3. The (First) Death of Uncle Ben - Spider-Man (2002)
No, the title of this entry does not refer to some twist in the tale you've forgotten ('First Uncle Ben death? Does he come back to life and die again? How unlucky.') but to the death of Peter Parker's dear old uncle seen in the first Spider-Man film. We all know how it goes. Peter Parker is having a whale of a time, making money out of his brand new powers, only to go and let a burglar run free out of spite. Soon, however, he finds his Uncle Ben dying out on the road. After this, Spider-Man's live will take a turn for the serious. As the catalyst for the whole Spider-Man story, Uncle Ben's death scene needs to be pitched well, so that the audience feels Peter's pain at losing his surrogate father and, later on, the guilt he experiences upon finding out Ben's killer was the thief he let escape. While Martin Sheen and Andrew Garfield give solid performances in The Amazing Spider-Man's Uncle Ben death scene, it doesn't quite pack the emotional punch of this one. Here, the ramifications of this needless death are really resonant so we fully understand why Peter then lives by his uncle's phrase (everybody now!) 'with great power, comes great responsibility.'
