Why ‘Spider-Man 2’ Remains the Greatest Spidey Movie

Spider-Man’s greatest enemy is not who you think. It’s more implacable than Green Goblin, more relentless than Doctor Octopus, and more persistent than Venom.Spider-Man’s ultimate adversary is time.Peter Parker can stick to walls, lift a car, and swing on webs through the canyons of New York City. But those things are meaningless in the face of time. There are simply not enough hours of the day for Peter to do everything he wants to do and everything he needs to do as his wall-crawling alter ego. No matter how many times he beats Norman Osborn and Otto Octavius, he’ll never defeat time. Every day, he must chose: Do I make myself happy as Peter Parker, or do I do the responsible thing and help people as Spider-Man? He can never do both.That is the secret sauce to every classic Spider-Man story; the fact that he’s two people sharing one life, and that every victory for one invariably causes problems for the other. That is why Spider-Man 2 remains the most beloved live-action Spider-Man movie. Because no other film about the character portrays that central dilemma onscreen, or distills it down to a single image like the elemental one above — Peter Parker looking into his closet and se...