Line #7 YMMV/SpidermanTurnOffTheDark


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8	* AccidentalInnuendo: "A Freak Like Me Needs Company" has the line (referring to Kraven) "He loves the animals...maybe a little [[BestialityIsDepraved too much."]]
9	* AudienceAlienatingPremise:
10	** 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.
11	** The first version of the show compounded this with a heavy emphasis on Myth/ClassicalMythology (the character of Arachne) and Greek theatre (the "[[GreekChorus 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.
12	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic:
13	** All the songs, with "Rise Above" and "A Freak Like Me Needs Company" being among the best.
14	** "The Boy Falls From The Sky" is also very good.
15	** "Pull the Trigger" adds to the long list of villain songs better than most of the hero's.
16	* BigLippedAlligatorMoment: Arachne's [[https://youtu.be/Fuvi08rglRg?t=495 "Deeply Furious" song]], wherein she sings about stealing [[MundaneMadeAwesome 50 pairs of shoes]] accompanied by backup dancers in [[Film/TheRockyHorrorPictureShow 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 [[VoodooShark 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 ElevenOClockNumber that didn't end up working as planned.
17	* CommonKnowledge: No, disgraced ex-congressman George Santos was ''not'' one of the producers. That was one of the many falsehoods he told his donors.
18	* CriticalBacklash: In spite of the scathing critical reaction that the production got, many of the people who see the show enjoy it in some capacity, [[http://reviews.ticketmaster.com/7171/1330722/spider-man-turn-off-the-dark-reviews/reviews.htm if this is of any indication]].
19	* CreatorsPet: 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 TheArtifact.
20	* DancingBear: 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 [[BileFascination because of the negative reception the play was getting]].
21	* EnsembleDarkhorse: Even people who hated the show praised the Green Goblin. If nothing else, out of all the villains, his costume is definitely the [[DamnedByFaintPraise least terrible.]]
22	* EvilIsCool: Creator/PatrickPage's [[EvilIsHammy riotously-over-the-top]] Green Goblin is pretty much the only thing from the show that's unironically liked.
23	* GrowingTheBeard: 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 BigBad from Arachne (a CreatorsPet) to The Green Goblin (an EnsembleDarkhorse).
24	* HarsherInHindsight: 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.''
25	* SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments:
26	** 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 NiceToTheWaiter. A shame that it doesn't work.
27	** At [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHL1SzaS6oA 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 PassingTheTorch 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.
28	* HilariousInHindsight:
29	** 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.
30	** Electro was played by a black man. Jamie Foxx plays him in ''Film/TheAmazingSpiderMan2''.
31	** 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 MomentOfWeakness at a crucial time, leading him to losing a loved one. After we talking about ''Turn off the Dark'' or ''Theatre/{{Hadestown}}''?
32	** 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.
33	* MagnificentBastard: The revised play's [[Characters/MarvelComicsNormanOsborn 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.
34	* {{Narm}}: All over the place. Pretty much the only time it crosses over into NarmCharm is when the [[EvilIsHammy Green Goblin]] is onstage.
35	** With their ginormous masks, Kraven and the Lizard both look like knock-off Franchise/PowerRangers villains. The Lizard is at least somewhat excusable, Kraven, being a [[BadassNormal normal human]] in the comics, is most certainly ''not''.
36	** 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.
37	* OlderThanTheyThink: The 1.0 run isn't the first time Spider-Man battled Arachne, as he [[https://www.tumblr.com/panels-of-interest/162984411925/spider-man-vs-arachne-from-incredible-hercules did so]] in an ''ComicBook/IncredibleHercules'' comic written in 2008.
38	* OvershadowedByControversy: The injuries, Julie Taymor's firing, the extensive rewrites, and the $60 million loss are the only things many people know about the musical.
39	* TheScrappy: The original BigBad 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 [[TheChooserOfTheOne 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 [[TheChosenOne 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]]Arachne got on Athena's bad side by declaring herself superior at her art than any of the gods, and in some versions the tapestry she weaves ''shows Zeus committing infidelity'', actively ''insulting'' not only the king of the gods but ''Athena's father''[[/note]]. Others objected to her [[{{Squick}} 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, [[SpotlightStealingSquad overshadowing Spider-Man himself]] in the process. With Spider-Man unwilling to kill her, it ended on Arachne's "[[EasilyForgiven redemption]]" with her ascending to the afterlife on the rope she tried to hang herself with [[IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy after letting Peter go and be happy with MJ]], leading to a ''very'' [[AntiClimax 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 TheArtifact, with Athena properly striking her down for hubris and keeping her SpiritAdvisor scenes in the first act but cut out her second act shenanigans with the Green Goblin taking the role of the BigBad, many theatre-goers let out a collective sigh of relief.
40	* SerialNumbersFiledOff: 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. [[SarcasmMode And they're nothing like the U.S. Military]]. Oddly enough, they actually ''were'' the military in Version 1.0.
41	* SoBadItsGood: 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 [[https://soundcloud.com/cruiseman/deeply-furious a musical number]] ''[[MundaneMadeAwesome based around stealing 50 pairs of shoes]]''.
42	* SoBadItWasBetter: 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 [[TheArtifact the scars of where the older version's subplots were hacked off]] (such as Swiss Miss's existence as a CanonForeigner, 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.
43	* SoOkayItsAverage: 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.
44	* TearJerker: Norman's ''devastated'' BigNo upon seeing Emily's body is gutwrenching, especially as immediately after he loses his mind.
45	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: 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.
46	* TookTheBadFilmSeriously: For what it's worth, Reeve Carney out of the cast did what he could to portray Peter Parker as an EndearinglyDorky high school student that becomes a compassionate superhero after a MomentOfWeakness. That, plus Patrick Page giving his all for a LargeHam AxCrazy 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.
47	* SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome:
48	** Like ''Theatre/TheLionKing'', 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.
49	** 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.
50	* WTHCostumingDepartment:
51	** Having the Green Goblin sing and dance under pounds of makeup and SpikesOfVillainy is perhaps unavoidable, but why the hell was Kraven the Hunter portrayed by a guy in a mask?
52	** The design of [[CanonForeigner Swiss]] [[SpikesOfVillainy Miss]] is based around swiss army knives, which turns into [[https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/f/fa/Swiss_Miss_%28Earth-11714%29_from_Spider-Man_Turn_Off_the_Dark_0001.jpg body armor]] with a spiked chest, a spiky dress, and a weirdly human face with no hair.
53	** Swarm, a classic example of TheWormThatWalks, was rendered here as...[[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/villains/images/3/32/Swarm_SMTOD.png/revision/latest?cb=20160706222804 a guy covered in bees.]] The effect is [[{{Narm}} laughable.]]

Context YMMV / SpidermanTurnOffTheDark