Spider-man director Marc Webb talks about why The Iconic “With Great Power” Quote was removed

In a recent interview with Marc Webb, MTV got to ask the director why the iconic line “With great power comes great responsibility” was removed from the movie:

“We played around with the idea of using it, but ultimately it felt like it was in the subtext of the film in so many places. I think we’ve all heard it so many times that I didn’t think that it was necessary to use. Uncle Ben, of course, issues a statement using some of the similar words to kind of convey that idea.

There were moments where we thought about using it, but it didn’t feel as emotionally honest to the scenes and to the sequences. We were trying to create something more naturalistic. Because we had seen it so many times before, I didn’t think it was absolutely necessary.”

Obviously the omission was noticed by everyone in the theater when I saw it earlier this week, but what surprised me most was that nobody seemed to complain.  The audience didn’t uproar, nobody bickered, nothing. Webb found a way to capture that line in a scene without saying it, and in the end it made it much more fluid and real. Personally, I’ve always loved the line, it was part of my childhood, but it felt more like some cheesy fortune cookie phrase and i can understand why it was removed, and I liked the final product better because of it.