'Spider-Man' Film Series Reboots

*Originally published on 1/29/10




Comic fans all across the internet have heard by now that Sony is ditching the sequel to Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy and has decided to reboot the franchise. I was a bit confused by this move, Raimi's work has proven successful, even the latest film, while receiving some negative backlash did extraordinarily well at the box office. With the general thought that studios care about money more than anything, you'd think that they'd want to keep the machine going.

From what I can gather, they wanted the film out by a certain date and Raimi wasn't going to be able to do it, so they let him go. When he left, a good chunk of the cast went with him. This is really bizarre, studios change release dates all the time, and it's not like the release date was closing in. The movie wasn't set to come out until 2012. They were even casting people in the villain roles, so this was a rather drastic left turn.

Since they let the director and cast go, it makes sense to state upfront that this is a new series of films as opposed to another sequel. At least Sony was smart enough to avoid the same mistake the Batman films made. If they go with a new director and a new cast, then rebooting is the most logical way to go. One of the biggest mistakes Superman Returns made was tying it into the old Superman films.

That being said, I really don't want to see another origin story. We've already seen the origin and don't need it retold in another movie. OK, the first Spider-Man film had its share of flaws, but it's about as faithful an adaptation of Spidey's origin as you could ask for. Even more importantly is the fact that moviegoers have been flooded with origin story after origin story the past few years; they're pretty sick of it by now. It makes sense for most characters, but with a character like Spider-Man, it's not like people don't know his background. I don't really see how they can present the origin in a different way than Raimi did. It would have the same plot points and would just come off as a rehash.

I would suggest doing what the recent Incredible Hulk film did and show the origin over the opening credits and then just move on to the story.

There are some advantages to this reboot though. A lot of people hated Kirsten Dunst's portrayal of Mary Jane. I didn't really have a problem with it, but there's bee a lot of bashing on her. Also, since they are rebooting, we can get a more deserving portrayal of Venom. He really got screwed over in the third film. We can also get Gwen Stacy introduced earlier and give her a bigger role seeing as she was a bit character in the overall trilogy.

With the announcement that this would tackle high school issues to appeal to a wider demographic, cynics have stated that this will be more "emo" to attempt to cash in on Twilight's success. Why? The franchise was one of the most successful ones in film history and people actually bashed on the film for being too emo, so you're going to fix that by making it more emo? Why try to cash in on Twilight's success anyway? Putting aside people's thoughts on the franchise itself (because in this case it really is rather irrelevant) you don't need to appeal to a wider demographic. I'd say that the demographic you were reaching for on the last go around was working pretty darn well.

As I said before, Spider-Man 3 has experienced some backlash, but it wasn't like Batman and Robin or Superman IV where hitting the reset button was necessary. As bad as it was watching Peter strut, it didn't reach that point of no return, not for me anyway. They could have easily salvaged the franchise and kept it going.

I'm sad to see Raimi go, I'm a fan of his work and I was curious to see what direction he was going to take. As it is, I have no problem taking a "wait and see" approach before rushing to judgment. My only real beef is with the idea of retelling the origin story as that is wholly unnecessary and redundant.