Some version of “Spider Man breaks web” is all over the news today. “Spider-Man breaks the web,” said ABC. “Fans Break the Internet After ‘Spider-Man 3’ Trailer Leaks” says Inside the Magic. “No Way Home breaks the web with the official trailer,” says Celeb Mix. “Marvel Breaks the Internet with Release of Spider-Man,” says Epic Stream; and “Spider-Man breaks the web” echoes Yahoo News.
In fact, no, Spider-Man did not break the web, nor the Internet. The Internet, and the web (a subsection of the Internet), are not broken, have not been taken down, and have not been broken – at least not by Spider-Man or the Spider-Man trailer.
But wow, that’s some great hype, isn’t it?
The real story is that the ‘Spider-Man 3, No Way Home’, trailer was “leaked” (we put that in quotes as for all we know Sony and Marvel were behind the leak, or at least looked the other way with a “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” when it was ‘leaked’), as it’s generated some great – if misleading – press.
However, it’s that last bit, the “misleading”, with which we take issue. We surely aren’t the only ones who spent time wondering, and then Googling and doing other research to determine, exactly how the web was broken. In fact, while one can imagine that “breaks the web” was intended to be a cute play on words (“web”.. “spiders”.. Spider-Man.. get it?), and so can be taken a couple of ways, “breaks the Internet” can really only be taken one way.
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At first we imagined that it must have meant that a site went up with the trailer, and that so many fans went to the site that the site went down. (After all, how else can you interpret “Fans Break the Internet After ‘Spider-Man 3’ Trailer Leaks”?) But there is literally nothing, anywhere, that supports this assertion – not even in the article with that title!
In fact, the closest thing to anything being “broken” (and it’s a far stretch) is Sony having gone after and taken down some instances of the trailer being posted online. According to Hollywood Reporter “Some links to the alleged trailer were taken down and slapped with a copyright statement. ‘The media has been disabled in response to a report from the copyright owner,’ the message read.” This almost certainly refers to a DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) takedown notice. Kudos to the Hollywood Reporter for not jumping on the “broke the Internet” bandwagon!
In case you’re wondering, “Spider-Man, No Way Home” is scheduled to open in December.
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