 Webb described the film as " a story about a kid who grows up looking for his father and finds himself . " Both Webb and star Garfield described Parker as an outsider by choice , someone hard to get close to . As in the early comic books , the character " is a science whiz . If you look back to the early Stan Lee and Steve Ditko comics , he 's a nerd with big glasses , " said Webb . He explained " the idea of what a nerd is has changed in 40 or 50 years . Nerds are running the world . Andrew Garfield made a movie [ called The Social Network ] about it . ... What was important in those early comics was this notion that Peter Parker is an outsider and how we define that in a contemporary context . " Garfield compared his Spider @-@ Man façade as a metaphor for internet anonymity , saying , " You feel the power of it , the power of not being seen , the power of the mask . Peter becomes witty when he 's got that protective layer . It 's like he 's on a message board . He 's got the anonymity of the Internet within that suit , and he can say whatever the @ # ! * % he likes , and he can get away with anything . " Garfield tried to explore Parker as an orphan , whom he feels " are the strongest human beings on the planet . " He said Parker is " a human hero [ who ] goes through all of the same struggles that we all have gone through , especially the skinny ones [ who ] want more power than they feel they have . " He believes Parker represents " a very inspiring , aspirational character that symbolizes goodness — and how difficult it is to be good — but how worth it it is . " Rhys Ifans compared this film to William Shakespeare 's Hamlet on the grounds that Spider @-@ Man can be redone over and over in different ways . He felt that they are similar in that they both represent meaningful archetypal young men grappling with the loss of their father . Critics like Claudia Puig of USA Today felt that Garfield 's character as the superhero " embodies the nerdy Parker , the anguished fatherless teen and the cocky super @-@ hero in equal doses " . Boyd <unk> of Variety noted that Garfield 's character as Spider @-@ Man makes an interesting hero in the film because of how it establishes early on that Peter 's growing pains along with his search for an identity are common to any teenager and that " his struggles involve real people — and real lives . " 
