# Question about the new Spiderman movie coming out. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 31, 2012, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-new-spiderman-movie-coming-out/623717 "2012-05-31T22:53:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2012, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-new-spiderman-movie-coming-out/623717/1 "2012-05-31T22:53:13Z")
Is his web shooting ability going to be from a mechanical device or a freakish mutation? I never got into comics but I vaguely remember watching Spiderman cartoons as a kid and I think in that show it was a mechanical device. Is that how it is in the comics as well? ---
**Author:** ![Lasciel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e79b87/32.png) [@Lasciel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lasciel)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2012, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-new-spiderman-movie-coming-out/623717/2 "2012-05-31T23:00:01Z")
It looks to be mechanical based on the trailers I saw. I was never a spidey comic fan, so I don’t know how that meshes with the way they have it. ---
**Author:** ![planetcory](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/planetcory/32/1032_2.png) [@planetcory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/planetcory)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2012, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-new-spiderman-movie-coming-out/623717/3 "2012-05-31T23:36:47Z")
> [@Shakes](#): > > Is his web shooting ability going to be from a mechanical device or a freakish mutation? > > I never got into comics but I vaguely remember watching Spiderman cartoons as a kid and I think in that show it was a mechanical device. > > Is that how it is in the comics as well? Yep. It’ll be a mechanical device this time around. The absence of those made a lot of people unhappy at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Arabella\_Flynn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8491ac/32.png) [@Arabella\_Flynn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arabella_Flynn)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2012, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-new-spiderman-movie-coming-out/623717/4 "2012-06-01T02:35:23Z")
> [@Lasciel](#): > > It looks to be mechanical based on the trailers I saw. I was never a spidey comic fan, so I don’t know how that meshes with the way they have it. The original incarnation of Spider-Man had gizmos that shot the web fluid. Being a science nerd, he built them himself. He gets himself into trouble from time to time when he runs out of the glue stuff in the middle of a fight. It may have changed in the comics, sometime between 1963 and now, but they were originally part of his gadgetry and not a radioactive-spider power per se. ---
**Author:** ![cckerberos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@cckerberos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cckerberos)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2012, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-new-spiderman-movie-coming-out/623717/5 "2012-06-01T04:33:36Z")
The comics changed to organic webshooters around the time of the movies, but I don’t know if that’s still the case. I was always okay with the change the movie made. Seemed to make more sense to me than having a high school student somehow create such fantastic technology. ---
**Author:** ![Yookeroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yookeroo/32/323_2.png) [@Yookeroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yookeroo)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2012, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-new-spiderman-movie-coming-out/623717/6 "2012-06-01T04:43:45Z")
> [@planetcory](#): > > Yep. It’ll be a mechanical device this time around. The absence of those made a lot of people unhappy at the time. But this was an improvement. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2012, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-new-spiderman-movie-coming-out/623717/7 "2012-06-01T04:56:43Z")
> [@cckerberos](#): > > I was always okay with the change the movie made. Seemed to make more sense to me than having a high school student somehow create such fantastic technology. Yep. Plus it made him more spidery. Most of his other powers are only tenuously spider-like. ---
**Author:** ![Alan\_Smithee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2acd7d/32.png) [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2012, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-new-spiderman-movie-coming-out/623717/8 "2012-06-01T06:52:29Z")
It also avoided the “why does he have to work for JJJ when he is the genius inventor of a patentable, highly desirable technology” question. Honestly, of all the major superheroes, I think Spidey makes the least sense. And that’s saying something. ---
**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2012, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-new-spiderman-movie-coming-out/623717/9 "2012-06-01T10:20:28Z")
> [@cckerberos](#): > > The comics changed to organic webshooters around the time of the movies, but I don’t know if that’s still the case. > > I was always okay with the change the movie made. Seemed to make more sense to me than having a high school student somehow create such fantastic technology. They’ve gone back to mechanical. SPOILERS for the comic [spoiler]There was a story called “One More Day” that acted as a (literally) magic reset button for quite a few things. Peter’s marriage to Mary-Jane was no more, No one remembered that Peter is Spider-Man (although weirdly they remember “something”), organic shooters were no more, Harry Osborne reappeared and probably a load of other stuff that I have forgotten. It was massively controversial at the time, but the stories since then have been really quite good so a lot of it has been forgiven by those that got really annoyed. > **[One More Day (comics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man:_One_More_Day)** > > "One More Day" (OMD) is a four-part 2007 comic book crossover storyline, connecting the three main Spider-Man series published by Marvel Comics at the time. Written by J. Michael Straczynski and Joe Quesada, with art by Quesada, the story arc concludes the fallout of Spider-Man's actions during the 2007 Civil War crossover. "One More Day" starts in The Amazing Spider-Man #544, continues in Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #24 and The Sensational Spider-Man (vol. 2) #41, and concludes in The Amazi... [/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2012, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-new-spiderman-movie-coming-out/623717/10 "2012-06-01T10:26:28Z")
