We now return to the continuing Adventures of Theory Man!
"Help! He stole my purse!"
Can't help you there but, did you know that Ant-Man could've saved half the universe by crawling up Thanos's anus. Oh um.
Thanks? Theory Man away!
Once again, the day has been saved. Thank you, Theory Man. Thank you. Hello internet
welcome to Film Theory, where today we've got an episode
that's sure to get all your Peters tingling. For two decades,
we've been inundated with Spider-Man.
Films, series, video games and oh so many memes. This summer's release of Spider-Man: Far From Home gives us our third
live-action Spider-Man movie franchise in just 17 years.
So, as our universe, not to mention the rest of the multiverse approaches complete Spidey saturation,
it's time to figure out once and for all who wins the Spider-Man Battle Royale.
Which Spidey reigns supreme? First,
let's set our ground rules and clarify what this video is and what it is not. This is a comparison of the observable, measurable
Spider powers
demonstrated on-screen by our beloved webhead. Only the theatrically released feature-length Spider-Man films will be considered.
This is not a popularity contest
nor, is it a Best Actor contest nor, is it a Best Hair contest 'cause let's be honest,
that one is no contest at all. Andrew Garfield, you have got yourself some
remarkable hair. And, what we're answering today is actually pretty darn simple,
"Which Spidey would win in a head-to-head fight?" Three franchises,
three Spider-Man's. Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker in Sam Raimi's Spider-man trilogy. Andrew
Garfield's Peter Parker in Marc Webb's "The Amazing Spider-Man" franchise.
And now, Tom Holland as the MCU's Golden Boy, Peter Parker. In our theoretical Battle Royale,
everyone is gonna fight in their standard costume. That means Tobey Maguire's character doesn't have to fight in his Homemade-Human-Spider Costume
but, he also doesn't get the Black-Symbiote Suit either. Likewise,
Tom Holland's Spider-Man doesn't have to wear his homemade costume
but, he's also not gonna get access to the Iron-Spider Suit or Stealth-Spider Suit featured in "Far From Home."
Our goal here is to eliminate as many variables as possible so we can judge them based purely on their Spider-
Manliness alone. Our Spider-Man will be judged across three
categories strength, web, and agility. Which necessarily takes Spider-Sense into consideration. From those three categories,
which ideally are boiling
down the essentials of any good Spider-Man
in battle situations, we'll be able to
determine which Spider-Man reigns
supreme. Round 1!
Strength! This one is actually a pretty
straight forward category because the films give us
really clear data to work with.
It's actually incredible. It's kinda nice
not to have to, like, backdoor our way
into these things for a change. All three of our Spider-Men in their respective films
basically, do the equivalent of the Hercules Hold from
the World's Strongest Man competition. (OKAY)
Toby with the speeding train, Tom with a ferry that's been sliced in half, and Andrew with a car dangling off a bridge.
So, which super impressive feat is the
most super impressive in the
immortal words of Olivia Newton-John or more accurately for our case
the immortal words of Newton comma Sir Isaac, "Let's get PHYSICS-AL" *funny Mat :|*
Associate professor Michael Milford and research fellow Juck C.Lightner of Queensland University of Technology
tackled the Hercules Hold moment from Spider-Man: Homecoming
determining that Tom Holland's character applied a force of over 31,000,000 Newtons
in order to keep that ferry together.
Which he managed to do single-handedly for about six seconds before Ironman eventually came and bailed him out.
Now that is a lot of Newtons but, is it more impressive than Toby Maguire's famous train stopping scene from Spider-Man 2?
To determine how many Newtons Toby's character applied let's check in with Newtons second law of motion, shall we?
Which tells us that force exerted by Spider-Man is equal to the mass of the train times the rate at which he brings the trains to a stop.
A New York City subway car weighs in at about 33,000 kilograms
and the train in the scene actually has itself six cars.
Shots inside the car suggest that the train is about half capacity.
