The best Spider-Man scene of all time: Spider-Man saves a kid from bullies (Amazing Spider-Man 2)

Even though I hate The Amazing Spider-Man 2, it does contain what I think to one of the best live-action Spider-Man scenes ever.

Spider-Man saving a kid from bullies

It's a quick scene but it tells you so much about Spider-Man, his personality, how people see him, and why we love him.

He saves a kid who is being bullied by getting his science project destroyed. Spidey drops in and by the sheer fact that he's Spider-Man, the bullies all flee.

Then Spider-Man not only compliments the kid on his science project, he actually knows what the project is (a wind turbine) and seems genuinely geeked out and impressed over it. It's very much Peter Parker/Spider-Man.

He fixes the broken parts of the turbine with his webs, makes the kid smile, and then he walks the kid home while chit chatting with him. It's a beautiful scene of why Spider-Man is so great.

It's one of those scenes that is uniquely Spider-Man's. For a Superman or a Captain America, there is this intimidation, looking at someone put on a pedestal, a god even. Not to besmirch Supes or Cap, I love them and they would do the same for the kid if put in the same situation, but their interactions with the kid would have been immensely different. They're not exactly us but people we aspire to be.

Spider-Man though is one of us. He's just us, any of us, all of us. Even with spidey powers and the full body suit, he's inherently an everyman, which is why the image of him walking this kid home is so poignant. And he walks a kid home out of the kindness of his heart, all to make this kid feel better and maybe tell his friends that he got to hang out with Spider-Man.

It's a phenomenal Spider-Man scene in an awful Spider-Man movie and makes me wish Andrew Garfield had more material like that to work with in his Spider-Man run. But it so encapsulates everything we love about Spidey: his humor, his nerdiness, his compassion, his relatability. It's what makes him one of the most beloved characters in all of fiction.