Despite the initial controversy surrounding them, Tobey Maguire’s organic web-shooters have just been vindicated with a high realism score from an expert addressing Spider-Man 2‘s iconic train scene in the early Marvel movie. Superhero movies are notoriously replete with pseudoscience to explain away the mind-bending feats that superheroes are capable of. Spider-Man is, of course, no exception – as the web-slinger typically creates a mysterious web fluid which he fires from web shooters to emulate the webbing abilities of a real spider in most interpretations.

Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy then flipped the script on the comics-accurate origins of Spider-Man’s webbing by introducing an organic version in line with his spider-based power set. This interpretation of Spider-Man’s powers certainly leans more into the fantastical side of Spider-Man’s origins, pairing it with his super-strength and wall-crawling to emulate a spider’s abilities better. Now, it has additionally been approved by an expert who highlights how accurate this organic webbing is by referencing one of Spider-Man’s most memorable scenes.

Real-Life Physicist Praises Spider-Man 2’s Train Scene And Webbing Strength Realism

Jim Kakalios Knows All About Superhero Science

An Insider series posted to YouTube, enтιтled “How Real Is It?”, is a series in which real-life experts are tasked with ᴀssessing the accuracy of various movie scenes. One of these videos delves into the pseudoscientific world of Marvel movies and asks physicist Jim Kakalios to address the accuracy of such features as Ant-Man’s powers and Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir. Kakalios is especially well-versed in this niche, as he worked as a science consultant on such movies as The Amazing Spider-Man and Watchmen, even winning an Emmy for his work on the latter, and authored “The Physics of Superheroes.“

In the video, Kakalios addresses the iconic Spider-Man 2 sequence in which Spider-Man stops a speeding train by using his webbing and super-strength. To ᴀssess how strong the webbing has to be to achieve this, Kakalios calculates the mᴀss of the train and its velocity as well as the number of web lines and their diameter, ascertaining that the tensile strength of the webbing needs to be 1,000 megapascals to keep from breaking. After comparing this to the strength of real spider silk, which is 1,200 megapascals, Kakalios gives the scene an accuracy rating of 8/10.

“So here, Peter Paker/Spider-Man needs to stop a runaway elevated train. He shoots out multiple weblines, they stretch a great deal, but they don’t break, and he’s able to stop the train just in the nick of time. How strong does the webbing have to be for this to work?

We can look up the mᴀss of a train. We can estimate its initial velocity by seeing how long it takes to pᴀss city blocks. We can look at the distance over which the webbing stretches. We can estimate its diameter. We can count the number of web lines, and we come up with a tensile strength for the webbing that has to be about 1,000 megapascals, which is equivalent to 145,000 pounds per square inch.

But real spider silk has a tensile strength of 1,2000 megapascals. If Spider-Man’s webbing is anywhere as strong as real spider silk, then this indeed could happen.

He’s shooting it out of his wrists, which is not what a real spider would do, but we’ll just leave that aside.”

What This Means For Spider-Man 2

Kakalios’s Comments Prove That Spider-Man 2 Cared About Realism

Spider-Man 2 remains one of the most highly-regarded superhero movies ever made, and is often praised as being one of the greatest examples of a sequel done right. Along with its predecessor, 2002’s Spider-Man, it provided a hopeful glimmer at a time when superhero movies were still finding their footing, when other superhero movies like Daredevil and Catwoman failed to inspire nearly as much positivity. At the time, superhero movies benefited from moments that helped to ground them as much as possible, and a physicist-approved moment such as this is important to helping make the setting feel more believable.

It’s likely, therefore, that Spider-Man 2‘s own scientific consultant, Michael Backes, was on hand to deliver the same verdict as Jim Kakalios when this iconic Spider-Man scene was being conceived. Spider-Man 2‘s train scene now lives on as one of Spider-Man’s most memorable movie moments, bolstered by the fact that the spectacle was scientifically feasible once audiences can look past the more fanciful elements of a man boasting the abilities of a spider.

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Sources: Insider/YouTube