The Nacelle Company and Vice continue to explore the best-known but least understood pop culture phenomena with Icons Unearthed: Spider-Man. The new six-episode season of Icons Unearthed explores the Spider-Man cinematic universe, largely focusing on Sam Raimi’s influential trilogy but continuing through Marvel Studios’ 2021 hit Spider-Man: No Way Home. As with other seasons, Icons Unearthed: Spider-Man is full of interviews with a range of people involved in the wall-crawler’s transition to the big screen, and features stunt performers, special effects artists, and more.

As with all other series seasons, Icons Unearthed: Spider-Man was directed by The Nacelle Company founder Brian Volk-Weiss. Volk-Weiss chose the subject in part after the success of Icons Unearthed: Marvel, which told the story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe from before the dawn of Marvel Studios up through the release of the first Ant-Man movie. With Spider-Man’s film future uncertain after Spider-Man: No Way Home, it’s a perfect time to revisit the journey the character has taken so far.

In conversation with Screen Rant, Volk-Weiss weighed in on his favorite interviews from the series. Admittedly not a lifelong fan of the character, Volk-Weiss also discussed what he believes is behind Spider-Man’s success and revealed the movie that won him over. Plus, he lamented the fact that Madame Web came out too late to be included in the documentary series.

Brian Volk-Weiss Set Out To Figure Out Why Spider-Man Was “The Most Popular Marvel Character”

Screen Rant: I grew up with the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies and, before watching this, I didn’t realize how innovative they were. Was finding that out the thing that made you want to make this? If not, why Spider-Man?

Brian Volk-Weiss: A couple of things. The purpose of Icons Unearthed is to take iconic things and dig in. With The Toys That Made Us or The Movies That Made Us, one hundred percent of those shows are things that I am very, very, passionate about. With Icons Unearthed, however, there are certain things we’re covering that I’m not a huge, crazy fan of. It’s not that I don’t like them, but the idea is that it shouldn’t be what Brian Volk-Weiss finds iconic and cool. Our job is to cover that which is iconic from popular culture. We knew that one of our best-performing seasons was Marvel, so it made it very clear when Vice picked up six more seasons that we should do some more superhero stuff.

I am a huge Batman fan. Anybody who knows anything about my collection talks about Star Wars and Star Trek, but the third biggest sub-collection I have is Batman. I’ve got almost no Spider-Man, but I obviously knew how big it was. Part of me was like, “I want to learn what’s the big deal about this guy.” I had seen all the movies in the theaters, but I never understood why Spider-Man was the most popular Marvel character going back 90 years. And that’s really what we set out to figure out.

To me, it seems like like it’s the fact he’s so relatable as a person. Is there more to it than that?

Brian Volk-Weiss: It’s funny—everybody goes to that relatable word. Batman is a billionaire. Superman is an alien. Spider-Man is relatable. And yes, of course, he’s relatable compared to an alien or a billionaire. I get that.

But what I found, and this is just my own opinion, is that it really is the comedy. I read Spider-Man number one. If you read Batman number one, Superman number one, Black Panther number one, Wonder Woman number one, et cetera, they are so serious. Spider-Man, issue one, page one, he’s cracking jokes. He’s clumsy. He’s f***ing s*** up. It’s not just that he’s relatable in that he’s a human kid in high school—he was a goofball. And that, I think, is really what made him pop.

Volk-Weiss Credits Kevin Feige For “All-New Spider-Man” & Marvel’s Success

Did you have a moment that was the most interesting for you to explore?

Brian Volk-Weiss: I’ve seen every single one of these movies in the theaters, but until this season was greenlit, I had never seen them again. One of the things that’s really cool about making documentaries about these topics is [that] when you’re in the theater or watching the show, you feel certain things, but you don’t know why. And I’ll never forget watching the first Tom Holland Spider-Man, and it just felt so different. Everything felt so special, and I was like, “This is all-new Spider-Man, this is great,” but I couldn’t tell why.

