Every Spider-Man Movie & TV Show Explained By Kevin Smith | WIRED

So you want to learn to be Spider-Man? Can you teach me? Yes, I can. How many more Spider-People are there? Hey, fellas. Hello. This could literally not get any weirder. It can get weirder. Hey, man, I'm Kevin Smith, and I am here today to talk about every iconic version of Spider-Man that has ever been on film or television. The Amazing Spider-Man is Nicholas Hammond in the first live-action version that we Americans saw. At the same time, there was another Spider-Man live-action happening over in Japan in 1978. But the one that we saw with Nicholas Hammond was very special because it was the first time you got to see Spider-Man in real life. Plus, he was played by a kid who was one of the original family members in The Sound of Music. So that made it cool for your mom. So you'd be like, I'm watching Spider-Man. She'd be like, this is ridiculous. And you'd be like, that boy was in The Sound of Music. Since my mother loved Julie Andrews and The Sound of Music, she was like, then I approve of this Spider-Man. And we got to watch it. But it didn't last very long. It's fun watching him climb up a building, get pulled up a rope, and he would just do this. He didn't quite wall crawl. No one can do what he can do when Spider-Man strikes back. Spider-Man Strikes Back comes out circa, I think, 1978. So it predates The Empire Strikes Back. The best thing we can say about Spider-Man Strikes Back is somewhere George Lucas was flipping through a TV guide going, Strikes Back. There it is. Star Wars 2. What was I thinking? And suddenly, he had a new name for his movie. But the movie itself, Spider-Man Strikes Back, not very memorable. There's no scene where somebody's like, I am your father. And it's Mysterio or something. No. It's nothing more than a title. Then, of course, it all wraps up with Spider-Man The Dragon's Challenge, which I was out by then. I didn't see that one, man. And I think by that point, I was headed toward the age of being interested in girls. And I knew that an interest in Spider-Man wasn't going to get me where I needed to be. So I let it go at that point. I didn't see it. Spider-Man. Long before Tom Hollands and Tobey Maguire was the guy, whoever it was, who played Spider-Man in the electric company's Spider-Man shorts. They depicted Spider-Man as being mute, which really made an impact on me. Later on, I'd play Silent Bob. It was based on this version of Spider-Man. He would have word balloons that popped over his head, and you would see what he was thinking. But sometimes, they used it to communicate with other people in the scene. It was very confusing. What happened? It was like, wait, are they reading his thoughts? But the idea was it was supposed to be a word balloon. They didn't let the guy actually speak. But it had a killer theme song. Even before, well, Spider-Man's always had a good theme song. Of course, in the cartoon, we had, Spider-Man, Spider-Man does whatever a spider can. But in the electric company version, it was, Spider-Man, where are you coming from? Spider-Man, nobody knows who you are. Like, it was pretty mysterious for a kid that was watching a program that wasn't quite Sesame Street. Then there was the Spider-Man cartoon most people know because it has the amazing theme song, Spider-Man, Spider-Man. Spider-Man does whatever a spider can. Spins a web any size. Catches thieves just like flies. Look out, here comes the Spider-Man. Limited animation from back in the day. But it was definitely established in animation, the formula going forward. Peter Parker has a secret identity. He is Spider-Man. He can't let Aunt May know about it. He's got a girlfriend, Mary Jane. All that stuff was in the mix in there, and they also introduced his rogues gallery of villains. Spider-Man got one of the most colorful rogues gallery in all of comics. Like, there's Batman, of course, then shoulder-to-shoulder with him is Spider-Man because he's got so many. He's got Green Goblin. He's got Hobgoblin. He's got all the goblins. He's got Mysterio. He's got Sandman. He's got Vulture. The list goes on and on. In the early 80s, before Spider-Man and his amazing friends, it was just Spider-Man, and Doctor Doom featured prominently in it, which Doctor Doom, more of a Fantastic Four villain. You know, Spider-Man way outgunned fighting a Doctor Doom, but it was Saturday morning. I remember in the credits, they would be like, Big Ben, they should be like London, as if, like, kids would be like, oh, Spidey's gone international. But they figured out, you know, we can make this way better. And they turned Spider-Man into Spider-Man and his amazing friends, which added Bobby Drake as Iceman and Angelica Jones as Firestar, and they would live together because they were all going to Empire State University, and Aunt May lived with them. She still didn't know that they were all heroes and stuff, and they had a room where things would flip, and suddenly, like, you know, the control board would come out, little base, their own little spider cave. That was really great, and I always loved it because it had Stan Lee's voice in it. Stan Lee was the narrator of that show. Base front, heroes, this is Stan Lee. And he would bring you into the story, and then at commercial breaks, you'd be, oh, no, what's gonna happen next? So he became a part