Last week I listened to an episode of a podcast where one of the hosts referred to “the second Spider-Man” and I had absolutely no idea what they meant. Was it the upcoming PlayStation 5 game Marvel’s Spider Man 2? Or could it have been Sam Raimi’s spider man 2 (2004)? They probably weren’t talking about the forgotten middle child of the Spider-Mans movie, Andrew Garfield’s The Amazing Spider Man 2 (2014), but maybe they meant Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019). As the podcast progressed, it finally became clear that the host was referring to an option that didn’t even cross my mind: Spider-Man: About the Spider-Verse (2023), the second film in the Spider-Verse animated film series.
That’s too many Spider-Mans 2. Spider-Man 2s. Spider-Man, Spider-Men, whatever! It’s too many, okay?
I have no idea how to fix this problem and it won’t end anytime soon. Thursday at San Diego Comic-Con was one spider man 2 panel – about the PS5 video game. But you could be excused if you assume it was about either About the Spider-Verse or even the MCU, despite the fact that Hollywood writers and actors are on strike and not SDCC.
I suppose it’s remotely possible you could have thought the SDCC panel was about the video game tie-in for the Sam Raimi movie spider man 2also titled spider man 2 (2004). Of course, there’s also the game tie-in for that The Amazing Spider Man 2, that is – again, of course! – also titled The Amazing Spider Man 2 (2014). Or it could have been about the Game Boy Color game Spider Man 2: The Sinister Six (2001), or maybe even the PlayStation title Spider Man 2: Enter Electro (also from 2001). The Game Boy game was actually the very first “Spider-Man 2” – unless you count comic book issues, but people would say anyway “Spiderman #2” in that situation, so that’s more or less good.
Most of those examples aren’t Spider-Man 2 that someone would try to Google in 2023. Still, it’s a pretty goofy problem in an era of reboots and sequels for beloved characters invented decades ago. In the absence of a real solution to this important societal problem, I advise everyone to assume that the phrase “Spider-Man 2” refers to the 2001 Game Boy Color game unless explicitly stated otherwise.