You Don’t Hate ‘Spider-Man 3’s Dance Scene — It Makes You Feel Insecure

Long before Justice League, convoluted superhero movies have enraged audiences. But few movies have received as much vitriol as Sam Raimi‘s Spider-Man 3. After directing two near-perfect superhero films, 2007 saw the horror legend’s final take on the character. There are a million reasons to dislike Spider-Man 3 — its never-ending stream of poorly defined secondary characters, its confusing laboratory subplot, the fact that it’s at least three movies crammed into one. But there’s one aspect of Raimi’s trilogy that has gotten far more hate than it deserves. Peter Parker’s emo dance scenes were a perfect encapsulation of the director’s take on the character, and their lameness was supposed to make you feel aggressively uncomfortable.

The justifiably ridiculed scenes happen an hour and a half into the over two-hour movie. After fighting with the symbiote that’s infecting both him and the suit, Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) decides to lean into the whims of the black goo. And at least for a little while, his life gets better. He grows a backbone and confronts Eddie Brock (Topher Grace), the meddling photographer who Photoshopped incriminating photos of Spider-Man. He demands a staff position at the newspaper who’s been taking advantage of him and attacking his alter ego for years. He finds a way to make his ex jealous. Life is great for Peter.

But as Devin Farci covered for Birth. Death. Movies., Peter’s descent into evil isn’t something he wears well. Every action that he takes, from changing his hair to a My Chemical Romance-inspired part to literally pushing Eddie around feels like farce. Raimi’s Spider-Man is such a pure, sweet soul that when he goes full evil, he doesn’t become a badass. He plays dress up, embracing outdated gestures and cringe-worthy insults like a Grease 2 cosplayer.

Peter’s horrible dance moves are the ultimate extension of that disconnect. Peter Parker is such an unrelenting nerd, this is what he thinks being cool and badass entails:

One more for good measure:

It’s terrible, and every human around him is understandably creeped out by this weirdo. But that’s kind of the point. Raimi’s take on Peter Parker always highlighted the outsider elements of this character above all else. Before Peter ultimately pushes MJ and snaps out of it, that otherness is what Raimi is forcing us to confront in these dance scenes. Peter Parker is a hero, yes, but he’s also a giant dork that much of “cool” society has brushed aside.

Dorkiness was always baked into the DNA of Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man. Andrew Garfield’s take on the superhero may have highlighted his lovable sass, and Tom Holland’s embodies the heartbreaking amount of responsibilities placed on his young shoulders, but Tobey Maguire’s Peter was always first and foremost an outsider who wanted in. This was the kid who tried to flirt with his crush by obsessively listing off spider facts. He mumbled almost every word in high school. When Maguire’s Peter finally became serious about trying to date MJ (Kirsten Dunst), he didn’t ask to take her on a nice date or bring her flowers. He read her poetry because a 50-something scientist told him that’s how to get chicks. When she first heard his desperate poetry reading, MJ thought it was just as dumb then as we do now.

In Raimi’s first two Spider-Man movies Peter Parker’s most cringe-worthy moments were often quickly followed by him doing something awesome and heroic, making them easier to look past. But Spider-Man 3 is the first time the director made audiences stew in his Peter Parker’s innate awkwardness. It’s uncomfortable in the same way as seeing a teacher downing shots at a bar is uncomfortable. We want our heroes to have vulnerabilities, but we don’t want to witness the unpleasant repercussions of those weaknesses.

Avoiding the actual tolls of weakness is partially what has turned the MCU into the well-oiled machine it is today. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) was captured by terrorists, but his movies skim over his PTSD and how it’s affected his probable alcoholism. Almost every person Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) knew died, but the MCU didn’t waste time documenting the soul-crushing hours Captain America spent completely alone. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is portrayed as a loyal puppy with little attention given to how his brother’s many, many betrayals have altered his self-worth. Even when things get grim for these heroes we rarely have to stare down their internal vulnerabilities.

Conversely Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker was a character with an intensely complicated internal life directed by the master of self-owning flaws. Sam Raimi is the best at taking characters’ biggest weaknesses and capitalizing on them in interesting and subversive ways. In Evil Dead that meant choosing one of the world’s dumbest and most arrogant men as his hero. In Drag Me to Hell it meant personifying an eating disorder as something that’s both horrifying and perversely pleasurable. And in Spider-Man that meant taking a long and unflinching look at the rougher edges of Peter Parker’s life, namely his many financial problems and exactly why he was considered an outsider. Raimi didn’t sugarcoat Peter Parker’s problems. He choose instead to bask in them, warts and all.

Spider-Man 3‘s dance scenes hurt. The movie forces you to watch a character you love and respect embarrass himself in the most groan-worthy way imaginable. But that’s why these scenes work. They show Peter Parker at his most authentically bad, a dork who’s acting out his idea of cool. Facing that gives us a new understanding of this character. Just as New York City loves to simultaneously put Spider-Man on a pedestal and knock him down when it’s convenient, it’s easy for us to love the web slinger when he’s saving the world and dismiss him when he’s embracing his very-human flaws. No one wants to see their own lameness reflected in their heroes, but that’s what Raimi gave us in unflinching detail for three movies. In two of them he was praised for being authentic.

There are a million reasons to not like Spider-Man 3. But in the age of too-slick superhero movies, maybe it’s time to lay off of Tobey Maguire’s believable lack of moves.

Watch Spider-Man 3 on Netflix