of that series. As warmly as I remember Spider-Man and his amazing friends, I think it has everything to do with the fact that Stan was, like, the omniscient narrator of that show. Spider-Man the animated series, I always think of as Spider-Man the toy show because that was back in the day where KB, the toy store, was selling tons of Spider-Man toys. Toy Biz, the company that bought Marvel later on, made a bunch of toys based on that line, based on the X-Men cartoon and based on Spider-Man the animated series, including, like, Smythe the spider slayer and stuff. What I remember most about that series was the end, oddly enough. I don't believe what you're telling me. In your reality, I'm a character in fiction? The last episode, Spider-Man crosses into our dimension and meets his creator, Stan Lee. Spider-Man? Uh, Pam, hold my calls for a while. So Stan has a voice in it, and it's really special because Madam Web is a character in it as well, and Madam Web was voiced by Stan's wife, Joan Lee. So they got to act together in the series finale of Spider-Man the animated series. And it was also just cool to see all the villains represented. Spider-Man's always made for a great cartoon because his rogues gallery is so colorful to look at, and it was no exception when they did Spider-Man the animated series in 1990. They used every, every villain from every nook and cranny that Spider-Man even crossed over with and also brought in heroes as well. There was Spider-Man Unlimited in 1999, and it was false advertising. Didn't live up to its name. It was quite limited, and it was gone. Before you knew it, it was over. Didn't have the staying power of some of the earlier versions of Spider-Man. So in 2003, they do a Spider-Man high-tech, man, like, with 3-D animation. Looks incredible, and of course, it has all the earmarks of trappings of the Spider-Man story that we love. But, you know, it was next generation. It took it into the third dimension because Spider-Man can't be held by two simple dimensions. So there are three Spider-Man cartoons that have come out in the recent years that I have not caught up on. Your Honor. The spectacular Spider-Man. I bite. Then there's Ultimate Spider-Man. And then in 2017, Spider-Man. I know my friend Scott Mosier wrote scripts for one of them. I think he did that for Ultimate Spider-Man or something like that. But no, I stopped watching the Spider-Man cartoons because they started making Spider-Man live-action movies. Suddenly, you didn't have to just look at animation. Suddenly, you could see Spider-Man in real life and it wasn't the guy that I grew up watching on TV. You are amazing. I wasn't wild about the Sam Raimi Spider-Man. It came out. It was definitely, you know, groundbreaking. I loved the trailer when they first started showing Spider-Man swinging through the chasms of New York. Like, it looked really convincing. But then when I saw the movie itself, I was a little put off because there's a big scene between the two, the hero and the villain, Spider-Man and Green Goblin. And both of them are wearing these masks from head to toe, so you can't even see their faces. So at a certain point, it kind of looked like Power Rangers, just people talking to each other, like a couple C-3POs, nobody's face. Which I thought was so silly because Willem Dafoe, who played the Green Goblin, played Norman Osborn, has one of the most expressive, like, faces in the business. So they could have just painted him green and suddenly they would have been there. But instead, Sam Raimi put him in a helmet. I was happy that we had a Spider-Man movie, but it wasn't my cup of tea. Spider-Man 2, the one that Raimi did afterwards, I absolutely loved with Doc Ock. And that's probably one of the greatest Spider, well, removed, one of the greatest superhero movies ever made. And that one really touched me. It has a moment where Mary Jane, like, says to Peter Parker, Isn't it about time somebody saved your life? Really human moment, because that's who you've got to remember. That's the epicenter of your story. Yes, Spider-Man's impressive and he can swing and do this s***. But it's the story of Peter Parker. It's the story of somebody incredibly mild-mannered who, when he has the mask off, you know, is kind of milquetoast and isn't the guy who, you know, is the center of attention in the room. But when he puts on the mask, he can be this guy, create this character of Spider-Man who's engaging and quippy and funny. So I thought, like, Tobey Maguire was a good Peter Parker, but, like, his Spider-Man, like, didn't, he didn't play like my Spider-Man. My Spider-Man was always cracking wise, and his Spider-Man didn't really crack wise. So I guess you can't really blame that on him. But his Peter Parker was pretty altruistic. He came across that way. So I liked him. And then the third one, Spider-Man 3 is when he's grooving down the streets of New York and dancing and doing this stuff. And, you know, that one was a little tough. Also had a Venom that didn't look very Venom, man. Topher Grace playing Venom was like... Hey, Parker. He's kind of small. So that movie, like, you know, it did well, it made money at the box office, but for me, it didn't capture my imagination. I love that it had the black suit in it, the symbiote suit, don't get me wrong. But Spider-Man 2 was the high watermark of the Raimi