Movies can't get much bigger than what Marvel has been pushing out these last few years. Especially with giant blockbusters like Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and now Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness. Movies built up with years worth of other storylines and multiverse spanning epics have become Marvel's forte as of late, and nobody really comes close to them in regard to scale and continuity.
But Marvel movies hadn't always been connected to one another and had years of development and story building to them. Up until the early 2000s, comic book movies didn't really have the hype or recognition that they do now. It wasn't until studio Marvel movies released X-Men and, the now twenty-year-old Spider-Man that the emergence of the superhero mega-blockbuster would become a regular at the box office.
When the emergence of Marvel superheroes hit the big screen in the late 90s, Marvel movies weren't even close to the powerhouse of storytelling they are now. For the most part, the line-up of superhero movies wasn't as planned out then as they are now at Disney, which has years of projects planned in advance. Marvel movies weren't as frequent, and many of them like Daredevil, The Punisher, and Hulk, amounted to almost nothing after their initial release. Only Daredevil got somewhat of a continuation with Elektra. Marvel movies were still in their infant stage, and it showed.
It was May 3, 2002, when the first Raimi Spider-Man was released, officially making it twenty years old on the eve of his new foray into Marvel with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The impact of Spider-Man set the standard for what could be expected from Marvel movies down the road and leading into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It had become a critical and financial success that comic book movies hadn't seen up to that point, especially coming out of the nineties.
Much of what had come out at that point had been from DC with Batman and Superman, who had both alienated their fan bases as their last installments had been completely panned by critics and fans. Other than that, comic book movies in the 90s had been adaptations of smaller comics like The Crow and The Mask. There had been only a couple of Marvel movies up to that point, and one of them wasn't even released to mass audiences, that being the first movie adaptation of The Fantastic Four. But Marvel would begin to explore the box office with their characters with Spider-Man leading the company to the success audiences see today.
Marvel would quickly see their gamble pay off with Spider-Man becoming the highest-grossing comic book movie of all time up to that point, with many modern comic book movies today still not able to meet the success that Spider-Man had in 2002. Much like Batman or Superman for DC Comics, Spider-Man was the safe and obvious choice for beginning the Marvel movie franchise along with X-Men. Spider-Man has consistently been a massive seller when it comes to comic books and is arguably their most recognizable character to audiences. If any property from Marvel was going to be a success on the big screen, it was going to be Spider-Man and if it had bombed, Marvel probably wouldn't be what it is today.
That would be the key to Spider-Man becoming a mega-blockbuster that showed studios that audiences wanted to escape into the world of relatable super-humans. Luckily for studios with rights to superheroes, not only did they have the potential of massive money-making movies, but they had nearly an endless line of source material to really milk it for as much as they can. Although there are a handful of aspects of Spider-Man that are different from the actual comic books, it still portrayed the story as the emotionally complex and resonating heroic journey that Spider-Man has always been on. For the genre, that hadn't been explored all too much. Although comic book movie predecessor's had emotional moments, most of them hadn't gone as far as Spider-Man had with truly resonating with audiences. It is safe to say that fans gravitated to this kind of superhero movie and haven't looked back since then.
But perhaps the best test for the movie's legacy is its relevance today, and it has that in spades. Not only is Sam Raimi releasing a new Marvel movie just days after the 20th anniversary of Spider-Man, but Tobey Maguire was just in Spider-Man-No Way Home reprising his role as Spider-Man. It is truly a testament to how much this movie was loved that fans not only were excited about Tobey's reprisal, but many are wanting the canceled Spider-Man 4 to be made, which Raimi has said he would be on board for. Now whether that happens or not, time will only tell. But it was not that long ago when the return of Raimi and Maguire wasn't even a thought in the mind of fans, so anything is possible.