Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark / YMMV

Accidental Innuendo: "A Freak Like Me Needs Company" has the line (referring to Kraven) "He loves the animals...maybe a little too much."
Audience-Alienating Premise:
- Let's just say that there is an audience for musical theater and there is an audience for Spider-Man, and there is perhaps much less overlap between those two demographics than the creators may have anticipated.
- The first version of the show compounded this with a heavy emphasis on Classical Mythology (the character of Arachne) and Greek theatre (the "Geek Chorus"), neither of which were prominent themes in the Spider-Man franchise. While this in itself could have made for a unique interpretation of the franchise, the amount of focus this took away from the previously established lore alienated fans of the franchise while failing to attract enthusiasts of Greek history.
Awesome Music:
- All the songs, with "Rise Above" and "A Freak Like Me Needs Company" being among the best.
- "The Boy Falls From The Sky" is also very good.
- "Pull the Trigger" adds to the long list of villain songs better than most of the hero's.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Arachne's "Deeply Furious" song, wherein she sings about stealing 50 pairs of shoes accompanied by backup dancers in Frank N. Furter corsets and with six extra prosthetic spider-legs, with an additional scene added of a nightmare wedding to Peter later on. Its impact on the plot is almost nonexistent, with later attempts to weave it into the plot by having Arachne need the shoes to descend from the Astral Plane only confusing audiences more. Even a book detailing the show's production had little explanation for the scene, and it was designed purely as an Eleven O'Clock Number that didn't end up working as planned.
Common Knowledge: No, disgraced ex-congressman George Santos was not one of the producers. That was one of the many falsehoods he told his donors.
Critical Backlash: In spite of the scathing critical reaction that the production got, many of the people who see the show enjoy it in some capacity, if this is of any indication.
Creator's Pet: Arachne was Julie Taymor's original creation and was responsible for creating Spider-Man and giving him his costume, got no less than three songs of her own (including one devoted to shoe shopping), supplanted the Green Goblin as the main villain of the show in Act Two, was designed in-universe to be unbeatable as she was an immortal illusion master, competed with Mary Jane as Peter's love interest, and technically won in the end by regaining her humanity and being able to die like she wanted. Julie Taymor insisted that not making Arachne's redemption arc the main focus of Act Two would ruin the artistic merit of the play and compared cutting any of her songs or scenes to a mastectomy, while both Marvel and general audiences were much less receptive to her and how her story took focus away from Spider-Man, was too dark for a family-oriented show, and undermined the highlights of Act 1. After Taymor was fired, much of Arachne's role was cut out via an extensive Retool, reducing her to The Artifact.
Dancing Bear: A lot of people admittedly went to see this because of the fact that it's a musical based on a superhero. Earlier on in the play's production, people went to see it because of the negative reception the play was getting.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Even people who hated the show praised the Green Goblin. If nothing else, out of all the villains, his costume is definitely the least terrible.
Evil Is Cool: Patrick Page's riotously-over-the-top Green Goblin is pretty much the only thing from the show that's unironically liked.
Growing the Beard: The play is considered to have improved significantly after it was overhauled, cutting out elements that were widely hated and adding more content to the things that people liked. The biggest change would be from switching the Big Bad from Arachne (a Creator's Pet) to The Green Goblin (an Ensemble Dark Horse).
Harsher in Hindsight: One of the songs is called "Boy Falls From The Sky". In addition to the numerous other accidents that happened during production and previews, the infamous 30-foot fall occurred in the scene right after this song.
Heartwarming Moments:
- Despite everything the Goblin has done, Spider-Man still tries to reason with him. He says that Norman Osborn was a good man, husband, and scientist. He reminds the Goblin how Dr. Osborn was nice to his proteges, and Nice to the Waiter. A shame that it doesn't work.
