Immediately after the release of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2, you wouldn’t need both hands to count the number of superhero movies that could inarguably be deemed as being superior to the web-slinging second installment.
Tim Burton’s Batman duo, Superman: The Movie and its successor, Bryan Singer’s X-Men and its sequel, Blade, The Crow, Darkman, The Rocketeer, Unbreakable, and maybe a couple of others were in or around the conversation, but not much else was worthy of even being mentioned in the same breath as Tobey Maguire’s sophomore stint under the spandex.
Fast forward two decades – which in the interim has seen the comic book genre explode in both popularity and ubiquity – and Spider-Man 2 is still held up by a huge number of fans as one of the all-time greats. Countless pretenders to the throne have come and gone in the interim, but any self-respecting ranking of the best efforts the genre has ever had to offer that doesn’t include Raimi’s classic isn’t worth being taken seriously.
While your mileage may vary as to whether it’s the best Marvel Comics adaptation, the best superpowered sequel, or even the best Spider-Man flick, it can’t be denied that Peter Parker’s battle against Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus is a titan of the medium, one that at-home audiences have been revisiting in their numbers over the New Year’s weekend.
Per FlixPatrol, Spider-Man 2 has been swinging higher and faster than it has for a long time on streaming, with the film’s availability on several platforms dependent on your location ensuring that it’s leaving viewers just as enraptured now as it was back in 2004.