I have been watching Spider-Man movies from the start. The recent movie I watched was The Amazing-Spider Man.

But the difference I found in this movie and the last one was that, in this movie the Spider-Man did not have his natural power to generate and shoot web. Instead of it he creates a wrist gadget to shoot web.

I would like to know if there is some logic of the producers behind this.

  • Well I like the web shooters much better. It make's The Amazing Spider-man more interesting. For one, they weren't bitten by the same spider,and they weren't bitten in the same place. The place the original spider-man was bitten was in the hand so he got to shoot webs from his hands.:D Hope I helped. – user7741 Jan 23 '14 at 23:24
  • The problem with the web shooters and the thought process I got from movie is that it just makes him have super human powers not spiderman powers. Without the organic web he could of been any superhero. This is my opinion based on the cartoons and not comics because I never had access to comics but I watched all the cartoons growing up as a kid. – user8188 Feb 22 '14 at 21:21
  • I for one think the web shooters are awesome. I mean just the thought of an average teenage boy creating them goes to show how intelligent he is. I don't have a problem with the organic web, but the web shooters are way cooler. They raise some curiosity as to what would Spiderman do if the web ran out and he was still engaged in a fight. – user9125 Apr 16 '14 at 11:31
  • Producing and secreting that much organic material that quickly puts a tremendous metabolic load on the body. (That's the reason why breast feeding is such a good way for a new mother to get her weight back down.) Organic webs would have required Peter to suddenly start eating a huge amount more than his previous diet in order to keep up with it. Ironically, the Andrew Garfield version of Peter Parker started eating a lot more, and the Tobey Maguire version did not. – Mason Wheeler Aug 3 '15 at 0:34

First of all Spider-Man doesn't have Organic webs in its starting stage in comics. He got Organic web later in the Comics series.

In the Sam Raimi's trilogy of Spider-Man he does not follow the real Spider-Man comics story as it is and skipped the Artificial Web-shooters thing and even skipped the main characters like Gwen Stacy. So, you can say that it's the director's/writer's choice to choose which aspects they grasp from the original content or not.

Here is some description of his main powers from origin to now in main universe of Marvel Comics -

Original abilities

When Peter Parker was bitten by a lethally irradiated spider, radioactive mutagenic enzymes in the spider's venom quickly caused numerous body-wide changes. Immediately after the bite, he was granted his original powers: primarily superhuman strength, reflexes, and balance; the ability to cling tenaciously to most surfaces; and a subconscious precognitive sense of danger, which he called a "spider-sense."

Additional abilities

Spider-Man's web-shooters were perhaps his most distinguishing trait, after his costume. Peter had reasoned that a spider (even a human one) needed a web. Since the radioactive spider-bite did not initially grant him the power to spin webs, he had instead found a way to produce them artificially. The wrist-mounted devices fire an adhesive "webbing".

Organic webs

In the "Disassembled" storyline Parker undergoes a transformation that results in the ability to produce organic web fluid from his wrists, and is able to fire his webbing in much the same manner as his artificial web-shooters. According to the new 2007 Spider-Man handbook, Parker has grown spinnerets in his forearms that terminate in small pores at the junction of his wrists. By pressing down with his middle fingers to his palm, he causes the pores to open and the spinnerets to eject the organic fluid with a force equal to or greater than that of his web-shooters.

Click here for more details.

By the way Sam Raimi's Script is inspired of James Cameron scriptment, which took the idea of organic web-shooters for Stevens's Failed Script. Since 1985 there have been many scripts written for the Spider-Men. But James Cameron's Script got the most attention and become the basis of 2002's film.[source]

But the 2012's The Amazing Spider-Man follows the similar path to the comics and they choose the artificial web-shooter for their movie to establish Peter Parker as a genius scientist.

  • 2
    The only thing I would add is that the invented web shooters go further to point out the intelligence of Peter Parker, he is not just a dude with spider abilities, he is a talented scientist/engineer himself. – Joshua Drake Nov 21 '12 at 17:20
  • 6
    I also wonder if originally they just did not want to deal with the fact that most spiders spin their webs from the lower abdomen... – Joshua Drake Nov 21 '12 at 17:20
  • By the way peter parker is not intended to be inteligent but changed to be like scientist in the later stories – Ankit Sharma Nov 21 '12 at 17:46
  • @JoshuaDrake: I believe you're correct, and that focus is necessary in The Amazing Spiderman because Peter is given the Spiderman suit by Tony Stark, while also generally being portrayed as a somewhat bumbling character (to comical effect, more so than in the Raimi films). Without the web shooters, viewers might assume that Peter is unfit to be a (super)hero, other than having "lucked" into that radioactive spider bite. – Flater Mar 28 '18 at 11:10

History of Web-Shooters:

...one key spider-like attribute has historically not come naturally to Spider-Man: the ability to create webs.

Instead, Spider-Man comes equipped with what are known as web-shooters, artificial devices that allow him to spin a web, any size.

How It Works

Spider-Man's web-shooters are fairly ingenious devices of his own invention; as a brilliant but socially isolated student with a particular talent for science, Peter Parker came up with them to complement his newly-acquired spider powers.

James Cameron goes 'Organic':

  James Cameron

Some might remember that James Cameron was once attached to write/direct an adaptation of Spider-Man.

From the book 'The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron'

Cameron had lobbied Carolco, the independent studio behind Terminator 2, to purchase the rights to the Spider-Man comics, which they did in 1990.

He wrote a Spider-Man scriptment for Carolco that was widely admired in Hollywood. The comic’s creator, Stan Lee, adored it and gave a Cameron-directed Spider-Man movie his hearty endorsement.


But Cameron made some thoughtful changes to the iconic character, starting with the Spider-Man’s wrist shooters. Lee’s comic called for Peter Parker to build them himself, but Cameron thought a biological explanation was more plausible.

  • “I had this problem that Peter Parker, boy genius, goes home and creates these wrist shooters that the DARPA labs would be happy to have created on a 20-year program. I said, wait a minute, he’s been bitten by a radioactive spider, it should change him fundamentally in a way that he can’t go back.”


Several elements of Cameron’s version made it into Sam Raimi’s take on the web-slinger. Specifically, the organic web-shooters.

‘The Amazing Spider-Man’: Why the Web-Shooters are back

  Marc Webb [Source]


  • I had a meeting with Stan Lee and we talked about the web-shooters. I was curious about the incarnation of them [because] of course in the previous films [they went away from them] and we wanted to reestablish ourselves ... the other thing was the fact that the web-shooters were able to dramatize Peter’s intellect and I thought that was really cool. … To me, it’s something I remember from when I was a kid and thinking ‘It would be cool if I could build those.’”
  • By the way "organic webshooter" idea is of Stevens. – Ankit Sharma Nov 23 '12 at 13:14
  • @AnkitSharma - The problem with the Leslie Stevens script is that it changed Spider-Man's origin completely: The result is not the acquisition of spider-like powers, but, instead, a transformation into an eight-legged human-tarantula hybrid. With Peter Parker basically turning into an actual spider the reason for_organic_ web-shooters are therefore quite different from James Cameron's thought process. So I wouldn't say Cameron took the idea from Stevens. (Btw, the Stevens script was rejected by Stan Lee) – Oliver_C Nov 23 '12 at 14:31
  • I know that and even added it in my answer to make it better – Ankit Sharma Nov 23 '12 at 14:34

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protected by Community Feb 10 '15 at 23:20


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