What would Spider-Man: Homecoming have looked like in 1977?
It’s been roughly two weeks since Marvel released the first trailer for its upcoming Spider-Man: Homecoming film. In a fall full of exciting trailer releases, this has been one of the standouts. But maybe you’re yearning for a little more Spidey as the holiday season approaches. Fortunately for you, fans fueled by geek energy and time on their hands continue to make the internet a fun place.
YouTube user DarthBlender created a mash-up of the Homecoming trailer with footage from the 1977 CBS TV movie The Amazing Spider-Man and 1978’s Spider-Man Strikes Back. Given that Marvel’s new cinematic Spider-Man is supposed to be a younger, less experienced version of the superhero, the cheesy feel of Spider-Man on a 1970s TV budget somehow works really well. Give it a look:
Older footage of Robert Downey from the 1985 movie Tuff Turf is used for Tony Stark. (Actually, that doesn’t quite make sense, since Stark is an older mentor to Peter Parker in Homecoming, but it fits the whole motif of this mash-up.) And because of that, Downey’s co-star in that film, James Spader, is the stand-in for Peter Parker. Too bad for Nicholas Hammond, who portrayed Parker/Spider-Man in the TV series, which ran on CBS from 1978 to 1979.
Also cleverly worked into this “trash mash-up” is footage from 1988 TV movie The Incredible Hulk Returns, which featured a guest appearance by Thor (played by Eric Kramer) joining Lou Ferrigno’s Hulk. Standing in for Michael Keaton’s Vulture/Adrian Toomes are clips from Disney’s 1981 Condorman. (The fact that I recognized that footage immediately, without even having to look it up, speaks to how old I am and how starved we were as children in the 1980s for anything close to superhero-related.)
I believe the mash-up also includes at least one clip from the Japanese Spider-Man TV series, in which the hero had far different superpowers (such as flying) from what he had in Marvel Comics. That show also aired in 1978. That was quite a year for Spider-Man. Stan Lee seemingly let anyone put the friendly neighborhood wall-crawler on TV during that era.
Creating a retro version of the Marvel Studios intro with old Steve Ditko Spider-Man illustrations and what appears to be a version of the 1960s Marvel logo was also a very nice touch. There was some definite care and attention to detail put into this.
Seeing those old TV clips repurposed tickles my nostalgia belly. Yes, the 1970s Spider-Man TV series was terrible, but it was absolutely a product of its era. (The 1977 TV movie was a big hit for the network, however.) Spidey didn’t fight any super-villains (unless you count ninjas) because there just wasn’t the budget for that. Plots included bad guys who could control minds or were trying to build atomic bombs.
Hammond made a good Peter Parker and did his best in the costume (though very little of the superheroic stuff). The stuntwork and action choreography was stiff and unimaginative, and the scenes of Spider-Man climbing walls and walking on rooftops don’t exactly look super-powered. They look like someone trying very hard not to fall off a skyscraper to his death. Then there’s the webbing. Hey, they tried. Everything had to stay still while a rope was whipped around it, but it was Spider-Man brought to life in 1977.
Many people spent good money at comic book conventions throughout the 1980s and 1990s to get bad VHS copies of that stuff because it was the only live-action Spidey that existed. Fortunately, movie studios bought hard into comic book superheroes, visual effects got a whole lot better and we’ve had much better versions of Spider-Man — and on the big screen — since then. Next year’s Spider-Man: Homecoming could be the best one yet. Thanks to YouTube, however, memories of 1970s TV Spidey continue to live on.
Finally, here’s a trailer for Condorman, just to prove to you that this really was a thing. It was in really in movie theaters. Good luck trying to keep that theme song out of your head for the rest of the day. It’s heroically catchy.
https://youtu.be/n9AI7Y772ic
