Sometimes, Marvel fans get annoyed when critics slam the modern MCU, with said fans claiming the haters simply don’t like fun films. However, for older fans of these colorful characters, the truth is just that we can tell how far Marvel movies fall short because we’ve already witnessed the perfect superhero film. I’m talking, of course, about Spider-Man 2, a Sam Raimi masterpiece that you can now stream on Netflix (just make sure you don’t get any web fluid on the remote).

A Different Type Of Superhero Movie

Before you watch Spider-Man 2 on Netflix, though, you might need a little reminder of what the movie is about…after all, we now almost have more films featuring the webhead than he has clones, copy-cats, and interdimensional doppelgangers. This sequel picks up where Raimi’s first film left off: Peter Parker is trying to balance life as a college student, boyfriend, and costumed crimefighter.

However, when a freak accident turns one of his scientific heroes into a maniacal supervillain and his own powers start mysteriously failing, he must decide whether he’ll hang the tights up for good or step up and become the city’s greatest hero.

The Returning Cast

Spider-Man 2 brings most of our favorite actors back from the first film (which you can still stream on Netflix, though it will be gone after this month). Tobey Maguire is once again playing our favorite neighborhood wallcrawler, and Kirsten Dunst plays girl-next-door turned girlfriend Mary Jane Watson. James Franco returns as Peter’s embittered friend, Harry Osborn, and J.K. Simmons reprises his role as J. Jonah Jameson, the entertainingly irritable editor-in-chief of The Daily Bugle.

New Faces

Of course, Spider-Man 2 brings in a few new faces, including Daniel Gillies (someone you might recognize from his NCIS episode if you’ve been binging that popular procedural on Netflix) as Jameson’s son, John. The most impressive newcomer, though, is Alfred Molina, who plays the supervillain Doctor Octopus to creepy perfection.

Molina proves to be a real double threat in this film: he’s great at giving over-the-top line deliveries as a supervillain, but he’s even better as the softspoken Otto Octavius, someone whose quiet brilliance is an obvious beacon for young science geek Peter Parker.

A Blockbuster Release

This movie swung into theaters in 2004, meaning that Spider-Man 2 was released when Netflix was just a DVD mailing company and streaming entire video libraries seemed as improbable as…well…a man terrorizing a city with his killer robot arms.

Both the lack of streaming services and the sheer quality of Sam Raimi’s sequel transformed this movie into a huge payday for Sony. Against a budget of $200 million, Spider-Man 2 earned $795.9 million, ensuring that (for better or for worse, perhaps) there would be a sequel.

Talked About To This Day

That sequel remains highly divisive to this day, but nobody is really divided over Spider-Man 2: on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie currently has a critical rating of 93 percent. Critics generally raved about the movie’s awesome villain (I really can’t oversell how good Molina is as Doc Ock) and the film’s surprisingly in-depth focus on its characters’ emotional arcs. Critics also declared that this film deeply improved on the original, something once thought impossible to do because that first movie was (and still is) completely iconic.

The Perfect Balance

I completely agree: Spider-Man 2 is a movie that I have embarrassingly bought multiple copies of and now stream on Netflix whenever I need a pick-me-up (hey, we can’t all have cute girls next door that bring us chocolate cake).

The movie manages to walk an impossibly thin line between being too silly and too serious. The result is a film that does what most modern Marvel films struggle to do: dive into some serious emotional depths while still providing the free-spirited fun that made comic books so popular in the first place.

Streaming On Netflix

Will you agree that this is the best superhero movie ever made, or will you want to unleash the full fury of your Deadpool & Wolverine popcorn bucket on me for recommending it? You won’t know until you stream Spider-Man 2 on Netflix. Afterward, I hope you find some really dank memes because, like J. Jonah Jameson, I won’t be happy until someone gets me pictures of Spider-Man.