Mask of the Spider-ManThere are a lot of great moments in Sam Raimi’s Spider-man trilogy; admittedly the
number of great moments skewed heavily towards the beginning of those works. In addition, the third one included the scene where Raimi allowed his opinion of being forced to include Venom spill on to the screen in all its cringey disco glory. Nevertheless, Raimi will always be known as the man who brought a credible vision of the web-slinger to the silver screen.. 
In each of these movies there is a scene in which Spider-man is identified explicitly as a hero of New York, and the bond between Spidey and the native New Yorkers is as crassly defined as “You mess with him and you mess with us”. That’s all fine and everything, but of the three Sony Exclusive iterations of Spider-man it is the only one that seeks to embed Spidey into a collective rather than seeking to make a completely different point. The Amazing Spider-man, despite being distinctly less than Amazing, picked on a new trope, a trope that, honestly, only half worked in that 2-movie experiment. While Sony were getting away with The Amazing Spider-man (a move that in retrospect just shows up what a car crash Spider-man 3 was that people ever thought it was even “okay”). A lot of critical opinion on Andrew Garfield’s take on the friendly neighbourhood superhero pointed out that the new Peter Parker was just, well, too cool to be Peter Parker and also a bit of a snarky a-hole to boot. What pulled this back from the brink was that one scene on the collapsing bridge where Spidey has to rescue a scared little boy from the front of a car tipping perilously over the dark waters of the Hudson. In a move of staggering empathy Peter takes off his mask and tells the boy that it is the mask that makes Spider-man brave and funny and capable of “amazing” things. The boy puts on the mask and is rescued and everyone cheers for Spidey. 
Who's gonna rescue Spidey when he falls off?
This was the key moment in establishing Peter’s heart of gold in those movies because, honestly, he’s a bit of a hipster idiot for most of the rest of the runtime of both movies. Following the dumpster fire that was Amazing Spider-man 2, Sony cut their first deal with Marvel/Disney and the Tom Holland version of Spidey debuted in Civil War, erasing the mental image of glowing blue Electro from the mind almost entirely. Marvel haven’t made any bold pronouncements about what Spider-man “means”. Possibly because keeping track of all those franchises is work enough, possibly because they want the audience to make their own mind up and probably a little from column A and a little from column B. Meanwhile, over at Sony, their ability to use all the other Spidey toys that aren’t the “main” Peter Parker allowed them to cook up the superb Spider-man: Enter the Spiderverse. There are a lot of reasons to be grateful for inter-studio shenanigans for this one, the gorgeous animation, the sharp, insightful scripting, the involving story and the existence of a Spider-man movie with Miles Morales front and center among them. Folded into this delightful superhero confection is a return to that Andrew Garfield on the bridge moment. The very beating heart of the Spiderverse movie being the idea that in an infinite multiverse, anyone could wear the mask. 
Sometimes a mask should even be encouraged
Now, by “the mask” obviously we mean the full red and blue bodystocking, not just the headpiece, but the sentiment resonates across the two franchises. Sony are clearly committed to this idea that the way to sell people Spider-man is to push the idea that Peter Parker is just an average Joe and if it can be him then it could be anyone. Indeed, the take on Eddie Brock presented in the recent Venom movie (another example of Sony “getting away with” something rather than solidly succeeding) tends to stick close by this message. Eddie Brock is a mess, and in this version they made him more of a mundane, well-meaning mess than any of the more challenging interpretations they could have gone with. All of which leads to the big question: is this the way to sell a superhero? Is it even remotely a good idea to push in this direction? Speaking personally, I’m not convinced. A key point here is that Marvel have tended to stick pretty close to the idea that superheroes are remarkable. Tony Stark without the armour is a billionaire genius playboy philanthropist, Steve Rogers was a paragon before the vita-rays made him a beefcake, Thor, well, he’s a god. Marvel is pretty plain that being a hero incurs a cost to the person who holds the power. Or, to put it another way, with great power (join in if you know the words) comes great responsibility. Not that Sony have entirely rejected that central plank of Spidey’s identity, of course, but it just appears that they like the other thing more. It doesn’t appear that Marvel like it at all. People do seem perfectly okay with every hero being a genius, or a kick-ass test pilot, or schooled in spycraft from scary communist kindergarten, or a master cat-burglar and hacker or whatever. If the MCU has a thesis on this it’s that all their costumed Avengers were remarkable beings even before they became super. 
The classic Spidey story where his arm turns into a patriotic plate
So, who’s right? It’s easy, and necessary, to point out that pre-Holland Sony were in danger of poisoning the well. Spider-man should be a licence to print money but, just like a drivers’ licence, it seems that such power should be weilded, well, responsibly. If there is an appeal to the idea that any person could just be a hero, no major blockbuster franchise has yet tapped into it. That idea seems to live and grow best in television properties like Heroes, Alphas and the 4400. In an infinite multi-verse though, possibilities can theoretically be endless so, in the end, somewhere in that kaleidoscope of possibilities it must be true that Sony has a point. Across the universes of Trash Mutant and Revenge of the 80s Kids Episode 136 this week we’re all about asking questions about the success (or otherwise) of Spider-man. The cast can be streamed or downloaded at http://theeightieskids.blogspot.com where you can also find an extensive archive of content about movies and popular culture. You can also get news about the podcast and other projects at https://www.facebook.com/RevengeOfThe80sKids 
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