I’m watching the first Spiderman film since it’s on TV, and on seeing it again i’m struck by just how poorly Peter Parker keeps his identity secret.
He first discovers his web-shooty powers in the school cafeteria, accidentally whipping a tray into someone’s back. He then exits the room, the tray still on the webbing from his wrist, it being dragged behind him. The room being filled with other people.
Shortly after, he gets into a fight where he performs all sorts of feats of agility, as well as doing a couple of backflips from standing. Right in front of a group of other students, of course.
When he joins the wrestling group, he performs under the name Spiderman, in a similar version of his costume, and reveals his face to the organiser as well as anyone backstage; people quite likely to sell him out for the money.
He rescues Mary Jane at several points. Does he make a show of not knowing her? Nope, it’s all “I’ll save you, MJ!”. It’s not like she could compare the sound of his voice to all the people she knows, or something. :dubious:
How can everyone (in the film universe, anyway) not know who he is?
History can be very easy to lose track of. I suspect that the moments you mentioned might have been pecuiliar in the minds of people who have witnessed them, but nothing that would actually make it to the papers or actually recorded
For the school incidents, no one else has ever seen “webbing,” so they don’t know that it’s “webbing.” It’s some kind of rope. None of them are likely to have the chance to examine Spider-Man’s webbing up close to compare it to that rope they saw one time. As for the agility, that’s certainly unusual but the leap from “bizarrely agile” to “superhumanly strong, able to leap dozens of feet into the air and stick to walls” is still a big one.
The people backstage at the wrestling show might make the connection between the two, but how will most of them remember him? Medium height, medium build, brown hair. Describes at least a hundred thousand people in New York City.
As for MJ, does he call her by name while in costume? His mask would muffle/distort his voice while he’s wearing it over his mouth and even if his voice sounds familiar when the mask is pulled up, is she going to make the leap between “puny Parker” and Spider-Man right away? And, IIRC, at the end of the movie it’s pretty clear that she suspects and of course in the second movie she finds out for sure.
Except for the fact that he was asked to fill out a medical waiver.
I was so certain that this was going to be the hook behind Bruce Campbell’s cameo in Spider-Man II-- the announcer remembers the amazingly agile kid who he dubbed “Spider-Man” in the first movie, makes the connection to the city’s new costumed vigilante, and checks through the paperwork until he finds the original wrestling application for Peter Parker (“Stage Name? [Please Print]: The Human Spider”). Then he sells the information to the highest bidder (either the Daily Bugle or Harry Osborne).
Instead, Bruce was suddenly a theater usher. I never could figure that one out. Are we to infer that he somehow lost his job as a wrestling announcer and was forced to seek employment elsewhere, coincidentally landing a job in the exact same theater where Mary Jane would eventually perform? Maybe that’s it; Bruce tried to sneak into the back offices at the wrestling arena to steal the info for himself, but was caught in the act and fired before he could find it. That’s why he was so insufferable to Peter in the second movie-- he subconsciously recognized Peter’s voice as Spider-Man’s, and was impelled to extract some petty measure of revenge.
At least when Supes went off world in the comic everyone thought Clark Kent was dead. And then he had the help of a shape-shifting parallel universe Supergirl to substitute in for Clark.
(I can’t believe I just wrote that in a serious conversation.)
It’s been a while since I’ve read the comics regularly (except for the Ultimate Spiderman series) - it’s been something of a running gag that Petey’s identity is one of the worst-kept secrets on the planet.
Reminds me of my favorite scene from Lois and Clark: the villian calls Lois the stupidest person in the world for not figuring out the dual identity. “Look, with the glasses I’m Clark, without I’m Superman.” Doh! :smack:
Or maybe, it was just Bruce Campbell playing two different characters…or maybe they’re twins who both live in NYC and are both on the margins of the entertainment industry.