trilogy for my money. That being said, I'm sure Sam Raimi's like, nothing you ever did was good, so I won't judge his s***. The Amazing Spider-Man, the one that came after the first reboot, very controversial because we were just finished watching Spider-Man and then all of a sudden Sony was like, hey, it's happening again. Different Spider-Man, different director, all new characters and stuff playing, all new actors and actresses playing the same old characters. So it was controversial because it was a reboot so close to the one that had just concluded and folks didn't know what to think, but when it came out, I enjoyed it, man. I enjoyed that first Amazing Spider-Man movie. I thought it was the reverse of Tobey Maguire. Plainface, as folks have called Tobey Maguire, he was a great Peter Parker, whereas Andrew Garfield, I think, was a great Spider-Man. He was quippy and funny when he was in the suit. No one seems to grasp the concept of the mask. I bought it. He felt like the comic book page Spider-Man, but his Peter Parker was way too hot. I would have f***ed his Peter Parker, you know what I'm saying? And he was attractive and happening and with it, no glasses and stuff. So that was kind of a departure from the Peter Parker that I was familiar with. So that's the one thing I didn't like too much about Amazing Spider-Man. Peter Parker can't be too cool for school. This is my path. Then they made a sequel, had Electro in it, and oh my Lord, the whole thing went off the rails. Amazing Spider-Man 2, it's got Jamie Foxx like... I had a friend once. It didn't work out. Acting in a way that led you to believe he'd never read a comic book in his life. Like he was like, this is what a bad guy sounds like. And then there was another villain too. Oh, they had the Hogg Goblin slash Green Goblin combo in there. Yeah, it was kind of misguided and, you know, it made a bunch of money, but it wasn't my cup of tea. It wasn't my cup of web. It wasn't my cup of web fluid. There you go. Web fluid sounds way f***ing dirtier than I meant it. Sorry. Nice job, kid. Thanks. Well, I could have stuck the landing a little better. It's just a new suit. Tom Holland in his first appearance as Spider-Man in Civil War is when we, the Spider-Man fans, finally go, there it is. There he is. Not only are they showing Spider-Man as a young boy in high school, he looks like he should be in high school. Tobey Maguire looked like he was 40 in Spider-Man. You know what I'm saying? Like it reminded me of when I saw Grease as a kid. And all the kids in high school looked like they were 30. So when I got to high school and I looked like a kid, I was like, what the f*** happened? Why don't the world look like Grease? Because they were all adults playing those roles. Same thing in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man. Tobey Maguire, I thought, was a little too old for it. Whereas Tom Holland is just right, man. The one thing that Tom Holland brings to it that nobody else ever thought to bring to that character was he plays it with a Queen's accent. Yeah, and with pickles. And can you smoosh it down real flat? Thanks. How adorable is that? So he sounds like a kid from New York, for heaven's sakes. Every other incarnation of Spider-Man, all the animated series, all the live actions, even the video games, nobody bothered to give him a New York accent. So I thought that was ingenious. And then I just buy him. I believe his performance. I believed his excitement at being involved with the Avengers, being called in for this little mission and whatnot. So, yeah, he was a revelation. And right then and there, I was like, this is my cinematic Spider-Man. One of the things I loved about Spider-Man Homecoming was they didn't show us Uncle Ben getting killed again. Like, they didn't bother with that stuff because, you know, they figured the audience knows it, man. They've seen it in the Raimi Spider-Mans. They've seen it in the Amazing Spider-Man 2 movies. So we don't have to hit them with this, like, with great power comes great responsibility part of the parable. They hit the ground running, man. We all know that something bad happened to Peter in order for him to become the man he is today. And that's the beauty of Spider-Man. Like Stan Lee would always say, like, Spider-Man is not like Batman or Superman. Superman, you know who he is. You know, he's a middle-aged white guy. Batman, because he's wearing a cowl, this part's cut out, you know exactly who he is. Also, he's a rich guy, white rich guy. Stan Lee said that even though, of course, Peter Parker was a white guy from Queens, white kid from Queens, he said the real charm of that character, they realized, was Spider-Man was covered from head to toe. So once he's in the costume, you don't know who he is. You don't know what he is. You don't know if he's a boy or a girl. You don't know what race, creed, or color or anything that character is. So any kid reading that book can see themselves as the character. It's kind of ingenious, kind of wonderful. But that character means so much to so many people because you can see yourself in it. And the beauty of that character is he's a boy, completely outgunned. He's a child, completely outgunned and outclassed, but still he wants to do the right thing. You know, and most kids, if you got that power when you were a kid, you'd be like, oh my