozzle Brock, and it turns him into fucking VENOM. VENOM!!! With the freaky tongue and sharp, needle-like teeth.
The symbiote plays on existing ‘negative’ qualities and amplifies them. Brock was a spineless creep, so he became a literal monster when the symbiote joined to him. Peter was a sweet guy, a loner, and struggling with balancing love, life, and duty as hero Spiderman, unsure if he would ever be able to really accept his Uncle’s words, “With great power, comes great responsibility” – words by a man who he still feels he is responsible for the death of. Only when Mary Jane said she wanted to be with him and when the public started to warm up to their masked crime-fighter did he start to feel better, as we saw in the beginning of Spiderman 3.
Being appreciated and recognized and having his feelings towards someone reciprocated was new to him, so he didn’t handle them as gracefully as he could have, becoming gradually more cocky and unaware of himself as Spiderman 3 progressed, traits that the symbiote took and twisted when it fused with him. Pete was unfortunately also weighed down with Mary Jane, who was even more insecure and constantly needy for affection, attention, and validation than he was.
Is he kind of oblivious? Yeah. Was he kind of a dickhole about the whole Gwen Stacy / Spiderman-kiss thing? Yes, very much so (well, he was more just terrible at explaining himself, yet again more proof that he’s got communication issues). Did he choose the most unoriginal way to pop the question aside from taking her to the top of the Eiffel Tower? (Although if he had web-slung himself up to the tippy-top with her, that would have been a clever twist on the over-done tradition.) Yes, but, MJ is a basic biddy and that’s all she deserved. *cough*
But was he evil? No way. No frickin way. All that scary, slimy, alien symbiote could do to Peter is to make him a schmuck who is confident enough to get attention but, judging from the women’s faces in the street as they turned from interested to revolted as he danced, doesn’t know when to tone it the bleep down.
3) The ‘Emo’ Haircut Is Not All That Bad, Guys. Calm Down.
I mean, considering that black is generally symbolic for evil, and that if the symbiote can change Brock’s entire body into a legit monster, I could concede that the symbiote made Pete’s hair dark while also somewhat greying up his innocent white heart.
But I could also see it as Peter doing that little hair flip and making the bangs intentionally because this is literally what he thinks is cool. Peter, as we have established, has no idea what is cool, what his attractive, what is slick, what is flirty. He has no sense for it, and I can imagine that just as those guys from ‘The Game,’ he was doing some peacocking for attention and chose the slick, dark greasy-haired image of creepy dudes who hang out at dimly-lit bars in New York.
The point is, he doesn’t look cool or hot, and we know it. WE ARE SUPPOSED TO KNOW IT. Him becoming ‘dark spidey’ is not a cool thing for Peter. It literally doesn’t suit him (get it? ‘Suit’? ‘Spidey-suit’?). It would be weird to see Peter doing these things while looking as he usually did. The whole ’emo’ thing is to show how poorly he fits into this exaggerated role as a dickhole, and how that difference in character is what kept the symbiote from consuming him and also made it relatively easy to expel from his body.
5) The Cookies Scene is Part of the Joke
My guilty pleasure and my secret other ship – well, really, I ship any biddy aside from Mary Jane, but I will write more about why I think she should have stuck with Harry later as I need to keep my blood pressure down at the moment to finish writing this – is Peter with Mr. Dicovich’s daughter, a skinny and meek girl who is just as awkward as Peter. What a cute pairing.
Unfortunately, dark-side Peter takes advantage of her in this following scene:
Guys, this stuff with him being an arrogant weasel is supposed to be comical. He’s rolling his eyes on the phone with his professor, he’s demanding the girl across the hall to make him cookies and get him fresh milk (of all the things, why not something like whiskey and steak? BECAUSE HE’S A FLUFFY GODDAMN MARSHMALLOW INSIDE!!!), and he’s being a jerk, he’s trying to show off, but yet again, he’s failing in everyone’s eyes (except for hers, because she adores him) and that’s the point. There is no way you could look at him and think that he was cool, and you’re not supposed to. This Peter is not the Peter you knew in the first two movies, and being this way is a terrible look for him – which everyone but him seems to realize.
Moreover, you’re supposed to be seeing how his confidence gradually builds up under the control of the symbiote, starting with his pompous yet dorky liaisons with the girl across the hall, the secretary at his workplace, the beautiful and smart Gwen Stacy, and finally with Mary Jane, where he royally fucks up by parading around the jazz club and hitting her. That’s heavy shit. And that’s when he knows that he’s gone way off the deep end.
5) Confidence Hits Peak with Betty the Secretary
Speaking of the secretary, Betty, at the Daily Bugle… since Pete ruined it with Gwen Stacy and MJ is definitely worth no one’s time, I would have killed to have the next movie start off with Peter getting it on with Betty. They are so cute. She’s been his supporter since Spiderman 1. When he starts making the moves on her in Spiderman 3, I nearly had a heart attack.
Check the video at 3:36.
6) Cheesy Lines are Peter’s MO: “Want forgiveness? Get Religion.”
Stupid line, but Pete is not slick and nor has he ever been – at least not Sam Raimi’s Peter Parker.
And look, you’re not supposed to be like, “Wow, Pete, sick line!” If anything, you’re supposed to cringe. Like, really – this clunk-headed boy uses outdated catch-phrases all the time: “I’m gonna put some dirt in your eye!”
Look, if the whole movie were filled with people trying to be funny or smart and failing at it, I’d believe it when they said that Peter’s dialogue and attempts at being funny are just failures on the writer’s parts or somehow proof that the whole story was fucked. But let me retort by saying this one thing: J. Jonah Jameson.
Please, take a moment to watch this other scene from Spiderman 3.
–> The “It’s hip, it’s now, it’s wow and how!” part.
–> The buzzer desk! “Not that one. Not that one. Drink plenty of water,” and that sheepish little, “Thank you.”
–> “What’s on you?” “It’s called, ‘Go away.”
–> “Photography, it’s not just about — no offense — flagpoles, or whatever.”
–> Brock schmoozing on Jameson at the end and Jameson shooing Betty away. It’s all gold!! Absolute gold.
Need more humor? Look no further than the restaurant scene:
You can’t tell me this movie doesn’t know jokes (let alone those in the other two, plus all those fantastic Raimi-isms), and Peter, as you can see in the above examples, is always so damn corny and oblivious, especially when he is the butt of the joke.
What’s really sad is that somehow most viewers missed the biggest joke of all – the blatantly absurd, over-the-top dancing down the street scene!!!!
Closing Remarks
Look, guys. I don’t think Spiderman 3 is perfect (really!). But I do think that if you instead focus on the development of and relationships between the characters – which are the most human and realistic of any superhero flick since – you can enjoy watching as your beloved characters grow, fall, change, get back up again, and keep growing.
And now, rewatch that darn scene. Actually, just rewatch the whole trilogy with fresh eyes. Do you get it now?