Not many people remember the original Spider-Man movies — and we're not talking about the
Tobey Maguire films.
This forgotten trilogy from the 1970s played in theaters worldwide, marking a curious debut
for the webslinger on the silver screen.
Let's break down the original live-action Spider-Man movies you probably never saw.
These three Spider-Man movies weren't originally supposed to be movies.
In fact, all three hail from the live-action TV show The Amazing Spider-Man that aired
on CBS.
Part of a wave of live-action superhero TV shows in the late ‘70s that delivered the
likes of The Incredible Hulk and Wonder Woman, The Amazing Spider-Man aired from 1977 to
1979.
The feature-length pilot that kicked off this trilogy also served as a movie entitled Spider-Man,
the first entry in this trilogy of Spider-Man movies.
The subsequent two installments of the trilogy, Spider-Man Strikes Back and Spider-Man: The
Dragon's Challenge, were each comprised of two other episodes of the Amazing Spider-Man
show.
Headlining all three movies is Nicholas Hammond as Peter Parker, while Robert F. Simon portrays
J. Jonah Jameson in each entry of the trilogy.
Beyond them, each movie is primarily stocked up with a whole new cast.
Whereas modern Spider-Man movies obviously get massive global theatrical releases, the
original Spider-Man trilogy had a much more limited theatrical reach.
Domestically, audiences only saw these episodes as part of Spider-Man's brief stint on the
airwaves.
In certain international territories, though, these episodes were repackaged as a trilogy
of movies distributed by Columbia Pictures, who would go on to be the distributor of the
modern Spider-Man movies in the 21st century.
Peter Parker's debut live-action movie follows a plot familiar to anyone who's seen Tobey
Maguire and Andrew Garfield's first takes on Spider-Man.
Nicholas Hammond's debut as Spider-Man begins with the superhero's alter-ego, Peter Parker,
getting bitten by a radioactive spider.
Soon after, he discovers that he's been bestowed with extraordinary superpowers like being
able to crawl up walls.
Future incarnations of this storyline would see Parker facing off against Green Goblin
and The Lizard.
For this pilot, Spidey would go toe-to-toe with Edward Byron, a guru who's hypnotizing
New Yorkers to commit crimes.
Clumsy fight scenes involving Byron's henchmen and an assortment of near-death experiences
involving hypnosis ensue as Spider-Man does his best to stop Byron.
Unlike the other two entries in this series, the 1977 Spider-Man was always intended to
be a feature-length story.
In this era, it was a common practice for TV pilots to run this long, as was giving
these projects international theatrical releases.
Going down this route allowed the producers of pilots like Spider-Man to have their cake
and eat it too, hedging their bets on both the domestic TV market and the international
theatrical circuit.
Official box office figures for Spider-Man '77 have never been released, but the book
Age of TV Heroes: The Live-Action Adventures of Your Favorite Comic Book Characters by
Jason Hofius and George Khoury claims the production earned $9 million in overseas grosses.
Whereas the 1977 Spider-Man movie dealt with villainy related to hypnosis, the sequel,
Spider-Man Strikes Back, is all about nuclear warfare.
The topic is explored through Spider-Man's confrontation with a villain by the name of
Mr. White — no, not that Mr. White.
And no, not that one either.
Spidey's newest foe hatches a devious plan that involves bombing the World Trade Center.
Much like the infamous finale of the 1976 King Kong, also set on the Twin Towers, Mr.
White's evil plan makes watching Spider-Man Strikes Back in 2020 a far more uncomfortable
experience than one would expect from a live-action Spider-Man movie.
Thankfully, this isn't the only scheme Mr. White has concocted.
Because this is two standalone episodes stitched together into a movie, Mr. White eventually
moves on from nuclear weapons to an assassination attempt on the President of the United States.
"I think I may have to try a new approach with this piece of merchandise."
The film eventually ends with Mr. White escaping and promising to get his revenge on Spider-Man.
Given that Mr. White never appeared again, this was a promise he couldn't keep, which,
as Spider-Man knows, is the best kind of promise.
Whereas the previous Spider-Man movie got a general theatrical release internationally,
Spider-Man Strikes Back was given a far more restrained theatrical launch.
Only a handful of European territories, including Germany, screened the title.
Its overseas theatrical presence was so minimal that there are no recorded box office figures
for the project.
Much like Mr. White leaving the scene of a dastardly crime, Spider-Man Strikes Back vanished
from theaters without a trace.
"The one thing they love more than a hero is to see a hero fail."
Wrapping up the trilogy was Spider-Man: The Dragon's Challenge, which saw the web-crawler
facing off against a villain named Zeider, a wealthy man who wants to kill an old colleague
of J. Jonah Jameson by the name of Min Lo Chan.
With incriminating information on Zeider in his possession, Min Lo Chan's life is in constant
danger.
The only person who could possibly protect Lo Chan and his niece Emily from these threats
is Spider-Man.
Thus, the web-crawler ends up protecting Min from the various bruisers Zeider sends to
assassinate him.
Eventually, Peter Parker uses his wits to expose Zeider and his treachery, thus preserving
the life of Min Lo Chan.
Like Spider-Man Strikes Back, The Dragon's Challenge received a minor theatrical release
in international territories, with this particular entry screening in countries such as Australia.
Also like its predecessor, The Dragon's Challenge has never reported box office figures for
its theatrical run.
This means that the largest legacy of this project is two members of its supporting cast.
Firstly, there was Rosalind Chao, who played Emily in the movie.
She scored an early acting credit here before going on to appear in numerous TV shows and
movies, including Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
She's also reportedly part of the cast of the upcoming Marvel Studios movie Shang-Chi
and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
Also appearing in Spider-Man: The Dragon's Challenge, in the role of Major Collins, was
Ted Danson.
