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"So, let me get this straight. Thirteen of New York's finest versus one guy in a unitard. Is that right?"
―George Stacy[src]

George Stacy was the police captain of the NYPD and the father of Gwen Stacy.

Biography[]

The Amazing Spider-Man[]

When Peter Parker begins hunting down his Uncle Ben's killer and making himself known to the public, Stacy immediately dislikes the mysterious costumed crimefighter.

Later, Captain Stacy opens the door to Gwen's room and finds her talking to Peter Parker, whom she had invited to her house for dinner earlier that day. Although they were not doing anything but talking, Stacy obviously isn't thrilled about the picture, and becomes suspicious about Parker. At dinner, when the topic of Spider-Man comes up, Stacy discusses with his family and Peter about how he will capture the masked menace; Peter defends Spider-Man as "doing something the police can't", and begins to accidentally anger Stacy, further ruining his first impression. However, dinner is suddenly interrupted when the Lizard is spotted rampaging through the Williamsburg Bridge, and Stacy immediately goes out to hunt down the monster.

After Spider-Man saves the lives of several people and fights off the Lizard on the bridge, Stacy's hatred toward Spider-Man remains undeterred, and the next morning, he issues an arrest warrant for "the masked vigilante known as 'Spider-Man'." He continually gets New York's finest police officers to go after him, but to no avail.

Heading back to his office at the NYPD's headquarters, Peter arrives there and tells him that Dr. Curt Connors is going to turn all of New York into powerful man-lizards, and that Stacy has to help him stop him. However, Stacy, who was already disapproving of Peter from the night before, has the cops escort him out of the building, refusing to believe what Peter says. However, after contemplating it, he reluctantly has an officer run everything they have on file about Connors.

After helping clean up the battle between Spider-Man and the Lizard at the school, Stacy resumes the hunt for both of them.

That night, Lizard launches a biological attack on New York City, and while Stacy orders a squad to stop it, Stacy himself instead personally leads a chase on Spider-Man. When Spider-Man is caught in the sight of the police, Stacy's helicopter stuns Spider-Man out of the air. The cops put Spider-Man in handcuffs, but when Stacy pulls off his mask, Spider-Man quickly beats up the cops and is about to escape until Stacy gets up and holds him at gunpoint, forcing Spider-Man to freeze. Realizing the situation, Spider-Man turns around and reveals himself to be Peter Parker. Stunned, Stacy is taken aback by the revelation, but Peter convinces him that he has to stop the Lizard before it reaches Oscorp where Gwen is, and Stacy reluctantly lets him go. He then heads over to Oscorp, where he runs into Gwen. He reveals to her that he knows about her boyfriend's secret, and she gives him an antidote that will cure the Lizard toxin and pleads him to make sure Peter's okay.

Eventually, Stacy somehow makes it near the top of Oscorp Tower and assists Spider-Man in defeating the Lizard. He gives Peter the antidote from Gwen and buys him time by fighting the Lizard himself. While Peter goes to switch the lizard toxin with the antidote, Stacy fires his shotgun at Lizard, but the monstrous reptile quickly heals from his wounds and attacks the Captain, mortally wounding him. Peter successfully releases the antidote into the air, but falls from the collapsing tower, and is saved by Connors, who is beginning to transform back to his normal form. Peter returns to Stacy, who is bleeding heavily. In his final moments, Stacy tells Peter that he was wrong, and that New York does need Spider-Man. However, he warns Peter that being a superhero will often put the ones closest to him in danger and that it will come with sacrifices. He then forces Peter to promise that he will leave Gwen out of it, so that she is not harmed by Peter's status as Spider-Man. Peter agrees, and mourns as Stacy dies.