- At Reeve Carney's last show, he swung in upside down, with Mary-Jane's actress giving him the signature kiss. He then flips right-side-up to receive a bouquet of flowers and thunderous applause from the audience. Reeve Carney explains that he is Passing the Torch to a successor, and sincerely thanks the audience for letting him be Spider-Man. He introduces his replacement, Justin Matthew Sargent, giving him a big hug.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- The show's divisive mythological aspects, particularly in 1.0, became funnier in hindsight with the Spider-Verse comics having the Web of Life and Destiny in a prominent role, which acts as a multiversal nexus and is the source of many spider powers and their fates. It brings to mind Arachne's role as a weaver of fate and her role in giving Turn Off the Dark's Spider-Man his powers.
- Electro was played by a black man. Jamie Foxx plays him in The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
- So we have a Broadway musical starring Reeve Carney and Patrick Page that takes notes from Greek mythology set in modern times, featuring a lead who has a Moment of Weakness at a crucial time, leading him to losing a loved one. After we talking about Turn off the Dark or Hadestown?
- Patrick Page plays the Green Goblin, who teams up with Kraven the Hunter in the show. A decade later, Page would voice Kraven in the Marvel's Wastelanders radio show.
Magnificent Bastard: The revised play's Norman Osborn is a scientist who believes in advancing the human race through genetic modification. Constantly working to achieve perfection, Osborn is transformed into the Green Goblin thanks to a failed experiment which kills his wife and erodes his sanity. Angered at humanity for ignoring his will, Goblin sets toward mutating the entire world. Starting his crusade by mutating his employees into the "Sinister Six" and terrorizing the city, Goblin then sets the Daily Bugle further against Spider-Man by revealing the connections between the two. Goblin then threatens Spider-Man's loved ones, forcing Spider-Man to confront him atop the Chrysler Building. When face to face, Goblin reveals that he deduced Spider-Man's secret identity and asks him to join him, before unveiling that he also took Mary Jane Watson hostage for leverage, engaging Spider-Man in a fight and only being stopped when he inadvertently flings himself off the building. Never ceasing to be theatrical and comical despite his madness, Green Goblin stands out as the single greatest villain Spider-Man faces.
Narm: All over the place. Pretty much the only time it crosses over into Narm Charm is when the Green Goblin is onstage.
- With their ginormous masks, Kraven and the Lizard both look like knock-off Power Rangers villains. The Lizard is at least somewhat excusable, Kraven, being a normal human in the comics, is most certainly not.
- The Lizard's introduction shows him coming out of the stomach of a scientist (whose face is depicted as a really creepy mask) like he was a Chestburster that somehow skipped to full-grown Xenomorph. The cherry on top is that he's depicted as an inflatable costume, which makes the scientist waving his arms everywhere and spinning around unintentionally hilarious.
Older Than They Think: The 1.0 run isn't the first time Spider-Man battled Arachne, as he did so in an Incredible Hercules comic written in 2008.
Overshadowed by Controversy: The injuries, Julie Taymor's firing, the extensive rewrites, and the $60 million loss are the only things many people know about the musical.
The Scrappy: The original Big Bad of 1.0., Arachne, was almost universally despised for her role in the story for many reasons. Fans of Spider-Man were very quick to point out that her role of choosing Peter to gain her power was a direct violation of the very foundation of the Spider-Man mythos, as the entire point was that Peter wasn't a Chosen One, but an everyman hero who fought ever-increasing odds in spite of his origins, a sentiment echoed by Marvel itself. Making matters worse was how she was portrayed, with her being shown as a misunderstood artistic genius, towering and having ascended above the plebians who didn't understand her work and being struck down by Athena solely for winning the contest, despite the original myth being one of the most iconic cautionary tales about pride, hubris and how you shouldn't disrespect the gods^note. Others objected to her trying to force herself onto a 15 year-old boy despite being thousands of years old herself, and many others were wary of how she spends Act 1 as a secondary character before suddenly becoming immensely relevant to the plot the moment Act 2 begins, overshadowing Spider-Man himself in the process. With Spider-Man unwilling to kill her, it ended on Arachne's "redemption" with her ascending to the afterlife on the rope she tried to hang herself with after letting Peter go and be happy with MJ, leading to a very unsatisfactory ending. The impetus for Deeply Furious, her song about the furies stealing shoes from all over New York to attract Peter's attention, was widely considered to be the show's worst song by a wide margin. When 2.0. was released and she was reduced to The Artifact, with Athena properly striking her down for hubris and keeping her Spirit Advisor scenes in the first act but cut out her second act shenanigans with the Green Goblin taking the role of the Big Bad, many theatre-goers let out a collective sigh of relief.