When the episodes comprising this movie originally aired in 1978, Collins served as Danson's
third credited appearance as an actor.
In many movie trilogies, it's easy to discern at least some kind of overarching story.
Some of those three-movie arcs can be loose, like the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy and
its payoffs relating to Sandman, Uncle Ben, Harry Obsorn, and the Green Goblin.
Other trilogies, like The Lord of the Rings, are so tightly wound together that it's more-or-less
not possible to comfortably jump in at the middle of the story.
That's not the case with this inaugural Spider-Man trilogy, for the simple reason that they were
never meant to be an interconnected series of films to begin with.
There's a sense of disconnect across the three movies that makes it unique among movie trilogies,
particularly ones starring superheroes.
The original 1977 Spider-Man is a standalone feature-length pilot meant to introduce viewers
to the idea of weekly Spider-Man adventures rather than set up feature-length sequels.
As for the two follow-ups, they're each just multiple episodes of that TV show that have
been roughly jammed together.
This explains why Spider-Man Strikes Back, for example, stops and starts its plot for
two wildly different evil plans from Mr. White.
Each plan was originally the center of its own TV episode rather than two halves of a
movie.
This results in very little storytelling cohesion across these Spider-Man features as individual
properties, let alone across the ramshackle trilogy as a whole.
With the exception of J. Jonah Jameson, Spidey's supporting cast in these movies is almost
entirely composed of new characters who have nothing to do with the Spider-Man comics.
"Who is that character anyway?"
For instance, in the first Spider-Man movie, a character named Judy Tyler is the most prominent
woman in Peter Parker's life instead of Gwen Stacy or Mary Jane Watson.
Spider-Man's best friend Harry Osborn is also absent from all three features.
The presence of new characters is especially notable when it comes to the trilogy's villains.
Instead of facing off against seminal foes like Green Goblin or Kraven the Hunter, international
moviegoers were treated to the sight of Spidey waging war against Edward Byron and Mr. White.
None of the oversized figures in colorful costumes that usually pick a fight with Spider-Man
would be found here.
The lack of Spidey's iconic supporting cast and foes from the comics explain a lot as
to why these movies didn't win over comic book devotees.
They also reinforce how these three movies are such strange outliers in Spider-Man's
feature film career.
Opinions differ about the quality of the 21st century Spider-Man movies, but one thing is
clear: all of them garnered better marks than the original three Spider-Man movies.
A retrospective review of the 1977 Spider-Man movie from JoBlo described the project as
goofy, cheesy, and penny-pinching -- a critique that can be applied to every movie in the
series.
Criticism of the low budgets are common; though presented theatrically overseas, the TV origins
of these Spider-Man movies was readily apparent on the screen.
Reviews for the follow-ups didn't get any better.
Spider-Man Strikes Back was reviled by The Dissolve for many reasons, with one observation
being that
"Spider-Man doesn't throw his first punch until the film is half over."
Meanwhile, the conclusion of the trilogy, Spider-Man: The Dragon's Challenge, was declared
by Inverse to be the worst Spider-Man movie ever made" due to the film's overwhelmingly
tedious nature.
While each of the individual films drew their own unique criticisms, the critical reception
to the first trilogy of Spider-Man movies was subpar across the board.
Worst of all, though, was that Spider-Man co-creator Stan Lee was critical of the TV
show that spawned these three movies.
Echoing modern complaints about the lack of personality in this original Spider-Man trilogy,
Lee once said of the show,
"They left out the humor.
They left out the human interest and personality and playing up characterizations and personal
problems."
Usually, anything with the Spider-Man logo is guaranteed to get some form of release.
But there are limits to everything, and even the lucrative nature of the character hasn't
guaranteed new home video releases for these three movies.
Though put out on VHS in the 1980s, the original live-action Spider-Man trilogy hasn't found
its way into any other home media format since.
This mirrors the scarcity of the Amazing Spider-Man TV show as a whole, which has been entirely
denied a proper home video release save for a handful of episodes making their way onto
VHS.
By contrast, the Spider-Man show from Japan, released in the same era as The Amazing Spider-Man,
has managed to get released on physical home media in Region 2 markets.
The age of streaming has offered no salvation for the increased availability of these original
three Spider-Man movies.
They have never appeared on any streaming platform and no plans have been announced
to have them stream alongside other Spider-Man programming on a platform like Disney+.
The negative reception associated with the program, as well as a lack of a major fanbase
to champion for its release, has led to these three Spider-Man movies gathering dust on
a shelf somewhere in a corporate vault.
While comic books are the go-to source of creative inspiration for adaptations of Marvel
Comics characters, certain TV shows, like The Incredible Hulk, have managed to leave
a lasting creative legacy.
Such was not the case with this trilogy of Spider-Man movies.
Much like the TV show they spun off from, these Spider-Man films have mostly vanished
from the pop culture consciousness.
"Do us both a favor — forget it."
Part of that is due to the trilogy's reliance on a down-to-Earth vision of Spider-Man.
The lack of exciting or strange elements in these films has kept them from turning into
a cult hit like the 1970s Japanese Spider-Man show.
The lack of a proper home video or streaming release has similarly ensured that the first
three Spider-Man movies have become a pop culture footnote.
In other ways, the property's longevity has been hurt by how it hasn't been referenced
in other Spider-Man media, rarely being treated as a "real" adaptation of the Spider-Man story.
One exception to this phenomenon came in the 2019 edition of Entertainment Weekly's "The
Ultimate Guide to The Avengers," which recognized Nicholas Hammond as one of the four actors
to have portrayed Spider-Man in live action.
It was a rare moment of recognition for the actor that first took the web-crawler to the
movies.
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