Meaning that the weight of the six cars plus the weight of the passengers inside, is gonna' be approximately
241,578 Kilograms in total.
So that, my friends, is our mass.
As for our acceleration or in this case DEceleration
we see Toby's character bringing the train from exactly 80 MPH to 0 MPH in 47 seconds.
That means the rate of deceleration is going to be
0.752 meters per second^2
Plug em' into the formula and we get ourselves
182,000 newtons of force which, is way less than what Tom Hollands Spider-Man had to exert
I mean let's give Toby's character some credit for pushing his body to the limits for 47 grueling seconds
compared to Tom Holland's relatively breezy 6 seconds
but there is no way around it, Tom Holland's Spider-Man exerted over
170 times as much force in his Hercules Hold.
Tom's Spider-Man is definitely the stronger of these two.
So, where does Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man fit in?
At a glance, holding a 2011 Chrysler Town and Country as it dangles over a bridge doesn't seem quite as impressive as stopping a train and wouldn't you know it,
it's not.
The Town and Country has a curb weight of 4,652 pounds but, let's call it an even 4,800
with a kid inside plus whatever personal items the family might have in the trunk.
Andrew's character is pulling directly against the direction of gravity so we can easily use Newtons second law of motion once again
to determine to force involved in Andrew's Hercules Hold.
Which comes out to be roughly 21,000 Newtons.
Now, that is a far cry from the force Tom and Toby were exerting.
Plus, Andrew's grip eventually gives out just after 40 seconds.
Get good Andrew Garfield.
So, Tom Holland's and the MCU' Spider-Man wins the strength category in a landslide.
He gets himself three points, Toby gets two points for second place, and Andrew gets one point for last place
but, a point in my heart for that beautiful hair.
Next up, Webbing.
Not only is it Spider-Man's weapon of choice,
it's also his mode of transportation. So,
webs are going to play a huge role in any Spider-Man vs. Spider-Man fight
which of our three Spider-Men have the best, most versatile strongest web?
Spoiler alert! It's Tom Holland's Spider-Man and it's not even close.
Spider-Man in the MCU has the Tony Stark Advantage™ when it comes to webbing.
576 pre-loaded web shooter combinations
Sticky-web, Ricochet-web, Taser-web, Stun-web, Spider tracers, Rapid-fire, Web grenades, Web wings
WEB WINGS PEOPLE
There is no two ways around this one. Tom's character wins the web war and he has the Tony Stark to thank for it.
So, now it's just a battle for runner up position
Andrew Garfield's webbing is also man-made
The downside to this though is that he could potentially run out of web fluid or get separated from his web-shooters while in battle.
The upside is that he's able to tweak his web formula and make it impervious to electricity for example.
However, it's tough to imagine electricity playing a major role in a Spider-Man vs. Spider-Man fight
So, who knows how beneficial this improvement that we see in the movies would actually be for our purposes in today's episode.
In Toby's case meanwhile, his webbing is created in vivo.
He's not able to manipulate his organic webbing but on the plus side,
he's never going to run out. Except on the rare occasions when he's like
you know, super sad and stuff.
But, as impressive as Toby's train scene is as a demonstration of his strength
it might be an even more impressive for his webbing.
are all on full display in a way that Andrew Garfield's web never is in the
amazing spider-man films and if Andrews Peter Parker had made more elastic
webbing maybe when Stacy would have had herself a smoother landing at the end of
the amazing spider-man 2 so Tom Holland wins the webbing category hands-down and
receives himself another three points got to give second place to Tobey
Maguire for that organic unlimited webbing that's pretty much the
equivalent of real spider so which yet again leaves Andrew Garfield's amazing
spider-man once again in the final position looks like Tom's running away
with this thing but that's a fast there is one final category to discuss agility
will use agility as a catch-all category for spider-man's nimbleness speed and
reaction time of which spider sense is a major part first let's acknowledge a
couple agility similarities between our three spider-man all three see more or
less capable of avoiding bullets praise and all three Peter Parker's have
similar foot speed trust me I went through their running footage
frame by frame and they're all just within a few miles per hour of each
other nothing so major that it merits mentioning here but reaction
time is where the spider-man really start to differentiate themselves
because not all spider senses are created equally let's start off by
acknowledging that all three Peter Parker's have sporadic use of their
spider sense at best they all appear to have a grasp on it for only a fraction
of the time resulting in them getting surprised by things like this and this
and this but when they are wielding their spider sense it's a metric we can
totally use for comparison in the first tobey maguire spider-man film there's a
really useful sequence where we see his spider sense in action from Peter
Parker's point of view the fly in particular is helpful because we know a
housefly beats its wings at about 200 times per second from Peter Parker's
point of view that fly is flapping its wings two times in two point six to five
seconds meaning his spider sense is helping him see the world about 260
times slower than real time as for Tom Hollands character there is very little
evidence that his spider sense or Peter tingle is very useful as it relates to
reaction time at all for instance in infinity war his spider sense only
tingles after Thanos his ship has already arrived at Planet Earth at a
point where any normal kid on the bus could have glanced out the window and
seen this thing so his Peter tingle seems to be more of a state of alertness
rather than an ability to experience the world in slow-mo and react to life that
much faster as for Andrew Garfield his reaction times do appear to be enhanced
host spider bite I mean snatching a fly out of the air is pretty darn cool but
it also doesn't necessarily mean that he's seeing the world in slow-mo to the
degree that Toby's character does that being said there is an argument to be
made that Andrews spider sense is way way way better than anyone we've ever
seen in a movie ever consider this scene where he's literally dodging bolts of
electricity a visible bolt of lightning travels at about a third of the speed of
light or 220 billion miles an hour so dodging a bolt of electricity is
obviously far more impressive than say seeing the world at 260 times slower
than usual but is the amazing part of the Amazing Spiderman
the fact that he's actively dodging those electrical bolts or does electro
just have himself a bad case of stormtrooper aid let's look at those
slow-mo clips again if we go frame by frame we see that spider-man is looking
at electro before the bolt of lightning is shocked we also see that he makes no
elusive movement until after the bolt passes beneath him looks like it's fair
to just chalk this one up to Electro's bad aim or more accurately the
inconsistent CGI work from the people working on this movie but wait
Andrew still isn't down and out just yet sure he might be benefiting from
Electro's bad aim in this one scene but in another scene we actually get a
moment similar to Tobey Maguire's fly andrew is seeing the world in a slowed
down state where he pulls a Jimmy Neutron brain blast and predicts the
movements of the electricity foreseeing that it's gonna go up the handrails and
eventually hurt the civilians reaching for them then we see him able to react
accordingly in order to protect them clearly this means he's faster than
electricity and thereby the fastest of all our possible spider-man right well
yes and no you see he's certainly faster than electricity the problem here is
that he's faster than electrodes electricity and when you actually stop
and do the math in these scenes these things are actually shockingly slow pun
definitely intended this panel is happening on the TKTS booth in New York
City's Times Square the top of this iconic stairwell is 45 feet across and
we see Electro's electricity travel to the center of that handrail in exactly
ten frames for a movie that runs 24 frames a second that's five twelfths of
a second to go twenty two and a half feet extrapolating out that math we see
that Electro's lightning actually travels at the astonishing speed of
thirty-six point eight miles an hour and when I say astonishing I mean
astonishingly slow I mean that is slightly faster than me driving through
a school so but it's clearly nowhere close to the billions of miles
