Spider-Man: No Way Home - 13 Fascinating New Details The Writers Just Revealed
7. The "Great Power" Line Was Never Considered For Earlier In The Trilogy
"With great power comes great responsibility" is one of the most iconic quotes in Marvel lore, so naturally, many fans were expecting to hear it during Holland's first two MCU Spidey movies - but it never came.
Despite how famous the line is, McKenna and Sommers - who've written the entire Homecoming trilogy - didn't really feel like they had to include it either, even when they started mapping out No Way Home.
In fact, the only reason they decided to use it here is because that's where the story took them. While they were writing the script, they realised that Aunt May could be Peter's Uncle Ben, prompting her to utter those memorable words:
"I don’t think there was much impetus to put it into the other two movies. This iteration of Spider-Man didn’t start by telling the story of losing Uncle Ben. We started at a different place with Peter. Those words are so tied to Uncle Ben, there didn’t seem to be a natural place for it. We weren’t even thinking necessarily, 'oh, we have to do it in this one.' As the story started to develop, and as we got to the scene with May, we realized, 'this is going to be Peter’s Uncle Ben,' and the words are going to come out."
Another reason why they decided to use the line was because it gave them another way to link all three Peters together - to make them realise that they're the same, that they're connected, that they're bound "in a cosmic way":
"For the scene on the rooftop, where the three Peters meet, we felt pretty strongly that we need something to really, finally crystalize it for these three guys that they are the same, that they are brothers. And that they are bound in a cosmic way by something and having them share those words in common seemed like the thing to do."
No Way Home does a fantastic job of making its fan service matter to the story, and this is yet another example of that.