When The Amazing Spider-Man 2 failed to live up to Sony Pictures lofty expectations for the franchise—both critically and commercially—the studio finally agreed to let Marvel Studios take a crack at Peter Parker.
Andrew Garfield was dropped from the role, and relative unknown Tom Holland was tapped to make his MCU debut as Spider-Man in 2016's Captain America: Civil War. Recruited by Tony Stark to fight Captain America's team of Avengers, the hero had a small but meaningful role in the movie.
Neither that nor 2017's Spider-Man: Homecoming explored Peter's origin story. We know he had an Uncle Ben and was bitten by a spider, but Marvel Studios has gone to great lengths to avoid revealing any more about his past.
In fact, it wasn't until Spider-Man: No Way Home in 2021 that we finally heard the iconic "with great power there must also come great responsibility" line. Delivered by Aunt May before she died, we still don't know whether it was the first time Peter heard that or a reminder of what his Uncle Ben once told him.
Talking to CBR about Captain America: Civil War's 10th anniversary, filmmaker Joe Russo made a starting admission about the MCU's web-slinger: Ben died in an accident, not because of Peter's failure to act.
"Spider-Man was one of my favourite characters growing up, if not my favourite," he told the site. "And what I related to was this idea of a kid with incredible responsibility, right? And I think you could manifest that responsibility through accidental death, right? And feeling the pressure, and the sense of loss in your life in a way that would keep the spirit that we wanted."
"[But] what Tom Holland is as an actor, if he blamed himself for his Uncle Ben's death, I think he becomes a very different character. So in our minds, no, he wasn't responsible for Uncle Ben's death," Russo continued. "That would have been a different interpretation. A more intense interpretation of the character."
This is a big, some might argue unnecessary change, to Spider-Man's origin. However, just because that's how the Russo Brothers perceived Spidey's past, it doesn't necessarily mean another creative team won't feel differently in a future MCU-set project.
Elsewhere in the conversation, Anthony Russo reflected on the challenge of bringing Spider-Man into this shared world:
"Not only did the idea of Civil War scare parts of Marvel, because we were turning Tony Stark, their most popular character in the MCU, into an antagonist in the film. The (idea of) introducing Spider-Man within this movie was very controversial because Sony had the rights to that character. The character could really only appear in the MCU in cooperation with Sony."
"When we started to execute it creatively with writers Markus and McFeely, there was no business agreement that we could use Spider-Man. So that became a bit of a process where we really had to hold out for that character. In fact, there were a couple of weeks where we didn't even come in to work on the movie because that issue hadn't been resolved yet. And we didn't know how to move forward unless we had the ability to use that character."
Joe added, "If I remember correctly, Sony and Disney didn't sign the deal officially until like a day before [Holland] was on camera, or something crazy like that. There was a reason that we couldn't talk about it, because it still could have blown up at the last second!"
Let us know your thoughts on these new Spider-Man revelations in the comments section.