Spider-Man - "With great power..." | Falcon Talks
About choosing to be responsible
"With great power comes great responsibility." is one of those proverbs/aphorisms that irks me a little.
Let me explain. 😅
Hi everyone!
Now, for those of you who don't know, "With great power comes great responsibility." is a proverb that originated from Spider-Man.
As many modern retellings of Spider-Man’s origin story usually go - after gaining his superpowers from the bite of a radioactive (or some otherwise sci-fi affected) spider, Peter Parker decides to become Spider-Man and uses his powers to… make money by becoming an entertainer (usually, wrestling is involved somehow). On the way home after a successful day making money and feeling confident with his newfound abilities, he lets a burglar that he could have easily stopped escape - because, as he saw it, it wasn’t his problem. After returning home (either on the same day or on a different day) to find that his beloved Uncle Ben had been robbed and murdered, he uses his powers to hunt down and confront his uncle’s murderer - who is revealed to be… the same burglar that he had let escape!
After catching and handing the burglar over to the police as Spider-Man, Peter reflects on the events that led to his uncle’s death in tears. It is then that he finally learns and understands the lesson that Uncle Ben had tried to impart upon him: “With great power comes great responsibility.”
BUT THAT’S NOT THE ORIGINAL LINE.
This1 is the original line:
“With great power there must also come -- great responsibility!”
As you can see, the original uses the words “there must also come”, while the shorter version just uses “comes” - this irks me, because it loses some of the original proverb’s meaning and the shorter version can be easily misconstrued.
Of course, before we can talk about how it can be misconstrued, we should talk about what the original proverb means in the first place.
“With great power there must also come -- great responsibility!” means that if you find yourself with “great power”, as Peter Parker did, then you are responsible for putting that power to good use - that is your “great responsibility”.
It’s not a new idea, by any means2, but Spider-Man’s origin story does have its own interesting take on it, which is why the original’s “there must also come” is so important - it emphasizes that it’s a CHOICE that one must make, and that one should make the choice to do good (or, at least, be responsible) with their power.
Without the important “there must also come”, “With great power comes great responsibility.” can be, and has been, misconstrued to mean that great responsibility naturally comes to those with great power - that those with power will naturally be responsible with it.
And we all know that’s not true.
We’ve all seen people who have misused and abused their powers.
From world leaders to even just some manager at work, we’ve all come across people who DID NOT choose to be responsible with their power - who decided not to shoulder the great responsibility that comes with great power.
“With great power comes great responsibility.” heavily downplays (or even omits) that one has to CHOOSE to do good and be responsible with their powers.
“With great power there must also come -- great responsibility!” emphasizes that one has to CHOOSE to do good with their powers - as Peter Parker learned when his choice not to do so led to the death of his beloved Uncle Ben.
And this lesson is important in two ways:
to remind people who find themselves with power that they have to make the CHOICE to be responsible with that power,
and to remind everyone that it's VERY possible that those with great power will make the choice to NOT be responsible with that power; and that is something that we have to be vigilant about.
Of course, I’m not saying that the only responsible way to use your powers (whatever they may be) is to become a vigilante/superhero and fight crime or something - though Peter’s guilt and circumstances seems to have driven him to do so.3
Great power isn't just getting superpowers - there are many forms of “power” and many different ways to use it “responsibly”.
Spider-Man writs this lesson large and applies it to superhero fiction, but it can be applied to everyday life too.
In your life, many of you will find yourselves with "great power"at some point or another. Being the leader of a country, a mayor of a small town, a doctor, a teacher, a manager, a parent, etc. - all of these and more are roles and situations that will place "great power" in you, even if only temporarily.
What I’m saying is that it’s a CHOICE that you have to consciously make to use your “great power” for good - that you have to remember to shoulder your “great responsibility”.
That, I think, is the lesson to learn - to remember to choose to use your great power responsibly and for good.
After all…
“With great power there must also come -- great responsibility!”
As always, thank you for reading!
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Bye for now!
Update (2025-02-08): I came across
’s look at Spider-Man’s origin story and really enjoyed it, so I wanted to share that with you all as well!Side Rant
All of that may have sounded obvious to some of you, especially to those of you who know Spider-Man’s origin story well - to the point where some of you might even argue that the shortened “With great power comes great responsibility.” is perfectly fine on its own.
But that’s because you know the story well.
The people who don’t know the story (or know it well) wouldn’t have the context to properly decipher what the shortened version means.
And this isn’t unique to just this proverb.
Two other proverbs/aphorisms that come to mind with similar issues would be:
A friend in need is a friend indeed.
This means that a friend who is there in your time of need is a friend indeed - not that a friend who’s in need is a friend indeed.
You can't have your cake and eat it.
This means that you can’t eat your cake and then still have it afterwards - there are many ways to misconstrue this, though the most common way leads to confusion about why you can’t eat the cake that you have.
Again, the meaning of these proverbs/aphorisms may be obvious to those of you who grew up with them, but they are not obvious at all to people who haven’t grown up with a language/culture that uses them.
So, please don’t assume that meaning behind these proverbs/aphorism are obvious just because you know them well.
(Yes, this side rant is here because of people that I’ve talked to who’ve stubbornly refused to understand that not everyone grew up with the same culture/language/context as they did. 😅)
And that leads into the second part of this side rant, which is that this is a good reason for why Spider-Man’s origin story is worth retelling, even if “everyone already knows it” - learning the story that actually goes with the proverb makes it easier to understand, parse, and remember it; rather than just hearing people say “With great power comes great responsibility.” ad nauseam without context.
Which is why it REALLY irked me when Captain American: Civil War and Spider-Man: Homecoming (as much as I really liked those movies) implied that Peter already learned this lesson when what is implied to be Uncle Ben’s death happened without properly showing it… Only then for Peter to have to (re-?)learn it in Spider-Man: No Way Home and then have no mention of his own Uncle Ben ever, even when the other two Spideys mention their Uncle Bens…
In its first appearance, the proverb simply shows up in a narration box, as seen in the panel. Attributing the line to Uncle Ben is a later development; and what really solidified it in the public consciousness as something that Uncle Ben tries to impart upon Peter was the Spider-Man (2002) film. Here are some links to the history of the line:
You can check the Wikipedia article for examples of precursors.
It may seem like the only thing that Peter can do with his powers is to be a superhero, but that’s not true. There are plenty of other ways that someone can use powers such as superstrength, super agility, and spider-sense responsibly and for good besides being a superhero; not to mention that Peter also has a genius-level intellect when it comes to science. Though, Peter also lives in a world where superheroics are more accepted and considered separate from vigilantism - so being a superhero might have been the more “natural” conclusion to make.