Tom Holland Is Right: The Amazing Spider-Man’s Web Shooters Made No Sense

According to Tom Holland, the web-shooters in The Amazing Spider-Man made no sense, and he’s right. In the upcoming book The Moviemaking Magic of Marvel Studios: Spider-Man, Tom Holland compares Andrew Garfield’s first set of web-shooters to the set that he uses in Captain America: Civil War and Spider-Man: Homecoming. For several specific reasons, Tom believes that his devices are more realistic, though he questions the realism of web-shooters in general. Spider-Man’s web-shooters have been his most iconic gadget since his first appearance in 1962, and while the practicality of such devices is dubious, the various Spider-Man film adaptations have tried to work around this with varying results.

The Amazing Spider-Man takes a generally grounded approach to Spider-Man’s origins, with Peter Parker creating his first true Spider-Man outfit by combining athletic suits and using sunglass lenses for the eyepieces. The only point that required suspension of disbelief was his web-shooters, which Spider-Man built partially out of wristwatch parts and loaded with high-tensile Oscorp “BioCable” cartridges. His devices were highly compact and stylishly DIY, with a red light that flashed with each use. In The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Peter builds a second pair along with a new suit. As revealed in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 video game, Peter began synthesizing his web fluid instead of purchasing Oscorp’s BioCable by this point.

Tom Holland reminisces on his first MCU web-shooters in The Moviemaking Magic of Marvel Studios: Spider-Man, citing their size and crudeness as indicators that they’re the most realistic iteration of Spider-Man’s iconic gadget, especially when compared to the small devices used by Andrew Garfield. Peter Parker may be a young genius in all iterations, but his lack of resources, especially money, means that his intellect can only take him so far. The first MCU web-shooters were bulky and homemade, cobbled together with scavenged parts and loaded with web fluid that Peter secretly concocted in his high school chemistry class. His more advanced web-shooters came from Tony Stark, along with a more stylish suit.

In Civil War, Iron man recruits Peter, overhauling his outfit and gadgetry, the full extent of which isn’t shown until Homecoming. With Tony Stark’s vast wealth and years of experience creating superhero weaponry, Peter’s new web-shooters are far more compact and streamlined, resembling the sort of technology Tony would include in his Iron Man armors. While Peter was still responsible for the web fluid, Tony incorporated it into the more advanced web-shooter design, giving Peter 576 varieties of web projectiles, including electrified webbing and webs that ricocheted off of walls. With Tony Stark’s wealth and resources, these advanced devices were at least somewhat believable.

Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man was ultimately more comic-accurate than Tom’s, with his version of Peter lacking the mentorships that Tom’s iteration had from Tony Stark. The Peter Parker of the comics worked alone more often than not, deliberately rejecting the notion that teen superheroes had to have an adult mentor figure. For this, the Amazing version of Spider-Man could only rely on himself (and occasionally Gwen Stacy) when designing his gear, and the films struck a balance between stylistic and realistic. Peter’s costume and web-shooters in the 2012 film had to be just realistic enough while maintaining comic accuracy, even if that required slightly more suspension of disbelief than Tom’s gear.

Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy bypassed the entire conversation about web-shooter realism by having Peter grow spinnerets in his arms as part of his superpowers, showing his intelligence through other means. Part of Spider-Man’s appeal is that he’s one of the most realistic superheroes ever created, but this doesn’t come from how plausible his powers or gadgetry are. What makes Peter Parker or Miles Morales so realistic is that, without their powers or gadgetry, there’s little separating them from any ordinary New Yorker. While Tom Holland is right that The Amazing Spider-Man’s web-shooters made no sense, it was the film’s characterization of Spider-Man and Andrew Garfield’s performance that showed the iconic hero’s realism.

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David Miller
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David Miller is a staff writer for Screen Rant, indie comic writer, and life-long lover of all things Star Wars, Marvel, and DC. He was born and raised in New York and has a degree in English from Rider University. He relates to Peter Parker maybe a little too much.

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