From a narrative standpoint, Spider-Man’s entire thing is thematically tied to the idea that “no good deed goes unpunished.” Peter Parker’s academic, professional, and social life all pay a price to enable his crime fighting. Spider-Man 2 does a good job of portraying that. After he stops the train that was about to crash in his fight with Doc Ock, he gets lifted up, arms outstretched, looking like a crucified Jesus. He suffers for the sake of others. It’s honestly a nice contrast to people like Tony Stark for whom being a billionaire playboy superhero has historically (if not in the Marvel movies) been depicted as coming with a fairly comfortable life. Well, at least ignoring the part of his backstory where he went homeless because of his alcoholism. But that was in the eighties, I think.
Iirc they originally wanted the iron man movies to show the damages done by his behavior and his alcoholism more like the comics but they ended up getting rushed to make a sequel to cash in on the popularity of the first movie instead
Yeah, I also read his wife was concerned about the idea at the time. Which is completely fair, but I personally think that it’s part of why RDJ worked so well as Iron Man, he could relate to the character.
From a narrative standpoint, Spider-Man’s entire thing is thematically tied to the idea that “no good deed goes unpunished.” Peter Parker’s academic, professional, and social life all pay a price to enable his crime fighting. Spider-Man 2 does a good job of portraying that. After he stops the train that was about to crash in his fight with Doc Ock, he gets lifted up, arms outstretched, looking like a crucified Jesus. He suffers for the sake of others. It’s honestly a nice contrast to people like Tony Stark for whom being a billionaire playboy superhero has historically (if not in the Marvel movies) been depicted as coming with a fairly comfortable life. Well, at least ignoring the part of his backstory where he went homeless because of his alcoholism. But that was in the eighties, I think.
Iirc they originally wanted the iron man movies to show the damages done by his behavior and his alcoholism more like the comics but they ended up getting rushed to make a sequel to cash in on the popularity of the first movie instead
I’m sure that RDJ’s own alcoholism may have played a role there as well. Don’t want to trigger a relapse.
Yeah, I also read his wife was concerned about the idea at the time. Which is completely fair, but I personally think that it’s part of why RDJ worked so well as Iron Man, he could relate to the character.