Serial Numbers Filed Off: That evil corporation that wants Norman Osborn to build them super soldiers and tell him (in song) "join the proud and few who know best for their country"? Yeah, they're Viper. And they're nothing like the U.S. Military. Oddly enough, they actually were the military in Version 1.0.
So Bad, It's Good: The original version's previews all sold out very quickly based solely on this principle. A widely-panned 65 million dollar avant-garde trainwreck is worth seeing, to say the least. The epitome of this in the original version of the play was a sequence where Arachne has a musical number based around stealing 50 pairs of shoes.
So Bad, It Was Better: A not uncommon opinion of the 2.0 version. No more shoe-based musical number, no more weird romance arc between Peter and a spider-lady, no more geek chorus... but the play was still kind of a dumb concept executed poorly, and still bore the scars of where the older version's subplots were hacked off (such as Swiss Miss's existence as a Canon Foreigner, given that in the original version she was invented on the spot by the Geek Chorus after Green Goblin was killed in the first act). Even after all the reworking, it only ran for two years and lost a lot of money.
So Okay, It's Average: This seems to be the general consensus among critics, at least in regards to the final version. Some critics have warmed up to it, though.
Tear Jerker: Norman's devastated Big "NO!" upon seeing Emily's body is gutwrenching, especially as immediately after he loses his mind.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: In theory, comparing Spider-Man to the myth of Arachne isn't a bad idea. Both characters are related to spiders, and both characters are undone by their own hubris. Arachne was punished for believing herself greater then the gods, and Spider-Man lost his uncle because his pride kept him from stopping an easily preventable tragedy. The problem came in the first version's Act 2, which was almost completely about Arachne trying to force Peter to love her and find redemption or death at his hands, instead of being about Spider-Man things.
Took the Bad Film Seriously: For what it's worth, Reeve Carney out of the cast did what he could to portray Peter Parker as an Endearingly Dorky high school student that becomes a compassionate superhero after a Moment of Weakness. That, plus Patrick Page giving his all for a Large Ham Ax-Crazy Green Goblin, make them the highlights of the video footage. Carney recalls there was one moment where his rigging left him dangling for ten minutes, and he stayed in-character the whole time despite the obvious danger.
Visual Effects of Awesome:
- Like The Lion King, the creative and convincing special effects for the show are considered the best part of the play. In particular, the upside-down segments were liked very well.
- The aerial battle between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin is one of the show's biggest highlights. It opens with the entire stage transforming to give the audience a bird's-eye-view of the street from the top of the Chrysler Building (complete with visible cars driving along said street). Then the Goblin takes flight with his Vulture-esque wings while Spider-Man swings after him, which later culminates in Spidey leaping onto his enemy's back and "surfing on him" in the air. The sequence was (inevitably) plagued with technical difficulties due to the complexity of the staging, but when it worked, it was an absolute spectacle.
WTH, Costuming Department?:
- Having the Green Goblin sing and dance under pounds of makeup and Spikes of Villainy is perhaps unavoidable, but why the hell was Kraven the Hunter portrayed by a guy in a mask?
- The design of Swiss Miss is based around swiss army knives, which turns into body armor◊ with a spiked chest, a spiky dress, and a weirdly human face with no hair.
- Swarm, a classic example of The Worm That Walks, was rendered here as...a guy covered in bees. The effect is laughable.

YMMV / Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark

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