From Spider-Man to Spider-Men (with twenty years of moral development)
Second Thoughts on Two Films
Some people hate superhero movies, and I can understand why, whether it’s that they are too formulaic or that there are now just too many out there. As a pre-teen kid in the early 1990s, cartoons played a role in my daily life and at that time, some high-quality superhero cartoons were made, including the likes of Batman, the X-Men, and Spider-Man. While some big-name superheroes made it on the big screen, unfortunately, by the late 1990s, the Batman movie franchise had lost its way. I’m not really going out on a limb by claiming that 1997’s Batman & Robin is not just one of worst superhero movies, but may be one of the worst films ever made. It was so bad that it seemed like it might have killed off the whole idea of superhero movies, but in reality, it had the opposite effect. Consider the following quote from Marvel Studio president Kevin Feige in a 2009 interview:
“That may be the most important comic-book movie ever made… It was so bad that it demanded a new way of doing things. It created the opportunity to do ‘X-Men’ and ‘Spider-Man,’ adaptations that respected the source material and adaptations that were not campy.”1
All hope was not lost; by the time I had moved into adulthood, the X-Men movie had been made, and my pre-teen interest in superhero stories had been rekindled. It’s amazing to think that nearly twenty-five years later, Australian actor Hugh Jackman is still playing the character of Logan and has finally put on the yellow outfit, which is true to the cartoon version I grew up with. Despite the success of X-Men and the ensuing film franchise, I believe that the massive popularity of Spider-Man cemented the modern phenomenon of superhero films that we have seen over the past twenty years.
For many decades now, Spider-Man has been one of the most popular comic book superheroes. I guess a fair amount of that is because his alter ego, Peter Parker, is relatable for kids as he starts out as a teenager. He’s super strong, but he doesn’t look it like Superman does. He’s smart but not uber-rich like Batman or Iron Man. Besides being strong and smart, Spider-Man is basically nimble, and his weapons are webs that help him get around or immobilise his enemies. Like many superheroes, Peter Parker is an orphan, and although it has become cliche now to provide an origin story, especially as characters are rebooted, Spider-Man’s story of gaining his powers and losing his uncle Ben is a big part of the original film.
I’m guessing most people are familiar with the basic origin story of Spider-Man. He’s bitten by a special spider on a school field trip, giving him special abilities. Uncle Ben dies at the hands of a petty criminal whom Peter previously chose not to apprehend, and it becomes the main factor that inspired Peter to become Spider-Man. In Sam Raimi’s 2002 film, Peter goes after Uncle Ben’s killer, who trips and falls to his death after they fight. Whilst Spider-Man didn’t kill the man, it certainly seemed that he was satisfied with the outcome. The film's final fight has Spider-Man fighting Green Goblin, who reveals he is actually Peter’s best friend’s father. That fight ended when the Green Goblin attempted to stab Spider-Man in the back, but Spider-Man jumped out of the way as the Goblin impaled himself.
Almost twenty years later, another seven Spider-Man films were made, with the series rebooted twice. The latest Spider-Man, played by Tom Holland, had entered the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) as one of the key characters in the Avengers storyline. It was in the third movie of Tom Holland’s trilogy I had the strangest experience in the movie cinema. Before seeing this movie, I do recall a cinema audience giving a round of applause once when a joke landed well, but by late 2021, when I took my teenagers along with me to watch Spider-Man: No Way Home, I was in no way prepared for what would happen in the theatre.
The trailers for Spider-Man: No Way Home revealed that the film would be cross-over, using the concept of a multi-verse to bring back the villains from the earlier Spider-man films from a different continuity. Although some people now loathe the concept of multi-verse films, this one in particular garnered a tremendous amount of excitement from the fans. There was so much excitement, in fact, that the film made nearly ten times its budget at the box office: almost two billion dollars. We went to see the film on the opening night in a sold-out theatre and could only get seats right at the front of the cinema. Although everyone had already seen the Green Goblin and other villains from the old movies, they started cheering as soon as they saw Alfred Molina on screen in the Doc Octopus outfit, like it was a professional football game. Every time another villain showed up, the cheers and applause continued. Even though it was a well-kept secret, everyone suspected that the old actors who previously played Spider-Man would also appear in the film, and when they did, the crowd were hysterical.
