Don't Come Fly with Me: Why a 'Spider-Man: Homecoming' Trailer Moment Got Cut from the Film

In the age of social media, film studios love to tease fans. As release day draws ever closer, we're bombarded with clips, TV spots and trailers, which can make us feel like we've already seen the entire movie — but sometimes, we've actually seen more.

Spider-Man: Homecoming has became the latest in a string of films that have shown us scenes in marketing materials that didn't appear in the final film — with one of the trailer's biggest money shots being noticeably absent. Yes, that magical moment with #IronMan and #SpiderMan flying through Queens did not actually feature in the film, and director Jon Watts explained why to Screen Crush:

"I think what happened was in the very first trailer they wanted a shot of Spider-Man and Iron Man flying together. And they were going to use something from the Staten Island Ferry [scene], but it just didn't look that great, the background plate, because the Staten Island terminal is a very simple building. It almost looks like an unrendered 3D object. So I think I was like 'Let's just put them in Queens. Let's use that as a backdrop.' Because we couldn't just create a whole new shot, so let's just use one of these shots of the subway; put them in there."

The Vulture's introduction from the trailer, wherein he flew dramatically down a hotel's atrium, was also missing from the final film. It's fairly common for different takes to be used in the trailers than the finished product, but it's becoming more and frequent that we see scenes in the trailer that don't actually appear anywhere in the film.

It's Not The First Time This Has Happened

Hell, Spider-Man: Homecoming isn't even the first Spider-Man film to show scenes exclusively in the trailer, or alter them in some way. As an example, Sam Raimi's first Spider-Man trailer featured a shot of Tobey Maguire's Spidey backflipping onto a car in his regular costume — but it had been digitally altered, as in the film Peter is wearing his wrestling costume.

The trailers for The Amazing Spider-Man also featured some unused scenes, including something else that could be described as a money shot. The initial teaser featured a first-person sequence of Spider-Man moving quickly through New York — including web-slinging, wall-crawling and generally doing everything a spider can. In the final film, the first-person shots appeared very briefly, contradicting how important they looked in the trailers.

Later trailers also featured a half-transformed Curt Conners saying, "If you want the truth about your parents, Peter, come and get it," which was mysteriously absent as well. When you consider that the "untold story" of Peter Parker's parents was supposed to be the unique selling point of this reboot, it didn't really happen at all.

Marketing Rules All

Ultimately, it's all about marketing. The film's producers want to build up excitement for the film. In order to do this, sometimes they may have to mislead audiences a little — Jon Watts states that they wanted to have a cool shot of Iron Man and Spider-Man flying together, but they didn't have anything suitable, so they decided to make one instead. This is different from how #RogueOne trailers featured many scenes originally intended for the film that were later cut due to reshoots.

Before YouTube, back when trailers weren't scrutinized frame-by-frame, we probably wouldn't have noticed a missing shot. But with connected universes becoming more common, there are often Easter Eggs in trailers that fans simply have to find. Superfans now analyze every second of a trailer, and scour it to glean some hints as to how the story pans out in the film.

Interestingly, Jon Watts also felt that it was a little bit odd that the trailers featured something that wasn't in the finished product:

"I feel a little weird that there's a shot in the trailer that's not in the movie at all, but it's a cool shot. It's funny, I forgot that we did that."

With or without this shot, Spider-Man: Homecoming looks set to be a rousing success; critics love it and the first reactions from the fans are hugely positive. Tom Holland has brought a side to Peter Parker that we hadn't seen on film yet — the fact that he LOVES being Spider-Man, and hopefully he'll continue to do this for many years to come.