Spider-reboot, spider-reboot, does whatever's already been done

[seriousfic]

So more news twinkles out of Hollywood regarding Spider-M4n and Spider-Man .5. Rumor has it that Raimi's version would've gone something like this. Peter Parker gets into a love triangle with MJ (duh) and the Vulture's daughter (presumably Felicia Hardy/Black Cat/the Vultress from the rumors), leading to him dumping MJ for the new girl (!). Then the Vulture is killed in a confrontation with Spider-Man and Felicia dumps Peter, prompting him to give up being Spider-Man in a funk. The end.

(prozacpark version: CANON PETER/FELICIA.)

Does that sound wrong to anyone else? Say what you will about Raimi, but he's always seemed to have a happy, upbeat, soft underbelly for Spider-Man and been an ardent Peter/MJ shipper, to the point where they could only break up if MJ was threatened with bodily harm and Peter was under the influence of an alien lifeform. And that's a pretty dark ending. I mean really, think about Spider-Man 3.

Studio execs: We want Peter Parker to be dark, anguished, and violent.

Raimi: DID SOMEONE SAY DISCO DANCING?

Plus, for someone who's been as adamant about advancing Peter's story as Raimi, how much sense does it make to rehash Peter's arcs from the last two movies? Maybe it was meant to be the first half of back-to-back movies, but if reports are right that the studio was planning to have Spider-Man 4 be the last movie and then reboot the franchise from James Vanderbilt's script, does that sound like the grand finale of Raimi's story?

For my money, they could've at least done something like Peter abandoning his civilian life to be Spider-Man 24/7, or have him grappling with marriage/pregnancy. Maybe have the second of the back-to-back movies feature the Sinister Six for an absolutely insane finale. With the fourth movie doing the heavy lifting of introducing some of the new antagonists (you've already got Doc Ock and Sandman, all you would need is compelling reasons for them to want a piece of Spidey), the fifth could wrap everything up. Then if you wanted to do a reboot, you could time-skip ahead, recast Peter and MJ, and make a Spider-Girl movie. Ha ha, it's funny because it would never happen.

But just in case you believe the rumors and are really glad Sony isn't going in that direction, well...

Marc Webb has finalized a deal to helm the new "Spider-Man" movie for Columbia. (read: We gave an action-adventure franchise to a music-video director who did one good rom-com that everyone liked because of the script.)

The plan for the movie is to be in the $80 million range (read: less than half what they spent on Spider-Man 2, so goodbye fights against Doc Ock, hello Peter Parker staring out a window at the rain) and feature a cast of relative unknowns (read: people who can't act). And the story will be pared down to center on a high school kid who is dealing with the knowledge that his uncle died even though the teen had the power to stop it. (read: that stuff that Tobey Maguire dealt with in ten minutes in the first movie)

The touchstone for the new movie will not be the 1960s comics, which were the inspiration behind the movies by Raimi, who grew on up on them, but rather this past decade's "Ultimate Spider-Man" comics by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley where the villain-fighting took a back seat to the high school angst. (read: And you thought Tarantino liked talking head scenes)

Comments

[rann.livejournal.com]

Sounds like the scripts were starting to be meddled with by Joey Cheese, which no doubt helped prompt Raimi and everyone else's departure. So Joe went out and found a less famous, less established, younger director he could have more control over, and inexperienced actors that he could tell to listen to him and not the director and who would actually do that.

So look for MJ's dialog in the reboot movie to be about as natural as a white guy's in a Spike Lee movie. "RRRARRGLARRRRSNRRRL!"

[mcity.livejournal.com]

>Studio execs: We want Peter Parker to be dark, anguished, and violent.
>Raimi: DID SOMEONE SAY DISCO DANCING?

Rumor is that he didn't want Venom in the film in the first place. I suppose that would make the scene in question a small bit of rebellion.

>Marc Webb has finalized a deal to helm the new "Spider-Man" movie for Columbia. (read: We gave an action-adventure franchise to a music-video director who did one good rom-com that everyone liked because of the script.)

My brother laughed when I suggested they hired him because of his punny name. Oh, how he laughed.