Let's talk about a small scene from Raimi's Spider-Man 2...

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...and how such a short interaction can communicate volumes to an audience about who the character is.

At the beginning of Raimi's film, we have a pretty insignificant scene where Mary Jane and Harry come over to Aunt May's to celebrate Peter's birthday with a quaint dinner catch up. After MJ and Harry leave, we get a scene that runs less than a minute, where Peter finds out Aunt May is late on her mortgage payments, before she tries to give him $20 dollars for his birthday. And in that moment you see Peter and May's reactions follow. Aunt May's desperate 'Yes you can. You can take this money from me. And don't you dare leave it behind.'

Because of course, it implies that this broke-ass Peter Parker always leaves the money that she tries to give him behind, despite badly needing it, because his sense of responsibility always sees him putting others before himself. This is a great and logical place/reminder to start Peter's arc from in the second film. And the performances really sell it.

Homecoming spoilers below.

After watching Spider-Man: Homecoming, with its incredibly shallow development of Peter Parker as a kid who goes from Avengers groupie who wants to be part of the band, to a kid who sort-of learns to be independent and rely on himself, but never in a way that isn't directly spoken out loud to the audience and telegraphed by the (six?) writers. Basically, you have a 2 hour movie that still can't clearly show the character arc of its hero without announcing it.

Watching Homecoming really reinforced my appreciation of not just the earnest, emotionally-honest, nature of Raimi's Spider-man, but of how tightly woven and smartly built Peter Parker's character development is.