While Spider-Man: No Way Home was far from being a perfect film, nostalgia is a powerful tool, particularly when deployed upon comic-book superhero fans, even the casual ones who watch movies but have never read a comic. Seeing the three Spider-Men on the screen together has a certain magical dimension to it that cannot be explained. One aspect of the movie that is needed for the plot to work but doesn’t really make sense is that all the villains who are brought back had died from their final encounters with Spider-Man, with CGI used to de-age the actors. However, the two older, returning Spider-Man actors had aged essentially in real-time from our perspective as an audience, with the original Spider-Man, Tobey Macguire, now middle-aged. This meant that the young Tom Holland Spider-Man had much to learn from his older, wiser counterparts, which ended up being a key aspect of the movie.
Tom Holland’s Spider-Man is young and immature; essentially, he convinces a wizard to try to fix his problems the easy way, but he also causes the wizard to mess up the magic, which is what brings the three movie universes together. As I said, this is far from a perfect film. Young Spider-man learns along the way that if he lets the wizard send all the villains back, they will immediately die from their battles with the other Spider-Men. He also gains an understanding that all the villains are, for the most part, good people who have become sick in their minds as a result of the accidents that gave them their super-human abilities. For these reasons and because of the compassionate encouragement of his Aunt May, young Spider-Man decides it’s better to try to save these villains by restoring them to their right minds rather than sending them back to die. This all seems like a good idea until a villain double-crosses him, and his Aunt May dies.
Despite what his aunt wanted, her death triggered the Avenger instinct in young Spider-Man, and in a violent rage, he was ready to kill the Green Goblin by impaling the villain with his own glider. Perhaps predictably, but it doesn’t matter to me, old Tobey Macguire Spider-Man put himself between the spikes and his arch-enemy. As much as he was saving the Green Goblin, he was really saving the young Spider-Man as he learnt what revenge does to a person from first-hand experience. No words needed to be said, just eye contact until the young Spider-Man relented and went back to the plan of saving the Goblin. Although the Goblin successfully stabbed the Tobey McGuire Spider-Man in the back this time, in the end, the plan to save him was successful.
Saving your enemy rather than killing them is not often how a superhero movie goes. Sometimes, the heroes take ethical stances and refuse to take the life of their enemy, as we see in The Dark Knight. Other times, as in the case of the original Spider-Man film, the villain’s attacks come back on themselves so that, whilst they die fighting the hero, the hero is not to blame. Sometimes, the most heroic end for the superhero is for them to die, not in a fight against their enemy, but in some other heroic act of self-sacrifice. But to die for the sake of your enemy, as Aunt May does in Spider-Man: No Way Home, or to forego revenge and work for the healing of your enemy may sit at the apex of the superhero moral arch. The sickness of mind that is clearly present in the Spider-Man villains may have meant this is the kind of story that can occur in his world. Perhaps not all villains can be redeemed. For those of us shaped by the Christian idea of all people having inherent dignity by nature of them being created in the image of God, we may be inclined to see the evil in people as a kind of sickness and to believe no one is too far gone.
Dying for your enemies, forgiving them, and believing they can be saved from their sickness and corruption make for beautiful stories, at least for some of us. It’s difficult to imagine where our superhero storylines will go from here. I suspect they will continue as they have: sometimes the hero will need to kill the bad guy, sometimes the villain will die as a natural consequence of their evil, but sometimes the hero will be committed to redeeming their enemy, even if it costs them dearly.
Boucher, Geoff. “For Akiva Goldsman, a beautiful turnaround.” Los Angeles Times, 18 October 2009, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-oct-18-ca-akiva18-story.html. Accessed 2 February 2025.