Then, years later, I’m sitting there interviewing somebody and you find out the first thing Kevin Feige basically said when he worked out the deal with Sony [was], “Get him out of New York. Get him out of the school.” It was only when I heard that when I was like, “Yeah, every single one of these things place in New York in the school.” It hadn’t even occurred to me. I feel like that’s what makes Kevin Feige so successful—he’s got these great instincts where it’s like, “No one noticed that before him?”

That was the other thing with Andrew Garfield. I love both of his films. I know a lot of people consider his second one to be severely flawed, and I’m not going to say it’s not, but he was great. But if there’s any knock I would give on those movies, it’s that they literally just rebooted the first three. It was Andrew Garfield and not Tobey Maguire.

As great as Tom Holland is and Zendaya is, and Keaton… Jon Watts is obviously a genius, [but it’s] just making it look different. Seeing Peter Parker in Italy. It’s the small things [like that] that I think make Spider-Man, Spider-Man.

I feel like there’s a recurring theme in this that Sony has struggled to manage this property. Do you feel like you’ve gained any insight as to why that has been the case?

Brian Volk-Weiss: Kevin Feige loves Marvel. When he’s sitting there reading a script or in an editing bay and something’s not working, he can say, “Hey, this isn’t working. But [in] issue 274, there’s a great moment where John Doe looks at Jane Doe, and then the roof explodes. Let’s look at that and see if that will fix our problem.” The problem with almost every other IP in all of Hollywood—and this changed with [James] Gunn taking over DC—is that for the most part, people who are put in charge of these IPs can’t do that.

We are now starting to do our own stuff. We have RoboForce in production. We have Biker Mice from Mars in production. Biker Mice from Mars still has a very passionate animated fan base, so we did something that I don’t think is done very often—we hired experts. I knew my own limitations with the IP, and I couldn’t do with Biker Mice what I can do with RoboForce, which we’re making up from whole cloth.

What Sony, I think, needed to do was have somebody who, in their sleep, could fix creative problems anywhere from the screenplay stage to the editing bay. And they just didn’t have that.

“I Worship That Guy”: Volk-Weiss Details His Favorite Icons Unearthed: Spider-Man Interview

Do you have a favorite interview from this season?

Brian Volk-Weiss: Yes—very easy to answer. Todd McFarlane. If we had interviewed anyone from Obama to Steven Spielberg, I’d probably still go with Todd McFarlane. I worship that guy.

I interviewed him for the Star Trek episode of The Toys That Made Us, and it was one of my favorite interviews of all time. What I loved about it was he took a topic that is—within reason—the closest thing I have to religion, and he made me look at it differently. The Enterprise is probably my favorite human-designed anything, and after I interviewed him, I looked at it differently.

What he did for me with Spider-Man was the opposite. I’m very tight with Star Trek. I wasn’t that tight with Spider-Man, but hearing McFarlane’s point of view on Spider-Man, Peter Parker, the differences between Emma Stone, Zendaya, and Kirsten Dunst… he’s such a genius.

“We Would Have Done 10 Episodes On Madame Web”: On The Movies That Didn’t Make Icons Unearthed: Spider-Man

To that, were you tempted to branch out into the Venom movies or the other surrounding films?

Brian Volk-Weiss: Let me give you an official answer—no we were not. We only get six episodes per season, except for Marvel, so you really have to contain these. The audience needs structure.

But I will tell you this, and here I go again getting myself in trouble. There is nothing I love more than a good bad movie—except for a really good good movie, of course. My favorite good bad movie—and I watch it about once a year—is Batman & Robin. In 1997 dollars, it was like a $150 million high school play. The closest anybody has ever come to knocking that movie off its pedestal? F***ing Madame Web. Have you seen this work of art?

I went with my friends and had the best time.

Brian Volk-Weiss: It’s genius. We had already locked that season, but had I seen Madame Web, we would have done 10 episodes on Madame Web. I loved it. Have you ever seen a superhero movie where only in the midst of the end credits, everybody gets their powers?

About Icons Unearthed: Spider-Man

To get Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s iconic webslinger to the big screen, Marvel had to give up control of their flagship hero to another studio. Icons Unearthed: Spider-man tells the story of the tug of war between Marvel and Sony and how two studios found a way to share the character and the profits.