I'm curious- what REALLY killed Gwen Stacy?

I have been reading a book entitled "The Physics Of Superheroes" and the part that deals with the death of Gwen Stacy who inexplicably breaks her neck whilst falling from the Brooklyn Birdge(albeit being hurled off by the original Green Goblin Norman Osborne) intrigued me enough to watch the movie version of Spider-Man (2002) in which Mary Jane Watson( played by Kirsten Dunst) was likewise thrown off the bridge(but fortunately she survived)?

I have never quite understood how that could be physiologically possible. Had ms Stacy struck the water then the impact would have been enough to break her neck( at some impacts, water can be as hard as steel) but Spider- Man caught her BEFORE she struck the water. My guess is that Ms Stacy had unbeknownst to her a heart condition that even she didn't know she had( possibly congenital) and the shock of falling was enough to trigger a fatal myocradial infarction- the breaking of her neck was simply dramatic license.

anybody think as I do?

Terry

Actually I am pretty sure that when she abruptly stopped from Spider-Man catching her that the whiplash from the fall broke her neck.

When it comes to that Spider-man movie,I hate it....and I guess that that is one of the errors of the movie.

This. The writer, when questioned even explicitly stated that it was the whiplash that snapped her neck and killed her. The fact that Gwen was unconscious at the time only made things worse. However in a lot of reprints Marvel has actually removed the "snap" sound effect from the panel where it happens for some reason, most likely because somebody back at Marvel thought the idea of Peter unknowingly killing his girlfriend whilst trying to save her was too dark.

Long story short; Peter accidentally snapping Gwen's neck is canon.