A teenager is bitten by a modified spider, discovers he can do things nobody can, and learns what it costs when he decides that is not his problem.
Before this, comic book films were a genre studios were nervous about. This one took the origin seriously, played the emotional beats straight, and made the central lesson a consequence rather than a speech.
Its Peter Parker is broke, unpopular and unglamorous, and the film keeps him that way. That is a choice most later versions of the character quietly stopped making.
Show detailsIts place in the wider picture
This is a separate continuity from the connected films, made by a different studio two decades ago. For most of that time it was simply a different Spider-Man that had nothing to do with anything else.
That changed retroactively when the multiverse films decided these versions all coexist, which is a good example of how this material rearranges its own past.
Who is in it
How it connects
This one sets these up.
Sources
Facts last checked on Sep 7, 2026
Released: May 3, 2002