‘Madame Web’ Reuses a Shot From ‘Spider-Man 2’

The following post contains minor spoilers for Madame Web. Do you care about Madame Web spoilers at this point? I didn’t think so. 

Extremely observant Spider-Man fans have made a shocking discovery in the new Spidey spinoff Madame Web: It is not very good.

No, okay, that is not the shocking discovery; even the casually observant Spidey fans have observed that part. But there is a legitimately surprising thing in this movie — a snippet from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 wound up being repurposed out of context in Madame Web.

You can see the footage below. It’s a point of view shot from Spider-Man 2. At one point in that movie, Peter Parker is running down an alley and he pulls down his mask and then leaps away into the night. The camera assumes his perspective, and glides up into the sky towards and over a New York City building.

For some reason — budgetary, I would assume? But that’s just a guess — Madame Web reused the shot wholesale. Take a look for yourself.

READ MORE: Every Spider-Man and Spinoff Movie Ranked From Worst to Best

It’s funny; watching Madame Web in the theater last week I definitely noticed this moment and it felt weird to me. But I couldn’t explain why. I didn’t recognize it as that shot from Spider-Man 2; it just felt off to me in some way I couldn’t put my finger on. I now realize that beyond the recycling and the fact that I had seen it before, it was shot some 20 years ago; with different cameras and different lenses by a totally different crew and cameramen.

The reason it felt different was because it was different than all the other shots in Madame Web — unless the film took other shots from old Spider-Man movies and nobody else noticed those yet.

Madame Web is now playing in theaters everywhere. For how long, I couldn’t say. But it’s there now.