Director Jon Watts explains why the webslinger is missing one of his signature superpowers.
One of Spider-Man’s key superpowers is his “spidey-sense”. It basically gives him super-reflexes and allows him to anticipate attacks and the presence of enemies. But in Spider-Man: Homecoming, he doesn’t have it. In Captain America: Civil War, Peter (Tom Holland) says that his goggles are to filter out all of the information he’s been taking on since he got his powers, and we’re left to assume that all of that information is his spidey-sense working itself out.
However, in Spider-Man: Homecoming, spidey-sense is pretty much absent. Not only does Peter get tossed around a lot, but he’s also completely unaware when he sneaks into his room only to find Ned (Jacob Batalon) sitting on his bed building a Death Star LEGO.
So what exactly is the deal with the loss of one of Spider-Man’s key powers? Steve Weintraub spoke with director Jon Watts to get an explanation on what’s happening with spidey-sense in the movie:
"The idea was, again, just you want to make this movie be less about things you've already seen before, and you've definitely already seen a spider sense sequence done extremely well in Marc [Webb]'s and [Sam] Raimi’s movies."
Image via Sony Pictures
Watts continued that we may see the development of spidey-sense in the sequels:
“It could be something that develops over time or we can do it in a different way. It's something that seemed like maybe there's a cool thing to do with that eventually, but let's not crowd this movie with something we've already seen before… That could be ... I'm just making things up right now, but it could be something like you're saying that develops over time.”
I feel like if done right, spidey-sense could be a cool thing to weave into the movies. You basically have a Peter Parker who thinks he’s getting a handle on his powers, and then all of a sudden there’s a new one that he’s not sure how to use yet. They could then play with it and put him up against a villain that would really test that new power. On the one hand, the audience might be familiar with spidey-sense, but Watts could present it in a way that we haven’t seen it done before.
For his part, producer Kevin Feige tells IGN that Spider-Man definitely has spidey-sense, but that they didn't want to handle it like the previous movies did:
Image via Sony Pictures
"No, I think he has it. And I think he has it with or without that suit. I think how we explore it in a cinematic sense will change. I mean, that was sort of a big showy part of previous versions and we thought that we'd make it more of an internal, sort of second nature thing for him."
He also clarified that the precognition and heightened reflexes that that spidey-sense provides are definitely part of Spider-Man's abilities and not something he gets from the suit:
"But there are ways coming up that will slowly hint at that and also just make it part of his, you know, his natural abilities. But we don't know that if it will be -- I think we'll explore it further down the line, but [it's] definitely him not the suit."
So the answer seems to be that spidey-sense is in its nascent stages, and something that we can probably expect to see more of in future Spider-Man movies.
And for more of our continuing coverage of all things Spider-Man, be sure to get caught up with our recent write-ups provided at the links below:
