In my previous editorial about this subject, I spoke about Spider-Man’s absence from the Captain America: Civil War trailer possibly being motivated by an intent to avoid spoilers about the character. These spoilers can include his costume, whose side he is on and how big his role may be.
I also talked about how he is a rookie superhero who is also an impressionable teenager. This impressionable upstart teenage would-be hero is throwing in with alien gods, super soldiers and certified geniuses with credentials including saving the entire planet. Up to this point, Peter’s main accomplish are probably something like making the honor roll and not being picked last for tee-ball a few times in 7
th grade. So what does that mean for Spider-Man in Civil War?
A Kick-Ass costume
Being what amounts to an Awesome-Con cosplayer with actual powers, we should realistically expect Peter to have created a truly cruddy costume when he first shows up. He’ll turn up like your kid brother at your neighborhood baseball game… young, innocent and out of his depth. His equipment won’t fit or will be over or under sized, he will try to wedge in to the game as something of a tag along and he will be kind of pitifully embarrassing.
Expect his costume to be not too dissimilar to Rainn Wilson’s Crimson Bolt
However, this is an opportunity to pay tribute to the comics. Tony Stark sees this young kind who does have potential (and his team needs another player or two) so he takes him aside, fixes his gear and gives him some tips to try to invest into him being a reliable hitter for the team in the future. This means Tony would approach the kid and offer to improve his costume, give him a place on the team and, hopefully, help persuade him to be an advocate for registration.
Now here is where I get into hopeful speculation: Peter may refuse to openly support registration because his personal hero, Steve Rogers, makes a few good points and he doesn’t want to necessarily side against his idol… he just wants to play in the game. Maybe he approached Rogers first but Steve turns him away for being too young in a potentially fatal scuffle.
Spider-Man’s starter costume should look something like terrible cosplay
Maybe Tony knows this and plays off Spider-Man’s desire to be taken seriously as a super hero so he offers him a place on his team and a spiffy new red and blue costume with awesome experimental Stark Tech wrist devices which actually can shoot webbing! How perfect for Spider-Man’s spider motif! Up until now, Spider-Man was calling himself that because he was able to climb walls in addition to his agility and super strength (similar to but exceeding the powers of Steve Rogers!).
This is all speculation, of course, but it’s fun to think about how Tony and Steve may be playing against one another in terms of finding advocates for their competing ideologies. We do know that the Russos have said that in terms of the Spider-Man costume, they are going to give everyone with they expect and with a slight twist. I know the fans of the Civil War may be expecting the red and gold Tony Stark Spider-Man costume, but I’d say most people expect the classic red and blue costume. The twist can be a few Stark Tech mods such as sleek and sexy glowing webs, similar to those of Black Widow’s costume in Age of Ultron.
Whose side is it anyway?
The idea of whose side Spider-Man will choose was one of the central plots of the Civil War comics but likely won’t be a big plot point this movie. It can still be used because I think the Russos know how important Spider-Man is to the concept of Civil War. In fact, they recently said they never even had a “Plan B” in case Sony wouldn’t agree to let them use Spider-Man for this film. He’s that centric. But why?
Spider-Man was always the plan
Well, if you look at the comic, Spider-Man was caught in the middle of Tony and Steve for a reason: the writers saw Spider-Man as a more relatable character to the reader than any other. Spider-Man has always been relatable to comic readers who are real people with real problems, like Peter.
Comic readers are prone to money problems, accusations of nerdiness, girl problems and social awkwardness so they can relate to Peter Parker even if they don’t relate to many or any of these problems because these are real world problems. They are ground level problems. Tony and Steve have problems stemming from personal beliefs about individual freedom, personal privacy and morality and the role of government in relation to super heroes or citizens. These concepts are more philosophical in nature and they are also easier to blur the lines and making the reader have a hard time choosing one side over the other.
Tony makes good points. Steve makes good points. Spider-Man is the reader and he is the same as the reader in that he knows both Steve and Tony are taking a stance based on trying to do what they think is right. With this in mind, Spider-Man in the upcoming Civil War movie should have this element in a smaller capacity.
You’re tearing me apart, Lisa!
Maybe he sides with Tony after being rebuffed by Steve out of a sense of betrayal by his personal hero not treating him as anything more than a kid in over his head. Maybe at a critical point Spider-Man has to make a choice and intervene in some way to follow his heart or morality and attempt to subdue Tony or his team – similar to how Wanda and Pietro had to intervene against Ultron when he went down a path they couldn’t follow.
Y-yeah, just… just click the link in the e-mail and you’re on Facebook, Captain Rogers. Can you add me? This is sooo cool. I know a guy with a robot hand who will totally freak when he sees this!
At this point we know Spider-Man’s role is something of a comic relief character, so it’s easy to see how we can get a wise-cracking kid out of his depth. I just hope Marvel uses Spider-Man as the conduit for the audience to relate to – we should be seeing the dilemma of which side to choose from Peter’s eyes, not the eyes of either Tony or Steve.
Spider-Man: Super Soldier
How cool would that be?
I think we all breathed a sigh of relief when we found out Marvel and Sony would skip Spider-Man’s origin story this go around. We’ve been there and seen that. Most casual Spider-Man fans know he was bitten by a radioactive spider and we’ve seen we can skip details of hero origins and not have a problem.
Whatever our origins were, they were not Magneto or X-men related… promise!
I do feel that a casual mention of possible links to established Marvel lore would be great in connecting the upcoming solo Spider-Man films with the MCU. As an example, we hear Tony or Vision mention that Spider-Man’s powers seem very similar to Capt. Roger’s powers. He has enhanced agility, enhanced strength and possibly a heightened metabolism, much like Roger’s except Spider-Man’s powers are significantly stronger. This can be a subtle hint that, once again, interested parties – this time in the private, for-profit sector (guess who) - were trying to recreate a super soldier serum.
Gotta make that money. Dolla, dolla bills, ya’ll.
This can set up the fact that Norman Osborn is quite upset that Oscorp’s, previously believed to be failed, attempt at recreating the Super Soldier Serum was not just a success but an improvement upon the formula! Now some kid who got access to his serum by God-knows-how is out there running around with multi-billion dollar Oscorp property running through his veins! Norman would sure be steamed.
We could find out that Oscorp, in their studies of Abraham Erskine found that the good scientist had an affinity and interest in arachnids. We would see a few aged, black and white photos of Erskine in his lab with a spider-filled tank in the background. This would cause Oscorp to avoid the gamma radiation path of recreating the serum and instead trying to figure out of the missing ingredient to Erskine’s formula was somehow spider-related. After the decades-long experiments failed we find out Osborn had the science team investigating this lead killed and all their research deleted to prevent accusations of unethical scientific practices from being uncovered. Only years later did Spider-Man appear on the scene.
This is totally unrelated, Steve, but did you know spiders are incredible warriors? I want to build a giant metal one someday. Now then, drop those pants. This is sting… like a spider.
This, of course, doesn’t prove Erskine used spiders in the only successful Super Soldier Formula, but it did lead to the creation of a similar, spider-related formula. Ideally, all this would be covered through one expositional dialogue scene between Norman and, maybe, Spencer Smythe. Just a possibility but who knows? It would fit well!
What do you all think? Do you think Spider-Man’s role will be that of the everyman with whom the audience can relate or will Spider-Man just be a cameo? Whose side to you think Spider-Man will choose and why? Do you have any other theories about MCU Spider-Man’s origins? Post a comment below and let me know what you think!