The latest trailer for Sony's upcoming Into the Spider-Verse is packed with characters, references and moments that will have comic book fans more excited than ever for the release of the movie. Those fans who only know Spider-Man from his films, however, have a bunch of tantalizing Easter eggs that lead us to believe that the version of Spidey we’ll be seeing is one who’s no stranger to the big screen.

We’ve known for a while now that the version of Peter Parker we’ll be seeing in Into the Spider-Verse will be older than any we’ve seen in the movies so far, and far older than we tend to see in the comics as well. He’s got stubble, a slightly jaded look across the eyes, and most importantly he takes Miles Morales, the star of the film, under his wing. This mentorship role for Spider-Man is rarely explored in the comics, but it totally fits with the character. It also makes sense that he would be older in this case, so that he can impart his wisdom upon the teenaged Miles, who is obviously relatively new to the superhero lifestyle.

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This new trailer wastes no time in recapping Peter Parker’s life so that we can get to the real star of the show, Miles. “My name is Peter Parker,” the voiceover (by New Girl’s Jake Johnson) tells us, “I’m pretty sure you know the rest.” This is a smart approach to Spidey’s origin story because we already know the history of the web-slinging superhero. We’ve seen it multiple times in the movies alone, which is why Spider-Man: Homecoming did away with it entirely. What we see in this latest trailer, however, is that we know this specific Spider-Man’s origins very well indeed, because he's basically Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man, from director Sam Raimi’s original trilogy.

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Raimi’s trilogy, which ran from 2002-2007, saw Tobey Maguire take on the role of Peter Parker as the young hero battled with the Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Sandman and more. Despite the series' decline in quality (man, that last one was not good), they’re still highly regarded as fun and memorable entries in the Spider-Man franchise. They’re also filled with iconic moments, which is perhaps why Into the Spider-Verse has chosen to use this version of Spider-Man as the basis for its main Peter Parker.

As Spidey recounts in the trailer: “I saved the city, then I fell in love, then I saved the city. Again, and again, and again.” As the weary hero gives us this extremely brief recap of his life, we see flashes of the moments he’s describing, and they’re almost all scenes we’ve seen before. We see Spider-Man stopping a speeding train, facing his body in ahead of the engine using only his webs. We see an upside-down kiss with Mary-Jane, perhaps the single most famous moment from the Maguire era. We also see a car flying through a restaurant window toward Peter and MJ, and later we see the familiar mechanical arms of Doctor Octopus surrounding Spidey, all of which are moments from Raimi’s original movies.

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Spider-Man saved a train full of people in 2004's Spider-Man 2. Doctor Octopus was on the loose, stealing cash from banks to pay for the fusion reactor that simultaneously drove his obsession and caused his accident. As Spidey caught up to him, they fought on top of a subway train, which Otto soon used against Peter, pushing it to top speed then breaking the controls. In an almost impossible situation, Spider-Man jumped in front of the train and used countless web lines to bring the train to a last-minute stop, saving everyone on board.

In the first film of the trilogy, Peter Parker is just getting used to his new-found powers. As he sees his lifelong friend Mary Jane chased down by muggers in an alley, he uses his alter ego Spider-Man to save her life. His secret love for MJ, mixed with her feelings towards this bold new hero that rescued her, led to them sharing an instantly iconic kiss as Spidey dangled upside-down from a fire escape.

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The last of the three scenes in the trailer is just slightly different from what we saw in Spider-Man 2, in which Peter saved MJ’s life in a coffee shop by pushing her out of the way of a car that came crashing through the window. In this version, Peter -- fully dressed in his Spider-Man costume -- heroically punches the car back out of the window, rather than pushing them both to safety, and the pair are raising glasses of champagne rather than hot cups of joe. Despite those cosmetic differences, though, it’s a strikingly familiar scene, and is instantly recognizable to Raimi fans.

As Peter’s recap concludes, we see a group of images that illustrate the rest of the times he’s saved the city, which includes him rescuing a busload of people, kicking what looks to be the tail of the Scorpion, and a central image that sees him surrounded by the arms of Doctor Octopus, a final reference to Spider-Man 2.

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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Into the Spider-Verse is utilizing the knowledge of Spider-Man fans in a really smart way. By playing into the familiar movie version depicted by Tobey Maguire, Spider-Verse can neatly and quickly side-step the origins of this version of Peter Parker with the simple reason being that we’ve already seen it play out across three movies. It will also add a sense of weight to Peter’s character now that we know that this is the version that fans once followed for five years across an entire trilogy of films. It will be interesting to see if there are any more references to earlier movies, once Into the Spider-Verse comes out later this year.


Directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse stars Shameik Moore, Brian Tyree Henry, Jake Johnson, Mahershala Ali, Hailee Steinfeld, Liev Schreiber, Luna Lauren Velez, Lily Tomlin, Nicolas Cage, John Mulaney, and Kimiko Glenn. The film opens on December 14.