Later, Stacy has a funeral where he is honored for his work as New York's top cop, and Gwen notes that everyone, even Flash, shows up, except for Peter. She arrives at his apartment, and Peter tells her that he can no longer be with her, and she realizes that her dad made him promise that. The next day in school, the two sadly ignore each other, until, in class, the teacher scolds Peter for being late, and when he says it won't happen again, she tells him not to making promises he cannot keep. Sitting behind Gwen, Peter quietly and slyly replies, "Yeah, but those are the best kind," which causes Gwen to smile, meaning that, for better or worse, Peter is going to stop honoring his promise to Captain Stacy and start dating Gwen again.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2[]

George Stacy appeared often as visions and hallucinations to Spider-Man, haunting him for the promise that he did not keep about his daughter. Gwen's death at the hands of the Green Goblin proved that Stacy was right, because Peter did not keep his distance from her and thus Gwen was killed by Spider-Man's enemy after finding out that Peter was Spider-Man.

Character traits[]

"I stand for law and order. Okay? I wear a badge. This guy wears a mask like an outlaw. He's hunting down criminals that all look the same like he's got some sort of personal vendetta. But he's not protecting innocent people, Mr. Parker."
―George Stacy talks to Peter Parker about Spider-Man[src]

An esteemed police officer for over twenty years, Captain Stacy was the public face of the NYPD who leads the department's investigation into Spider-Man's vigilantism. The only thing Captain Stacy vows to protect more than the city is his family, and particularly his only daughter, Gwen, assistant to Curt Connors in Oscorp and girlfriend of Peter Parker.

Captain Stacy was a very lawful person, and thus naturally disaproves of Spider-Man's attacks against criminals, especially after Spider-Man unknowingly botched one of their undercover operations by subduing a car thief. However, while Stacy's views of justice and law-enforcement were quite antagonistic toward Spider-Man, his criticism did help make Peter re-evaluate his personal vendetta against his uncle's killer and realize that his crusades are not as heroic as he thought they were.

Stacy was very strict with his own beliefs, which made him quite stubborn, judgemental, and critical. He wasn't wrong when he initially accused Spider-Man of being a troublemaker motivated by a selfish vendetta. But neither was he open or willing to change his mind, not even after questioning witnesses from the bridge incident, where he surely must have heard that Spider-Man saved the cars and the young son of the only witness to hear of Spider-Man's name.

Even as the Lizard recently attacked his daughter's school and was about to threaten the whole city, Stacy still considered both the Lizard and Spider-Man menaces, and willingly divided his forces to capture both, rather than concentrating on the clearly more dangerous Lizard. It wasn't until the very end when he finally allowed himself to understand Spider-Man, after unmasking him and listening to his resolve to save Stacy's daughter and the city.

Relationships[]

Appearances/Actors[]

Behind the scenes[]

  • Denis Leary was originally unfamiliar with Spider-Man, describing himself as "more of a Batman guy." However, he nontheless accepted the role and did some research to learn about his character. He recalls that when he met a good friend of his for the first time, his friend, Jeff Garlin, a Spider-Man fan, said that Leary reminded him of George Stacy.

Trivia[]

  • A series of viral marketing campaign videos have spread across the internet, which are based around Leary's character. One video showed a fake newscast, where Leary, in-character as Stacy, was interviewed by a reporter, and expressed his negativity towards Spider-Man while encouraging the citizens of New York to call a special police-operated hotline if they see the crimefighter. In reality, the hotline was fake, as fans who called it were told over the phone that the number had expired.
  • George Stacy's appearance in the film is based off of John Stacy, the character's counterpart in Marvel's Ultimate Universe, who was much younger in appearance compared to the versions of George Stacy from the Raimi series and the mainstream Spider-Man comics who was portrayed as a much older character.
  • Denis Leary was intended to return as the ghost of George Stacy once again in The Amazing Spider-Man 3, this time joined by Emma Stone as his daughter Gwen's ghost, now both of them haunting Spider-Man throughout the movie as the guilt of her death on top of his would continue to plague him despite fighting against the Sinister Six, and that meeting Mary Jane Watson and befriending her (and eventually beginning a new relationship with her) would help him to recover and move on from it. A proposed plot point would be Peter developing an experimental scientific method of resurrecting the dead in hope of bringing Stacy and Gwen back to life, but was dropped because it was uncharacteristic of Peter "to play God through science".

Gallery[]

The Amazing Spider-Man[]

The Amazing Spider-Man 2[]

See Also[]

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