Sam Raimi Details Why He Made His Spider-Man Trilogy

It’s easy to take for granted how special Sam Raimi‘s Spider-Man movies were after the character has been rebooted twice, folded into the MCU, and starred in an Oscar-winning animated movie. Upon their release the films were huge and they were influential in multiple ways across Hollywood, but in the end the earnestness that Raimi brought to the material kept them head and shoulders above many of the other Marvel adaptations of the time. Taking part in a Reddit AMA earlier today, Raimi was asked “why” he made the movies to begin with, and his answer was just as touching as his take on Spider-Man.

“I directed the first Spider-Man film because I was such a huge fan of Stan Lee’s brilliant character,” Raimi wrote. “Peter Parker and Spider-Man were an important part of my teenage years. I thought it was very moving how much he sacrificed for others. How hard he worked to protect innocent people. And all the while had to take care of his Aunt May and do his homework to boot. His self sacrifice resonated with me. He was truly a good person. We can identify with Characters in a comprehensible story. Stories of heroes, like Peter Parker, remind us of what we are capable of. Maybe you’re one of those people that like to be reminded of the good you are capable of. Now get out there and do something about it.”

As Marvel fans know, Raimi is returning to the House of Ideas with the upcoming Marvel Studios release Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Like Spider-Man, Raimi had a past love for the Master of the Mystic Arts, so much so that he put an Easter egg for it in Spider-Man.

“I loved Doctor Strange as a kid, but he was always after Spider-Man and Batman for me, he was probably at number five for me of great comic book characters,” Raimi previously told ComicBook.com. “He was so original, but when we had that moment in Spider-Man 2 I had no idea that we would ever be making a Doctor Strange movie, so it was really funny to me that coincidentally that line was in the movie. I gotta say I wish we had the foresight to know that I was going to be involved in the project.”

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is scheduled to arrive in theaters next year, with some characters from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies rumored to be appearing in the upcoming Spider-Man: No Way Home.