The Evolution of Spider-Man (Animated)

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One part radioactive spider bite and one part departed Uncle Ben is the perfect recipe for any Spider-Man, but just how much has he changed throughout his live-action films? Climb on and let’s untangle this together.


warning: spoilers ahead!

Peter Parker first appears in 1977’s TV series The Amazing Spider-Man and it's film trilogy counterpart. He dons an ill-fitting red and blue suit with circular mirrored eye-holes and an emblem that resembles an ant. He also wears a metal belt and bracelet, which shoots his webbing.

While this series ran in the States a Japanese film and TV series – Supaidāman – had its own web slinger: this time a motorcyclist named Takuya Yamashiro. After encountering an alien from the Planet Spider, he receives a bracelet that injects him with his Spider powers, along with Spider weaknesses. It also holds his suit, which is similar to the American version, but with thinner, bright white eyes. The bracelet shoots out a rope and net instead of webs and can summon a flying Spider-Car, as well as a Spacecraft that can turn into a giant flying robot. 

Flash forward back to America in 2002, a nerdy Peter Parker appears in Spider-Man (2002), and in this trilogy only, he produces organic shooting webs. He first wears a bulky sweater and baklava to wrestle, and eventually upgrades to a form-fitting suit, with raised-grey webbing and triangle-shaped eyes.

Even though this Spider-suit would become damaged it would return in Spider-Man 2 (2004), this time with a slightly larger and differently shaped Spider-Emblem.

The suit takes yet another beating but would reappear again in Spider-Man 3 (2007), this time enhanced by a black symbiote from Space. It darkens the suit, modifies the emblem, and makes Spider-Man a bit irritable. Eventually he tires of the symbiote and takes it off, but it quickly finds another host.

While there were more sequels planned for the series, instead it was rebooted in 2012 with The Amazing Spider-Man (2012).  This time around, Peter Parker is taller and more lean. He wears a red mask, sunglasses to fight blond criminals, then upgrades to a thick and predominantly blue textured suit with a longer emblem and smaller yellow lenses.

In the sequel – The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) – the suit drops the texture, adds more red, and the eyes are brighter and more enlarged. Despite setting the scene for the story to continue, this series would be scrapped in favour of putting Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Initially appearing as a small child in Iron Man 2 (2010), Spider Man's official reappearance many years later in Captain America: Civil War (2016) and Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) depict a younger Peter Parker gifted an A.I. Advanced suit by Tony Stark. This advanced suit has animated eyes, a retractable wing-suit, a hidden parachute, a flying drone emblem and special webbing abilities. When it's taken back by Tony Stark, Parker instead wears a sleeveless hoodie and goggles to face-off against the Vulture.

In Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Spider Man upgrades to the self-assembling red, gold and blue Iron Spider Armour. It has enhanced durability, helps Parker breathe in space and has four extra Spider-legs, all of which will surely help him battle Thanos.

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