A Homophobic Joke Was Cut From the TV Version of the Original Spider-Man Film

With great power comes great responsibility, and with responsibility comes the understanding that some jokes are just too bad to keep.

A homophobic joke has been edited out of the original 2002 Spider-Man by one British television channel, letting LGBTQ+ fans enjoy the movie just that much more than usual.

The change was noticed by a viewer watching the original Spider-Man movie on British channel ITV2.

"They cut out Peter Parker's homophobia in Spider-Man one on ITV2, watch this," the excited viewer said in a video he shared on Twitter.

The video shows a famous scene from the movie where Peter is using his new spider powers as a wrestler and he jumps up onto the cage surrounding the ring and mocks his opponent, a bearded wrestler named Bone Saw.

"That's a cute outfit, did your husband give it to you," Peter asks in the original cut, but here, he simply says it's a cute outfit before flipping off the cage wall to fight the wrestler.

Is this political correctness gone too far? No, it's just a bad joke taken out of a good movie to make the movie better. In fact, we'd love to see this happen more! So many movies from this era have one or two bad homophobic or transphobic jokes that could really use an edit button.

Plenty of Twitter users have also pointed out that the scene had already aged so badly it had become a meme, with Bone Saw calling Peter Parker out for his homophobia and telling him "you're on the wrong side of history, Spider-Man."

Now, history has proven Bone Saw right. Will other tasteless and humorless homophobic jokes soon also be cut from otherwise beloved movies? Once again, history will be the judge.

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