{"id":6426,"date":"2026-08-22T18:06:22","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T18:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=6426"},"modified":"2026-08-22T18:06:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T18:06:22","slug":"why-do-we-love-spider-man-so-much","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=6426","title":{"rendered":"Why Do We Love Spider-Man So Much?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n\tWhy does everyone love Spider-Man so much? When \u201cSpider-Man: No Way Home\u201d came out at the end of 2021, it made an insane amount of money ($814 million in the U.S. alone), blasting away any vestige of that era\u2019s comic-book-movie fatigue. I thought the reason for the film\u2019s mind-boggling success was obvious: It had three Spider-Men in it \u2014 Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield, and the OG Tobey Maguire \u2014 and that made it a unique royal-family reunion of spider-veined spandex.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=6425\">How \u2018Abbott Elementary\u2019 Pulled Off Its Big Phillies Game Episode<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\tThere was a perfect storm of happenstance to how that confluence came to be. \u201cSpider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse\u201d (an infinitely better movie) had come out two years before, and borrowing deeply from the comic books it did a brilliant job of injecting head-spinning multiverse madness into the Spider-Man saga. The makers of \u201cNo Way Home\u201d said, in essence, \u201cLet\u2019s do the same thing \u2014 only in a pandering, overstuffed, how-many-movie-stars-can-dangle-from-the-end-of-a-web? way.\u201d I thought it was the definition of a one-shot.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tBut \u201cSpider-Man: Brand New Day\u201d has rewritten the playbook again. The movie is a solid and well-executed adventure, no more and no less, in which Holland\u2019s Peter Parker and his love, MJ (Zendaya), barely even get to talk (because she doesn\u2019t remember who she is). No one is pretending that \u201cBrand New Day\u201d is as great as, say, \u201cSpider-Man 2.\u201d Yet despite that, it is now likely to become\u2026<em>the top-grossing movie of all time<\/em>. At least until the next Spider-Man adventure comes along.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tWhy Spider-Man, why now? Ever since his debut in 1962, he has been immensely popular (though Stan Lee had to fight a skeptical publisher to approve the character). But if you look back over 50 years of American comic-book-movie culture, it\u2019s undeniable that the two\u00a0<em>reigning<\/em>\u00a0superheroes have been Superman and Batman. Christopher Reeve\u2019s performance in the first two \u201cSuperman\u201d films remains, to me (and many others), the most perfect live-action embodiment of a superhero there has ever been. Those first two films loom mythologically.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tAfter that, it was Batman who ruled for decades as\u00a0<em>the<\/em>\u00a0comic-book-movie antihero of our age. Batman is, of course, the only superhero who possesses no superpowers, which makes him uniquely like us. (With a bit more attitude, we feel like we could\u00a0<em>be<\/em>\u00a0him.) He\u2019s the brooding cool film-noir god of the existential night who speaks to our alienation, which is why Christopher Nolan\u2019s \u201cThe Dark Knight\u201d is the greatest comic-book movie ever made. And let\u2019s not underestimate the original creationist jolt given to live-action superhero culture by the indelible \u201cBatman\u201d TV series of the late \u201960s. In half-hour episodes shot on cruddy sets, that show achieved the uncanny sense of\u00a0<em>being<\/em>\u00a0a comic book come to life. Adam West\u2019s performance conveyed gravitas with a wry wink that\u2019s never been matched.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=6420\">Actor Michael Wright, Star of \u2018The Five Heartbeats\u2019 and \u2018V,\u2019 Dies at 70<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\tDoes sweet, genial, wholesomely sexy Tom Holland really compete with all of that? Holland has grown in confidence as an actor, and there\u2019s no doubt that he now owns the role of Peter Parker even more than Tobey Maguire did (Garfield, stuck in a sub-par chapter of the franchise, always looked glum and a bit lost). A generation has grown up with Holland, and now that his Peter is a young adult, he seems poised to rule all the more. One reason that superhero fatigue is always lingering around the corner is that the very quality that attracts us to comic-book superheroes \u2014 their Olympian strength and majesty, their pumped iconography of invincibility \u2014 is also, in an underlying way, exhausting. More and more, they come at us jam-packed into teams: the Avengers, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four. How super can a hero really be when the world is lined with them?<\/p>\n<p>\n\tSpider-Man provides a cathartic relief from all that, coalescing around the keyword that almost everyone uses to describe him:\u00a0<em>relatability<\/em>. Peter Parker, as we all know, starts off as an ordinary high schooler contending with the effects of a spider bite as if they were the onset of puberty. (He has to harness and control the act of shooting sticky webs out of his wrist.) He\u2019s got bully problems, girlfriend problems, as well as secretly sensitive hidden-identity problems. He\u2019s the James Dean of superheroes (the web-swinging crime fighter as misunderstood kid), and the way Holland embodies him, with a buff abashment just this side of shy, he\u2019s like a boy-band star audiences want to cuddle up with. He also sticks to his home turf of New York City (he needs its canyons to swing), and to the comrades who surround him like family. In an all-superhero-politics-is-local way, that\u2019s a crucial part of his relatability.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tYet Peter, as a young adult, also strikes a special balance that speaks to us right now. In 1978, a scruffy but ultimately more optimistic time, the character of Superman kicked off comic-book-movie culture by being valiant, chiseled, indomitable, supreme. A decade later, as the glittery \u201980s were starting to crash and burn, Batman arrived to take center stage: a wealthy player who had a hidden dark side, a gruff manner, and a \u201cpower\u201d that was a grand illusion. His real power had to come from within.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tSpider-Man is the superhero for\u00a0<em>our\u00a0<\/em>time because he\u2019s the perfect spiritual fusion of Superman and Batman. He wears all-American red-and-blue spandex and does an exhilarating version of flying around; he\u2019s an Eagle Scout believer in his own destiny. But he\u2019s also masked and furtive and traumatized. In \u201cBrand New Day,\u201d when his spidery abilities get discombobulated, he literally doesn\u2019t know which end is up. And that makes him a mirror of how so many of us feel in these scary days of American turmoil: yearning to stand up to the darkness, yet also mired in it. In the \u201cSpider-Verse\u201d films, which are every bit as amazing (as cinema) as Spider-Man himself, he grapples with issues of identity that make Batman\u2019s look like child\u2019s cosplay. Who is Spider-Man? He\u2019s the light and dark sides of comic-book culture poured into one. He\u2019s the superhero who speaks to our anxieties\u00a0<em>and\u00a0<\/em>our dreams, the romantic teen idol who has to keep figuring out who he is. He makes us all feel like we\u2019re hanging \u2014 thrillingly \u2014 by a thread.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=6418\">Emily Watson Says \u2018Dune: Prophecy\u2019 Season 2 Will Have \u2018Lots of New Elements,\u2019 Led Her on \u2018A Quest in a Way Actors Always Get to Do and Actresses Don\u2019t\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Batman and Superman once had the edge. But Peter Parker is Batman fused with a boy-band pop star \u2014 the relatable but slightly dark superkid next door.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5075,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1039,472,4974,1051],"class_list":["post-6426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","tag-spider-man","tag-spider-man-brand-new-day","tag-the-dark-knight","tag-tom-holland-2"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Why Do We Love Spider-Man So Much? - Relocation Observer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=6426\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Do We Love Spider-Man So Much? - Relocation Observer\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Batman and Superman once had the edge. 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