our of actual lightning and it is still significantly slower than the flapping
of that flies wing sorry Andrew Garfield I tried I just
can't justify giving you the win here the fly snatching is admittedly more
impressive than anything Tom Holland exhibits though so the totals have been
tallied can we get ourselves a drumroll please all right if that's the best you
got in third place with four points we have Andrew Garfield spider-man gold
star for being smart and sciency and all but this ain't no gold star contest just
like it ain't no best hair contest just get over it look at the volume of that
hair it's no wonder he's a movie stars were just lowly youtubers next up coming
in with seven points we have a two-way tie for first place that's right we all
thought the table was gonna run away with this thing but it turns out that
Toby has the grip strength to barely hold on so there you have it folks in
the Battle of spider-man's there is no clear winner we dug in exam the data and
no clear winner could wait a minute my theorist tingle is going crazy I'm
sensing a lot of you screaming at your screams right now because there's a
spider-man movie I haven't mentioned yet it's a feature-length spider-man movie
it had itself a theatrical release and even though it's not part of a franchise
it should be considered according to the rules that I laid out earlier that movie
is of course spider-man into the spider verse but how do we go about comparing
the animated characters in spider verse to the live-action characters in the
franchise's easily actually because one of our live-action spider-man actually
crosses over into spider verse or at least one of his multiverse equivalents
crosses into spider-verse see there's a compelling theory that Tobey Maguire's
Peter B Parker is the exact same Peter B Parker featured a meme to the spider
verse and the theory is supported by the fact that the producers at one point
considered casting Tobey Maguire as Peter B Parker's voice I mean it's come
out since after the movies released that Peter B Parker in the movie isn't
actually the same spider-man that we see in the Sam Raimi movies but he's
definitely going through the same types of adventures and life experiences so
even though he's not the exact one he's pretty much a multiverse stand-in for
the exact one so by the transitive property of equality
that would mean that Peter B Parker from into the spider-verse equals Tobey
Maguire's spider-man from the Sam Raimi trilogy which would then also equal Tom
Hollands MCU spider-man they are all relatively equal spider-man so if we
want to know how Toby and Tom would stack up against the other Spidey's and
into the spider verse all we need to do is look at how Peter beep Parker stacks
up to off first let's look at penny Parker and the spider mob from their
performance in spider verse we know enough about this duo to not give them
the win despite being highly ranked on all the usual Spiderman comparison lists
spider is a dud in spider-verse winds up being the only Spidey character defeated
in the final group battle as for spider-gwen spider-man Noir and spider
cam they don't necessarily prove themselves stronger than Peter B Parker
during the end fight either all three of them fight valiantly and at least
survived the final battle but so does Peter B Parker no matter how badly I
want to give this win to spider-ham I just can't these three cameo Spidey's
just didn't have large enough roles in spider-verse to separate themselves out
from the rest of the field sorry but da da da da that's all folks
however miles gives us a lot to work with throughout this movie he goes
directly head-to-head with Peter B Parker who remember we've established is
our Tobey Maguire character standing miles is invisibility lets him get the
best of Doc Ock whereas Peter B Parker is easily captured by her plus miles
successfully steals the goober away from Peter B Parker without him knowing it
later in the movie miles in Peter B Parker go at it while fighting kingpin
and in the end miles proves himself a better fighter by getting the best of
Peter be true miles is going against an older out-of-shape
Peter B Parker but the flip side of that coin is that miles has only possessed
his powers for a few days at this point he hasn't had any time to properly hone
his skills and reach his full potential seems more than fair to consider Peter B
Parker's old age balanced out against miles 'as inexperience so in the end
Peter B Parker who's as strong a spider-man as our live action
choices have to offer gets himself bested by Miles Morales in a direct
head-to-head confrontation and that can only mean one thing
Miles Morales wins in a battle royale against all the different Spider Men
Tobey Maguire and Tom Holland may portray the strongest Peter Parker's in
cinema but Peter Parker is no match for Miles Morales the strongest spider-man
in all the films just goes to show that the best spider-man film also happens to
contain the best spider-man but hey that's just a theory
a film theory and if you want to see more spider-man content check out this
video on the left where I analyze the physics of spider-man's deadly web
slinging it turns out that spider-man should have died multiple times over
regardless of his super-strength or while you're here make sure you click
the button on the right to subscribe and with that I'm off next week let's take a
break from superheroes shall we