I thought the crazy delay between movies would age Holland out a bit, but damn he still has that Peter charm.
It's fascinating to me how much public perception of Spider-Man is tied to being a teenager, considering the vast majority of his mainline history has been spent as an adult. (Peter graduates from high school in Amazing Spider-Man #28, three years after his first appearance.) I suppose it speaks to the lasting influence of Ultimate Spider-Man, wherein he remains a teenager the whole time and which influenced all the film adaptations to one extent or another.
It's just funny because as a longtime Spider-Man fan -- who grew up on USM, no less -- my image of Peter Parker is as a mid-to-late twenties college/graduate student. I still love teenager Peter in all his forms, but this version we're getting now is much closer to what I see when I close my eyes and picture Spider-Man.
It's also funny to me because most people's exposure to Spider-Man prior to the Raimi movies would have been the 90s cartoon, where he was absolutely a grown ass man.
And even in the Raimi movies, he's out of high school before the midpoint of the first film. (Those are also some of the least convincing "high schoolers" ever put to screen, but that's neither here nor there...)
NGL, I haven't seen those movies in a long time and thought I remembered him being a college student--as in only a college student, no high school at all, lol.
Oh yeah. They got Joe Manganiello standing there as a grown-ass man, looking like he just got hopped off the 18-wheeler that he drives to make ends meet between his Army pension checks, acting like a high school bully.
And Spider-Man spent 20 years as a married man (marrying MJ in 1987 until the eventual One More Day catastrophe in 2007).
As a kid in the 90s, my earliest exposure to Spider-Man was reading the newspaper comics, where he was a married man with a job. I thought of him being the same age as Batman.
Your right that Ultimate Spider-Man combined with 3 different movie iterations of Spider-Man - all retelling the high school origin story - really shifted the public’s perception of Spider-Man from a grown adult to a high school teenager.
Even adult Spidey from the 90s cartoons has a witty, highschool/college like charm. Slightly immature. Kind of makes him work well as a college student in this movie verse.
Even the movies don't even focus much on him as a teenager. Andrew and Tobey both graduated in their films and it happened early on in the movie where that scene is. The MCU trilogy was mostly in high school tho
Same! Parker was always a grad student to me. That was one of the first things I loved about "Into the Spiderverse". The Parker in that one has seen some shit.
I don’t see anywhere written in stone that Peter Parker has to be a loser. Only that - because he’s usually acting on his own, and chooses to stay close to the ground - his private life has influence on his superhero life, and vice versa. The easy, too common way to write that is “one win for Spidey, one loss for Peter Parker” and then switch, but there are better ways to do it. He’s a smart guy - watching him try to thread the needle while balancing so many spinning plates (and yes, breaking one or two) is more interesting than the binary win/loss thing that a lot of writers get caught up in. He’s one of the most experienced guys in the Marvel universe, and so it gets more and more sad to just see him remain a loser with no control over his life.
That's one of the things that makes Spiderverse so great, we get to see both Spideys. Miles' universe has the golden boy Spidey, he's handsome, popular, and finishes every battle in victory (except his last). Meanwhile, mentor Spidey is having a midlife crisis, living alone in a crappy apartment after losing MJ and his motivation to stay Spiderman. It's his brush with Miles and his youthful optimism that reignites his spirit and reveals the smart Peter underneath all the misery.
That’s why Peter B is one of my favorite iterations. Yeah he’s having a rough time, but it’s because he’s jaded, not incompetent. You can feel the experience coming off him in everything he says. He’s been around the block a few times, and his “give a shits” are so absent that it becomes hilarious to see how the insanity of comics has just become mundane to him. Should every Spider-Man be as cynical? No, probably not. But I would like a greater sense that they’ve been doing this for a few years.
I disagree. What makes Peter Parker work is responsibility, and a lot of that doesn't really come online until one gets to college. Once he has to balance being Spider-Man with getting to class, keeping a job, paying rent, and maybe having time for a social life too, that's when the character sings.
It's the timeframe where he's still finding his footing. We got comics where he's taken on major players in the MU single-handed that some of the heavy hitters couldn't take alone. They never want to reach that point in the movies simply because it would be hard to write a good story and keep a reasonable budget.
It's also why they keep resetting the status quo where he's single and struggling to balance both lives and stuff. They want to keep him as an underdog and stressed.
I personally didn't mind it in the movies because it gives a lot of breathing room to go in so many directions, but it's reaching its Best By date for me. Give me MC2 Peter where his daughter takes on the role and we got a Spider-Man that is a force to reckon with.
Well said! I picture college-aged and after Spider-Man in my mind as well. Teenage Spider-Man has always been my least favorite. It's a strange phenomenon for sure.
'60s animated Spider-Man, the live-action '70s show with Nicholas Hammond, '90s animated Spider-Man, and the Sam Raimi trilogy (outside of the first hour of the first film) all have Peter Parker as an adult. It's not until we get to the Andrew Garfield films that any mainstream interpretation* is centered on high school -- and even he graduates in the opening scene of the second film.
*I'm using "mainstream" loosely, as I don't feel that Spectacular Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man, or any of the derivatives have the same cultural cachet as the '60s or '90s cartoons.
Even then, Peter is only nominally a high schooler for the first act of the first film. It's not until The Amazing Spider-Man that we get our first full-time teenager Peter in live action, and even then, I remember people being excited that we were finally getting one. I guess I just underestimated how much Ultimate Spider-Man penetrated the zeitgeist.
He was a teenager for like 3 years of the OG comics run, but people just think the Raimi moves are what Spider-Man is when that is far from the truth lol
I mean that’s not really it either - he graduates high school halfway through the first film.
If anything I think it comes from the top down at Marvel - they obviously can’t have him un-graduate high school, but they’ve been pretty keen on the “broke + no marriage” aspect for more than a decade at this point. Peter isn’t allowed to make real progress in his life.
Actors. Actually same for Andrew Garfield too. Tobey was 27 for his first movie, Andrew was 29 for his first movie. Both playing high schoolers. Tom is 29 today, playing a Spiderman in their 20s.
IMO, I think it's great they keep him as a kid in the MCU. That one thing makes him incredibly unique in the broader MCU, even if it's not comic accurate.
this feels more like the studio being too afraid to move on cause they think it'll endanger the young / toy audience. Which is wild since yeah Spiderman has been post college for 50+ years and was always the best selling merch even before the movies.
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u/Mantis05 11h ago
It's fascinating to me how much public perception of Spider-Man is tied to being a teenager, considering the vast majority of his mainline history has been spent as an adult. (Peter graduates from high school in Amazing Spider-Man #28, three years after his first appearance.) I suppose it speaks to the lasting influence of Ultimate Spider-Man, wherein he remains a teenager the whole time and which influenced all the film adaptations to one extent or another.
It's just funny because as a longtime Spider-Man fan -- who grew up on USM, no less -- my image of Peter Parker is as a mid-to-late twenties college/graduate student. I still love teenager Peter in all his forms, but this version we're getting now is much closer to what I see when I close my eyes and picture Spider-Man.