Home Entertainment It's official: New Spider-Man will be a teenage Peter Parker; no retelling of his origin story

It's official: New Spider-Man will be a teenage Peter Parker; no retelling of his origin story

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Sorry, Miles Morales fans, but I have some bad news for you guys. After much speculation that the upcoming Marvel produced Spider-Man reboot would see a new face beneath the webbed mask, it has now been confirmed that as far as Spidey movies are concerned, there’s only one man boy for the job: Peter Parker.

This admission was made by Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige when he spoke to Collider, with the studio president also going on to confirm recent reports that this new version of Parker will indeed be back in high school again.

“In terms of the age of an actor we’ll eventually cast, I don’t know. In terms of the age of what we believe Peter Parker is, I’d say 15-16 is right…”

Feige also explained the thinking behind taking Parker back to his younger days, saying that not only will it allow for the retelling for some of the wallcrawler’s most famous stories, but it will also give the predominantly older Marvel Cinematic Universe something it hasn’t really seen before.

 [S]ome of my favorite Spider-Man arcs and Spider-Man stories, he’s in high school for a lot of it. We want to explore that. That also makes him very, very different from any of our other characters in the MCU, which is something else we want to explore: how unique he is when now put against all these other characters.”

“We want to play with Spider-Man in the high school years because frankly there’ve been five Spider-Man films and the amazing thing about it is, even though there’ve been five Spider-Man films, there are so many things from the comics that haven’t been done yet. Not just characters or villains or supporting characters, but sides to his character. The most obvious being the ‘young, doesn’t quite fit in’ kid before his powers, and then the fella that puts on a mask and swings around and fights bad guys and doesn’t shut up, which is something we want to play with and we’re excited about.”

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If you’re worried though that with Marvel going back to Spider-Man’s early days, that we’d have to sit through poor old Uncle Ben being killed for the third time on-screen (that guy just can’t catch a break!), then you can breathe a sigh of relief. Speaking to CraveOnline, Feige confirmed that they will actually be giving their audience the benefit of the doubt and will not be retelling Spider-Man’s origin story all over again.

“In Spider-Man’s very specific case, where there have been two retellings of that origin in the last whatever it’s been – [thirteen] years – for us we are going to take it for granted that people know that, and the specifics… It will not be an origin story. But, with great power comes great responsibility. It is inherent to who his character is. But we want to reveal it in different ways and spend much more time focusing on this young high school kid in the MCU dealing with his powers.”

A young high school kid that is actually in the MCU at this very moment, by the way.

“There is a young kid [already] running around New York City in a homemade version of the Spider-Man costume in the MCU, you just don’t know it yet,“

Speaking of, Feige revealed that while they don’t know yet who will be in this costume, they do know exactly how it’s going to look.

“We’ve already designed the costume, which is different than any of the ones that have come before. And yet ours is classic Spidey, as I think you’ll see.”

That’s quite an intriguing statement, because while Amazing Spider-Man 2 did many – MANY! – things wrong, the one thing it got perfect was Spider-Man’s costume which felt like it was ripped right from the comic book pages. So how can they be different from that, yet also retain a “classic” feel? I honestly have no idea.

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Irrespective of how they plan to top what came before in that regard, Feige admits that there are other portions of ASM2 and all the previous movies that were done really well, meaning that there’s no need to reinvent the wheel there. But there are also new things that they can now tackle with this reboot.

“I think they did a lot of things really, really right. In particular the look of Spider-Man, and the emotion of Spider-Man, and the women in his life. I think there are a lot of things they haven’t done, which is A) his interactions with other heroes in the universe, because that was not possible, and also exploring more the notion, as the comics did for many, many years, as Ultimate Spider-Man did for ten years, [of] a much younger version of Spider-Man than we’ve seen in the movies. [The previous films] get him in and out of high school really fast.”

“And also the notion that he is very, very funny and very, very witty when he’s in that costume, swinging around. Not as a standup comedian, obviously, but as almost his nervous energy, bothering the criminals with banter as much as with his powers. That’s something that I think we’re excited to explore.”

Now with Spider-Man set to make his debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the upcoming narratively important Captain America: Civil War, it’s clear that the hero will be factoring heavily into Marvel’s future plans. But how did a studio, well known for meticulously planning out their entire line a decade in advance, adapt their plans to include Spider-Man after they were eventually able to strike a deal with Sony to bring him into the MCU? Well, actually they didn’t. He was already part of their plans when they made their massive Phase 3 line-up announcement last year, they just didn’t tell anybody about it.

“Spider-Man we knew about when we were doing that announcement in October. It could have gone either way, and Marvel as you well know doesn’t announce announce anything officially until it’s set in stone. So we went forward with that Plan A in October, with the Plan B being, if it were to happen with Sony, how it would all shift. We’ve been thinking about it as long as we’ve been thinking about Phase Three.”

As previously mentioned, as part of Sony and Marvel’s new co-production deal, Spider-Man will be making his debut in the MCU in 2016 in the third Captain America flick which sees Cap and Iron Man going head to head in an ideological battle that will see the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s loyalties split between the two men. Expect lots of people to be punched.

After all of that, Spider-Man will be getting his own solo movie in July 2017 which will reportedly be written and directed by Drew Goddard (Cabin In the Woods), who had actually been part of the Spidey brain trust over at Sony before their Amazing Spider-Man franchise plans were scrapped in favour of this new deal.

Last Updated: April 13, 2015

8 Comments

  1. Great article, BUT I feel this sentence sounds wrong “We want to play with Spider-Man in the high school years “

    Reply

  2. DarthZA

    April 13, 2015 at 09:35

    As much as ASM and ASM2 did wrong, Garfield was not wrong. He was perfectly cast and injected life and fun into the character. He did still fall short of the high hopes I had, but I was happy with his performance. I still wish they just stuck with him, but knowing that they are rebooting him, I’m glad they putting him back in High School.

    Reply

    • Kervyn Cloete

      April 13, 2015 at 10:02

      Yeah, the saddest part of this whole reboot was losing Garfield. His Spider-Man was spot on.

      Reply

  3. Blood Emperor Trevor

    April 13, 2015 at 10:15

    But if Uncle Ben doesn’t die again, does that mean Spider-Teen will be irresponsible?

    Reply

    • DarthZA

      April 13, 2015 at 10:46

      I think what they’re getting at is that Uncle Ben is already dead when it starts.

      Reply

      • Kervyn Cloete

        April 13, 2015 at 11:41

        Pretty much yeah. No need to show that old man getting shot again.

        Reply

    • RinceThis

      April 13, 2015 at 11:58

      Oh you!

      Reply

    • Mark Treloar

      April 13, 2015 at 21:34

      Everything’s better with Zombies right? Marvel Zombies?

      Reply

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