The Spider-Man Phenomenon

Of all the superhero film franchises we have seen in this century (and they are many) perhaps the most consistently successful, especially when we think in terms of single characters rather than whole superhero teams, would appear to be Spider-Man--as the table below shows, the star of eight live-action major feature films between 2002 and 2021 that have pulled in nearly $8 billion together. Equal to more like $10.5 billion in 2023 dollars, when adjusted for inflation (as shown in the figures in the parentheses), seven of the eight were billion-dollar hits (all but 2014's The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which missed the mark only slightly), with the first, one should remember, really and truly inaugurating the age of the superhero as a consistent box office-topper (Sam Raimi's 2002 Spider-Man claimed the #1 spot at that year's booming box office, symbolically beating out the year's Star Wars film for the first time in the history of that franchise), while the last, Spider-Man: No Way Home, was a better than $2 billion hit in the pandemic-battered months of December 2021 and January 2022 that like no other movie of the prior two years showed that the box office was really and truly back.*

Real Grosses for the Spider-Man Films to Date

Spider-Man (2002)--$822 million ($1.393 billion)

Spider-Man 2 (2004)--$789 million ($1.273 billion)

Spider-Man 3 (2007)--$895 million ($1.315 billion)

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)--$758 million ($1.006 billion)

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)--$709 million ($1.29 billion)

Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)--$880 million ($1.24 billion)

Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)--$1.132 billion ($1.349 billion)

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)--$1.922 billion ($2.161 billion)

It also seems notable that the Spider-Man franchise has got away with things that often fail to work for even very successful franchises. Thus have we seen Spider-Man: No Way Home incorporate all three versions of the twenty-first century big-screen Spider-Man into one two-and-a-half-hour "event" film, with the result not ending up dismissed as an overstuffed and overcomplicated appeal to nostalgia but the colossal "the box office is back" success I have just mentioned (all as the Marvel Cinematic Universe finds its intensive exploitation of its own shared universe a liability). Thus have we seen the Spider-Man saga branch out via the Sony Spider-Man Universe, parlaying the character of Venom into a series successful in its own right (with the first Venom, again, a billion-dollar hit in today's terms, and Venom 2 another milestone in the box office's recovery from the pandemic).** And thus have we seen Spider-Man also become the basis for that extreme rarity in American film, a major animated film that is not a Disney/Illumination-type comedy or musical comedy but an action-adventure that goes on to real box office success--such that as other superhero sequels time and again fell short of the originals at the box office and with fans, in cases seeing catastrophic collapse (most notably in the case of Captain Marvel 2), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse just about doubled the gross of the 2018 original to become the third highest-grossing movie of the year (after only Barbie and The Super Mario Bros. Movie), and the highest-grossing superhero film, period, in North America.

All of this makes it a truly historic success--and it seems worth saying a word as to why.

As I have remarked in the past I think there is some room for argument for how audiences actually experience movies like these--whether they get into them in a conventional Goethe-Schiller dramatic way, identifying with the protagonists so that they follow their story breathlessly; or, as they tend to do in response to action films, more commonly respond in a more visceral fashion to a fast-paced spectacle, to the point that talking about "characters" is misguided or eyewash.

I have tended toward the latter view--especially where the more general, less sci-fi-immersed, audience is concerned. Still, I do think it fair to say at the very least that audiences may find it easier to get into some spectacles than others--that it helps when the imagery has a greater ring of verisimilitude about it, and is easily processed, so that it is less off-puttingly unbelievable and "cognitive" and alienating, with the result that superheroes operating in a grounded setting and relatively down-to-earth situations (a Spider-Man as against a Thor) have an advantage.

Meanwhile, to the extent that audiences can and do achieve identification with the protagonist to care about them it may help that, for the audience generally and perhaps the traditional comic book target audience particularly, Peter Parker, may have an advantage. In a genre where the characters are principally adults with exotic backgrounds, and power, resources, status even apart from their superhero identities--aliens, demigods, plutocrats--Parker is a working-class orphan being raised by his aged aunt in Queens. Indeed, even amid media obsession with self-made rich men and tech billionaires that makes the public expect technical and scientific ability to go with wealth and vice-versa, instead of making of the scientifically talented Parker yet another inane Edisonade hero with which to propagandize the illiterate (a teenaged Tony Stark going from rags to riches and moving Aunt Bea and himself from the house in Queens to a Manhattan penthouse!) Parker is, in his normal, non-superhero life coping with the usual adolescent problems, like not having a lot of cash, and scraping by on the kinds of opportunities that might actually be open to an adolescent (more or less). By Silver Age comic book standards his story is practically "kitchen-sink"--and those who can "relate" to a comic book character likely relate to him that much more (even after they have grown up).

However, for all its advantages, and rule-defying successes, the Spider-Man franchise's power is going to be strongly tested this year as, in a year in which the Marvel Cinematic Universe is putting out just one film (Deadpool 3) the Sony Spider-Man Universe will be delivering three--a third Venom film, the Kraven the Hunter movie that was supposed to have come out last year, and a Madame Web film. Will the audience's appetite for more "Spider-Man Extended Universe" hold up through all of that? We will get a clue as to that when Madame Web hits theaters this Valentine's Day weekend.

* The 2014 film's $709 million gross in 2023 dollars ($912 million) rather more than any superhero movie made in the entirety of 2023. All calculations made from Box Office Mojo financial data, adjusted using the Consumer Price Index. Spider-Man was #1 in 2002, right ahead of Star Wars: Episode II--Attack of the Clones (which had to settle for the #2 spot, the first time that happened to a major Star Wars film, with this not repeated until the debacle of Solo in 2018).
** Venom's $856 million (helped by a spectacular performance in the overseas markets) in 2018 equals about $1.04 billion today. Later Venom 2 (Venom: Let There Be Carnage) was the first post-pandemic U.S. release to break the half-billion dollar barrier, and between that and its notably strong opening weekend a sign of the box office's recovery.