Spider-Man Homecoming: 5 Scenes We Need (And 5 We Don't)

5 Things We Don't Need...

5. Uncle Ben Meets His Maker (Again)

It's quite odd to see the same scene played out across different movies, but that's exactly what the Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield incarnations of Spider-Man brought us. Watching those movies again, these repeated scenes have completely lost their impact - and this lack of emotional resonance would be increased no-end if Homecoming chose, once again, to kill Uncle Ben.

Pretty much everybody knows who Spider-Man is. Everybody knows that his uncle was murdered, and that's what spurs on his spider-infused superhero vendetta. We simply don't need to see it again. Much like the Batman origin story in Crime Alley - which usually incites groans when it appears - Peter Parker and the dead uncle is, at this point, an entirely pointless scene to show us.

For starters, it lacks tension, because we know what's coming. There€™s nothing worse than watching a predictable scene play out beat-by-beat, and it doesn€™t get more predictable than this. The 'death of the parents or significant other' trope is also quite a tired one at this point, and it would be nice to see another reason for a hero to take up the mantle. Batman, Spider-Man, Star-Lord, Daredevil and Superman all have this severe familial issue in common, and that€™s just in comic-book adaptations.

There are numerous examples of this cliche being used in other films, and it's slowly becoming parody. It€™s a cheap way for a writer to attempt to extract an emotional response from the audience, while giving the protagonist an excuse to don the cape-and-cowl. Yes, this is Spider-Man€™s definitive origin - nobody can argue that - but why do comic-book movies have to stick religiously to their source material?

Well-received adaptations like The Dark Knight, Iron Man and X-Men: Days Of Future Past have little-to-nothing in common with their respective comic strips, and they worked brilliantly. This in mind, there€™s no reason to assume the removal of Uncle Ben won€™t have just as strong an effect.