> [@Alan\_Smithee](#): > > It also avoided the “why does he have to work for JJJ when he is the genius inventor of a patentable, highly desirable technology” question. > > Honestly, of all the major superheroes, I think Spidey makes the least sense. And that’s saying something. Comic Spoilers: He hasn’t for a while now. In fact, as far as I can remember JJJ is the mayor now anyway, rather than running The Daily Bugle/The DB/Whatever. It got complex. Anyway, Peter currently works for a super science guy as one of their big five (or was it six) star researchers and as such is no longer strapped for cash, getting by magically getting the best pictures of Spider-Man and selling them to the papers. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2012, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-new-spiderman-movie-coming-out/623717/11 "2012-06-01T20:19:42Z")
Personally, I favor a compromise approach: His body secretes some interesting chemicals from embarrassing places, which he then collects and does a little processing to make the fluid he puts in his mechanical web-shooters. This ties it directly in with his spider-powers and explains why he can’t commercialize it, while still crediting him with some scientific know-how, leaving open the possibility of running out of fluid at inconvenient times, and avoiding the question of why he secretes webbing from his _wrists_. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2012, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-new-spiderman-movie-coming-out/623717/12 "2012-06-01T20:38:26Z")
I grew up on the mechanical web-shooter devices from the comics, but I thought the becoming-a-superhero-as-metaphor-for-adolescence from the earlier movies was better: teenager copes with and learns to control seemingly overnight developments in his body, including increased muscle mass and unexpected emissions of white, sticky fluid. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2012, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-new-spiderman-movie-coming-out/623717/13 "2012-06-01T20:43:37Z")
Running out of web fluid was pretty much the entire plot of every episode of the cartoon show i watched when i was a kid. ---
**Author:** ![Cliffy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/59ef9b/32.png) [@Cliffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cliffy)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2012, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-new-spiderman-movie-coming-out/623717/14 "2012-06-01T22:32:38Z")
The original comics in the '60’s had a scene in which Peter tries to sell his web fluid to a science lab and they want no part of it because it dissolves in an hour. In hindsight, that’s a bit silly – there’d be all sorts of applications for an adhesive that de-adheres in a specific time frame. But it was an effort to deal with this exact problem. –Cliffy ---
**Author:** ![CyclopticXander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/59ef9b/32.png) [@CyclopticXander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CyclopticXander)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2012, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-new-spiderman-movie-coming-out/623717/15 "2012-06-02T08:53:52Z")
> [@Cliffy](#): > > The original comics in the '60’s had a scene in which Peter tries to sell his web fluid to a science lab and they want no part of it because it dissolves in an hour. In hindsight, that’s a bit silly – there’d be all sorts of applications for an adhesive that de-adheres in a specific time frame. But it was an effort to deal with this exact problem. > > –Cliffy Yea, one of the uses is that you could be freaking spider-man. It seems like there would be some pretty good military uses there at very least. I loved that the recent movies made it organic as that makes more sense in every way, but its not make or break for me so I’m still excited for the new one. An explanation that does make sense though is that he doesn’t want this technology to get into villiainous hands so his keeps it a secret, much the way Iron Man does with his technology. It still doesn’t explain the coincidence of the one guy with super spider powers being the one to discover this crazy new thing that nobody else has ever found. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2012, 9:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-new-spiderman-movie-coming-out/623717/16 "2012-06-02T09:52:29Z")
> [@CyclopticXander](#): > > (snip)It still doesn’t explain the coincidence of the one guy with super spider powers being the one to discover this crazy new thing that nobody else has ever found. Guy named Otto Octavius winds up with eight limbs. What are the odds? ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2012, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-new-spiderman-movie-coming-out/623717/17 "2012-06-02T11:58:33Z")
Maybe he won’t invent it this time? The one trailer I saw suggests his parents feature heavily in this one, so perhaps they were involved in making the stuff? ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2012, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-new-spiderman-movie-coming-out/623717/18 "2012-06-02T12:31:34Z")
> [@Bill\_Door](#): > > Guy named Otto Octavius winds up with eight limbs. What are the odds? He didn’t get 'em by accident, he made them. It’s about as coincidental as Dr. Harry Beavers, OB/GYN. ---
**Author:** ![planetcory](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/planetcory/32/1032_2.png) [@planetcory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/planetcory)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2012, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-new-spiderman-movie-coming-out/623717/19 "2012-06-02T13:10:19Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Maybe he won’t invent it this time? The one trailer I saw suggests his parents feature heavily in this one, so perhaps they were involved in making the stuff? That’s my suspicion too. His father was a brilliant scientist, so it may just be something Peter finds and works on. ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2012, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-new-spiderman-movie-coming-out/623717/20 "2012-06-04T00:06:51Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Maybe he won’t invent it this time? The one trailer I saw suggests his parents feature heavily in this one, so perhaps they were involved in making the stuff? That’s how it was in Ultimate Spider-Man, IIRC. He finished some formula he dad had been working on and that’s where the webshooters got their fluid. Of course, in mainstream Marvel Universe his dad was a spy, not a scientist, so that wasn’t the case. (Nitpick on the topic title and many other uses in the topic, it’s Spider-Man, not Spiderman! Stan Lee put the hyphen there on purpose.) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-new-spiderman-movie-coming-out/623717.md?page=2)