God, I'm gonna get rich, which is what he tries to do in the beginning. But then realizes, of course, as we know, with great power comes great responsibility and turns it around. And he becomes one of the most relatable superheroes that ever existed. This is a guy who's late for his rent, who's always kind of getting in trouble when he's not wearing the suit and could pull himself out of it just like that if he would just lean into being Spider-Man for profit, but won't do that because he's a hero. My name is Miles Morales. I'm the one and only Spider-Man. At least that's what I thought. We've seen various incarnations of the Peter Parker character and we know he's a white kid, but thanks to Miles Morales, who's a character who was introduced in Ultimate Spider-Man, The Ultimate Line, like years back, and now is in Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse, you finally get the idea of that writ large. It ain't just some white guy swinging through Manhattan. Now it's African-American Latino kid, Miles Morales. That's what they do with the Spider-Verse characters is all the elements that you're familiar with have been slightly remixed in this different planet or different universe where Spider-Man is not Peter Parker, but instead he's this. And so for years, there were a bunch of us who loved the character and were like, when are they going to put him in a movie? And there's been no sign of him showing up in a live-action movie except in Spider-Man Homecoming. The Prowler reference to having a nephew, and everybody who knows comics knows the Prowler's nephew is Miles Morales. Miles got bit by a radioactive spider that had come home in a bag that the Prowler, his uncle, had brought home and stuff, as Norman Osborn was trying to repeat the same process that created Peter Parker's Spider-Man with Miles. He was trying to duplicate it, but Miles wound up getting bit. He didn't want no kid to get bit and stuff, and thus the adventure begins. My name is Peter Porker. Spider-Ham. Peter Porker, the spectacular Spider-Ham. I remember buying that comic when I was a kid. And, you know, his character has been around as the animal version of some of the Marvel heroes and whatnot in that universe, but you never imagined you'd see it beyond the page. But we live in such a golden era right now where somebody's like, let's whip Spider-Ham into this movie as well. Do animals talk in this dimension? Because I don't want to freak him out. Pretty astounding that we get to see that in my lifetime before I die. A cinematic Spider-Ham. Hey, guys. What? It's Gwen, actually. So Gwen Stacy in one version of the Spider-Verse stories, it's Gwen Stacy who gets bit by a radioactive spider, not Peter Parker. Peter winds up taking an elixir that turns him into the lizard and stuff, and then when he changes back, he dies in Spider-Gwen's arms, which is fitting because Gwen Stacy dies over and over again in Spider-Man's arms in the classic telling of the story. She's thrown from the bridge by the Green Goblin. Spider-Man, thwip, tries to save her, but she snaps her neck in the process. So Spider-Gwen having Peter Parker die in her arms was only fair and fitting and whatnot. And then her character kind of got to go off and have her own adventure kind of remix. Hey, fellas. Spider-Man Noir is kind of like the idea of the Marvel Noir universe was, you know, what would Marvel have been like in the 30s? So they, you know, tell a darker, older version of it, not as quite rightly lit or super heroic as you're used to with comic book stories. A little on the darker side. It was pretty genius they got Nick Cage to do his voice in that movie. And then Penny Parker is from a futuristic version of Spider-Man where, like, her dad built this giant suit, this robot thing. It's like a kind of giant robot, like a Vangeline or something like that. And he gets killed, and she has to take on the spider. And so it's a different take on it. Instead of Peter Parker, you got Penny Parker. She's a little Japanese girl who controls this machine that is their version of Spider-Man. It's the kind of cool thing about the concept is you can do it a bunch of different ways. You know, we all know what Spider-Man looks like and what the concept is. But, like, you know, you can go over to Turkey and see their version of Spider-Man. He's a villain. The Turkish Spider-Man was a bad guy, fighting Captain America. Some versions of Spider-Man, he could shoot lasers, you know, whenever they bootleg him and do him overseas. The Japanese Spider-Man was a motorcycle racer who was doing it to avenge his brother's death. You know, so it's a character that can translate into any culture because that captures our imagination. This, thwip, thwip, I'm gonna hit you with a bunch of web and capture people. It's kind of cool visual and stuff. But what makes that character transcendent, why it can go through so many different cultures, is because, at the end of the day, that's who I think most people feel they would be in a world of superpowers, you know? We'd all like to believe that we're Wonder Woman or Superman or something like that, but chances are we'd probably be fumbling through it and figuring it out, you know, with a heart of gold like Peter Parker. Well, Stan, we all have to grow up sometime, I suppose. Even us characters of fiction. Spider-Man. It's time to go.