In the past fifteen years, we’ve seen six big screen appearances from Spider-Man with three different actors in the role. The seventh will be this July’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, and just like Captain America: Civil War glossed over Uncle Ben’s fate, it sounds like this solo outing for the wall-crawler will do the same.
For those of you unfamiliar with the character (which, admittedly, is unlikely after seeing his death play out so many times in the movies), Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben was killed by a burglar who the youngster let escape earlier that same evening despite having the powers to stop him. From there, the hero decided to live by his uncle’s motto of “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility,” a line which defines him as a superhero.
From the sounds of it, Spider-Man: Homecoming won’t be delving too much into that key moment in the wall-crawler’s life, something we expected and is now confirmed by executive producer Eric Carroll.
“They talk about that, absolutely. It’s not… it’s not a huge thing that I want to go into too much, but there is an acknowledgment that there was a Ben. I mean, we’re implying he’s dead. We have not at all, again, gone into trying to change his origin story as far as I have been envisioning it. But we, just again, we thought that to keep this fun, light tone, as soon as they have to have their, like, ‘Let’s remember our dearly departed father figure’ – it derails that a little. And again, what we’re trying to tell is this sort of fun story of the kid who is doing all the wrong things for the right reasons. And once you do that, it stops becoming a sort of sun movie about a kid trying to be a kid. He’s mourning the loss of a parent.”
That’s probably for the best, but one thing fans hated about The Amazing Spider-Man movies is the fact that they glossed over that “Great Power” line. If Spider-Man: Homecoming does the same and pretty much ignores the reason Peter becomes a hero, that could end up backfiring on Marvel in a big way. Then again, they definitely don’t need to devote too much time to this, so a throwaway line might suffice.
Either way, we’ll find out just how much Uncle Ben we get when soon enough as Spider-Man: Homecoming swings into theatres July.
