Sam Raimi was the one in charge of bringing Peter Parker/Spider-Man to the big screen, and even though he was as faithful to the source material as possible, he decided to change one element from Peter’s transformation: the webshooters, which in the comics are made by Peter. After spending years in development hell, Spider-Man finally made the jump to the big screen in 2002 with Sam Raimi as director and Spider-Man, the movie was a big hit and is credited for redefining the modern superhero genre. Spider-Man’s critical and commercial success made way for two more movies, released in 2004 and 2007.
Norman Osborn/Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe) as villain, and it also introduced two characters very close to Peter: Harry Osborn (James Franco) and Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst). Peter’s suit was faithful to the comics, as were other details, but Raimi still took some liberties when adapting the character.
One of the biggest differences between Raimi’s version of Spider-Man and the character in the comics is that the former has “organic webshooters” on his wrists, instead of being a creation of Peter (like in the current version of the character, played by Tom Holland). But what was the reason behind that change?
Sam Raimi Wanted Spider-Man’s Webshooters To Be Part Of His Mutation
Before “scriptment” written by James Cameron. David Koepp was later brought on board to work on the first screenplay using Cameron’s as basis, and Raimi later ed the project. Scott Rosenberg was later hired to rewrite Koepp’s material, and one detail that remained a constant through all this process was the “organic webshooter”, which was in Cameron’s “scriptment”.
Raimi decided to keep this big change as it made more sense to have the webs coming from his wrists than being something created by him, given the nature of his transformation into Spider-Man. In an interview with Fangoria, Raimi said that Spider-Man “sticks to walls, he can leap” so there shouldn’t be a reason for him to invent his own “web fluid”, and so they mutated him “far enough into a spider to produce webbing”. This change was strange to some, especially because of that particular close up to his wrists where the audience can see the exact point where the webs come from, but in the end, it helped Peter’s mutation be more believable – and it was definitely more convenient for him as he didn’t have to worry about running out of webs, although he temporarily lost this power in the sequel.
