The screenplay for the film was originally written by David Koepp and directed by Sam Raimi. This was the first installment in the Spider-Man trilogy yet to come. But before Koepp was decided to be the screenwriter, the idea of James Cameron writing the script and directing the film was being entertained by the studio. However, eventually Raimi was decided to be the director, not using Cameron’s script nor hiring him for the directing position.
As a child and teenager, Raimi was a huge fan of the comics and loved Spider-Man himself. That burning passion is what contributed to landing him the job. It was clear that he was very much into the material and was excited about working with it.
Most of the script by Koepp was borrowed from Cameron’s original work. However, Koepp did make some changes. He decided to switch out the antagonists Electro and Sandman for Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus. But this is where the director’s influence seeped in. Raimi saw the antagonists a little differently. He believed that the Green Goblin would be sufficient enough to fill the place as antagonist, the father and son relationship between Norman Osborn and Peter Parker being more interesting. So, with the push from Raimi, Doctor Octopus was dropped from the script.
In June, Scott Rosenberg was hired to rewrite and review Koepp’s version of the script. Some things were changed and some were kept the same. One thing that remained constant through all the rewrites was the idea that Peter Parker would have an “organic web shooter”. This was mainly set in stone because of Raimi’s vision for the film. He believed that if he made it so that Peter invented his own web shooters mechanically, it would not be as believable to the audience; Peter was bitten by a spider, after all. So because of Raimi’s concern, the “organic web shooters” were present in the script through and through.
One thing that Rosenberg wanted to remove was Doctor Octopus. Additionally, Raimi argued that it would make the story too complex and hard to follow if they added a third origin story for the audience to continually try to follow. As a result, many already shot scenes were deleted and served as outtakes.
John Dykstra, the visual effects artist and supervisor on the scene, wanted to do a lot of the stunts through CGI, computer generation. Raimi was slightly opposed to this because he was used to the painstaking but rewarding planning, coordinating, and endless practice of action scenes done by stunt doubles and the actors themselves. However, Raimi learned a lot more about computer generated effects from this film and implemented it in some of the harder action scenes, some of which would be nearly impossible for humans to do in real life. But Raimi still put in an endless amount of effort to plan some of the still humanly attainable action scenes. This tedious and extremely complex process added an extra $30 million to the then $70 million budget.
An issue that became a significant problem for the crew was the humanization of Spider-Man. Since the character always wears a mask and his face is never shown while in action, it’s hard to show any emotion or feeling. The human face helps with so much when it comes to expression, and that is something Spider-Man lacks. But Raimi did not let this stop him. He really wanted his version of Spider-Man to depict a young superhero boy who is going through changes and trying to find himself as he goes through adolescence. Raimi’s push for this extra detail really sold the film. Even though a lot of the stunts of Toby McGuire, the actor for Spider-Man, was digitally created, it resembled like McGuire even though it wasn’t truly him. The team was able to create such accuracy to the actor’s traits and movements which can be seen in the completely digitized character. Raimi did not want any of the scenes to be 100% CGI so he made sure that every since scene had at least partial real film.
The film was a financial success. The whole team is to thank for that. However, critics did praise and applaud Raimi’s job of staying true to the original storyline while, at the same time, creating and maintaining enough action scenes to keep the audience engaged and suspenseful. It was a hit in the box office and was an incredibly successful movie.
