Marvel's Spider-Man 2 features Tobey Macguire's iconic Venom suit, and everyone's planning the same homage

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No, it's not Bully Macguire

Spider-Man
(Image credit: Columbia Pictures)

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 was the pretty much the main event during last night's PlayStation State of Play, and while Insomniac was keen to show off the game's huge array of suits, one in particular has jumped out to players.

That would be Tobey Macguire's Symbiote suit from the oft-maligned Spider-Man 3. It's a blink-and-you-miss it moment as the game cycles through a whole suit of potential looks for Peter, but plenty of eagle-eyed fans spotted the iconic look as Spidey bears down on an unfortunate baddie.

In the years since Spider-Man 3, Tom Hardy has lent their talents to Venom in two films (plus a tiny multiversal cameo in Tom Holland's No Way Home), but the final piece in Sam Raimi's trilogy is the only other time that the symbiote has appeared in live action. That film spawned the Bully Macguire meme, lending Peter Parker's goth look an enduring popularity, but the lack of live-action Venom means that it was almost a dead certainty that this suit would show up.

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On social media, as well as celebrating the appearance of the Raimi Venom suit, plenty of fans are already planning what they'll do when they unlock it. During the movie, once Peter starts to realize the abilities offered by his slimy new outfit, there's a scene where he clings to the side of a skyscraper, inspecting the new look and testing out his powers. It's an iconic moment in an otherwise little-loved film, and it does seem like the kind of thing it would be fun to replicate in-game.

While the version of the suit that fans are excited to see is linked firmly to Peter, it's pretty clear that he won't have access to it throughout the entire game. As is pretty much par for the spider-course, Peter will eventually part ways with the symbiote, at which point it'll be picked up by someone else. For a while, the identity of Venom was one of Marvel's Spider-Man 2's hottest debates, but after a trailer released earlier this summer, that debate is pretty much over.

Eddie Brock isn't Venom in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 - and that's a good thing.

Ali Jones
Ali Jones
Managing Editor, News

I'm GamesRadar's Managing Editor for news, shaping the news strategy across the team. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.