Cinema Science UNTANGLING THE WEBS OF SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING
Spider-Man is one of the most popular heroes of all time, as evidenced by his cinematic persistence. Much like that pesky spider you can’t seem to scare out of your bedroom, Spider-Man just keeps turning up on the big screen no matter how many times you shoo him away.
Over the last decade, the character’s been portrayed by three different actors in big-budget blockbusters: Tobey Maguire in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films (2002–2007); Andrew Garfield in The Amazing Spider-Man (Marc Webb, 2012) and its sequel (Webb, 2014); and, most recently, Tom Holland in Captain America: Civil War (Anthony & Joe Russo, 2016) and Spider-Man: Homecoming (Jon Watts, 2017). While, as a high school teacher, you can’t guarantee your students will have seen every one of these films, you can safely bet that they’re fairly familiar with Peter Parker’s radioactive talents.
Which is great, because among Spidey’s superpowers is his ability to pull students into the web of science. While the superhero’s abilities and backstory don’t entirely align with scientific dogma – last I checked, the side effects of a bite from a radioactive spider wouldn’t include super strength – there are plenty of juicy scientific concepts to explore in and around Spider-Man.
Given the sheer number of Spider-Man films to contend with in the twenty-first century, for this instalment of Cinema Science I’ve chosen to focus primarily on Homecoming simply because of its recency. But if you were planning on structuring an entire unit around Spider-Man, there’s ample opportunity to touch on the earlier films, contrasting and comparing their depictions of this friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man.
Herein lies the lesson stimulus: what, exactly, can a spider do? Specifically, what separates a spider from its brethren in the arachnid class,
