Yes, boys and girls, it’s rant time again.
There are some news announcements that just make me turn red with anger. Righteous anger. Anger I have no right to. I have a really hard time keeping such emotion bottled up and under control. The only way is to spew it electronically. Thankfully it doesn’t happen all that often—at least not when it concerns science fiction and fantasy.
Today’s rant is courtesy of Columbia Pictures and Marvel Comics.
Last week, it was announced that Sam Raimi would be leaving (or pushed out) the highly-lucrative Spider-Man franchise. Columbia decided instead of finding a new director and producing a story that was set in the already existing framework of the Spider-Man trilogy, they would reboot the origin story and set it while Peter is still in high school.
Yesterday, it was released that director Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer, numerous music videos) would be helming the revamp / reboot of the Spider-Man franchise.
The announcement yesterday is what ultimately threw me over the edge into insanity.
Columbia Pictures president Matt Tolmach is quoted thus:
“At its core, Spider-Man is a small, intimate human story about an everyday teenager that takes place in an epic super-human world. The key for us as we sought a new director was to identify filmmakers who could give sharp focus to Peter Parker’s life. We wanted someone who could capture the awe of being in Peter’s shoes so the audience could experience his sense of discovery while giving real heart to the emotion, anxiety, and recklessness of that age and coupling all of that with the adrenaline of Spider-Man’s adventure.”
First of all, nice run on-like sentence there, bucko.
Second, what you just described, Mr. Tolmach, is exactly what you had been getting with Sam Raimi—minus the focus on high school for all three movies, of course.
It is unbelievable that a movie studio wants to reboot a franchise so quickly. Spider-Man was released in theaters in 2002. 2002! Since Sam Raimi was giving Mr. Tolmach everything that he wanted with one exception, why would that one exception force his hand to reboot a franchise so soon?
A similar thing kind of happened two years ago with Ang Lee’s Hulk and Louis Leterrier’s The Incredible Hulk. But rather than the latter director and writers telling the origin story again, they wove enough of it together to make it work without pissing people off who had only just seen it a few years before. As a consequence, The Incredible Hulk was a far better movie than Hulk ever dreamed of being.
But Spider-Man? Really?! Hulk was a huge disappointment to movie goers and comic book readers. It makes sense to revamp it, especially with the Avengers movie project on the go. But why Spider-Man? The trilogy was hugely successful. People loved it, with the possible exception of 3, and the reason people loved it had to do with the crazy life of Peter Parker as he tries balancing being a hero with being a normal young man. They loved it because of his funny lines (keep the change!). They loved it because of the conflict between the adult relationships because they were once there too at one point.
And of course, they loved it for the heart of Peter Parker as he couldn’t stop from wooing Mary Jane Watson.
So why return to Peter Parker’s high school when we’ve been there, done that?
Enter sarcasm.
Oh, I get it. We are in need of producing a film that capitalizes on the High School Musical crowd.
No, wait. Those fans are already in college. And most people hated high school anyway. That plan won’t work. Let me see…? Hmm…?
Oh, I know! We’ll try to grab a whole new generation of movie watchers by putting Peter Parker back into high school!
Brilliant!
Well, for this movie goer, I don’t want to see that. I love Spider-Man. I have hundreds of Spider-Man comic books. I know the character inside and out. What Raimi did with Spider-Man and especially with Spider-Man 2 is exactly what I wanted my Spider-Man to be. One who grows with every scene. One whose hopes are my own, even now.
Throwing him into another origin story and putting him back in high school is just a money grab, pure a simple. And with an untested director at that! Sure, 500 Days of Summer is a great movie, but I can’t help thinking its the brilliant writing and not the directing of Marc Webb with that one. So not only are we rebooting a recent movie property, but we are doing it with an untested director at helm who has never guided a CGI action movie.
Aces!
At least with X-Men: First Class “rebooted” by Bryan Singer, we’ll get to see new scenes and character interactions we didn’t get a chance to see in that trilogy.
With Spider-Man, it will be “seen it, done it.”
I’m tired, Hollywood. Tired of the reboots. Tired of the remakes. Tired of watching the same stories with the same characters with the same outcome. Is this all you have, Hollywood? With so many creative geniuses in the world, you are reduced to starting established properties over again?
Undoubtedly a great many of you won’t agree with me. That’s okay. I would just rather see something new and different on the silver screen than the same tired properties trying to make up for some imagined loss of bottom line that didn’t actually happen.
My spider-sense is tingling like a migraine.
Columbia Pictures won’t be getting my money in 2012.
This sounds q bit like the One More Day fiasco that’s currently going on with Spidey in the comics. The EIC wanted to make him young again, so he ordered a “magic retcon” (he doesn’t have to explain it) that basically said Pete and MJ never got married, and a bunch of other things during that time period never did, either.
Much wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued, and still does to this very day.
The cover that I used is from Spider-Man #1, which is coming out in April. Marvel is doing the same exact thing that the movie studio is:
COVER BY: Karl Kerschl
WRITER: Paul Tobin
PENCILS: Matteo Lolli
INKS: Array
THE STORY:
To the public, he’s a mystery. To the media, he’s a menace. To the Torino crime family, he’s a possible million dollar payday. To Gwen Stacy, he’s the subject of her latest school paper, and a way to become a reporter for the Daily Bugle. He’s Peter Parker, the amazing Spider-Man, and he’s here in an all-new ongoing series! MARVEL ADVENTURES All Ages …$3.99
PRICE: 3.99
IN STORES: April 28, 2010
That cover makes me cringe just thinking about a Peter Parker in high school. What? Will his life revolve around having acne or trying to get a car (already done in the first movie) or trying to get the girl of his dreams (already done in the first movie) or trying to pass a test or having to overcome a nasty teacher (J. Jonah, anyone?) or asking a girl to the dance?
All of that is very exciting.
I’d only support a Spiderman Reboot if James Cameron took the lead on it as director.
But he’s not; too bad about that. Don’t know anything about director Mark Webb.
With Raimi exiting the picture so did Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst. I wonder what Stan Lee has to say about all this. I love Spiderman and definitely think it is too soon to remake the movies; even Batman took a hiatus between the awfully made Batman and Robin and Batman Begins.
Besides I’m not real happy with Marvel Comics in general right now and its sell out to disney. I just hope Jack Kirby and Stan Lee got a chunk of the $4 billion dollar deal.
Let Spiderman cool another 5 years before making a remake. Peter Parker in high school better have a nice complexion–super heroes shouldn’t have acne. IMHO
The One More Day fiasco has long since died down. While some felt is was a bad move and it was done in a way that was ham-fisted and ridiculous, people either stuck to their guns and no longer read spider-man, or continued on and enjoyed the good stories told, despite the event that allowed them to be.
I just want good movies. I had faith that Raimi could do that with a chance to make Part 4, but that hope was squashed. Now I think that it’s better than Raimi having to deal with the dopes who thought venom should have been squeezed into part 3.
It is truly amazing (no pun intended, honest) that corporate suits think they know more about the creative process and how to bring a great movie forth than a genius like Raimi.
Forcing Venom into the movie was its ruination. With Marc Webb, the suits got exactly who they wanted — someone they can undoubtedly push around. Unless he wins an Oscar somehow in March, he won’t have the clout to deny the studio what they want to do.
Ergo, we’ll get a craptastic movie in 2012.
I won’t lie–I completely disagree here. Raimi, while a fun director, didn’t make these movies fun for me, something that Spider-Man was always about in my mind. Perhaps I was just disenchanted with the casting of Peter and Mary-Jane, but I couldn’t help think that Spidey wasn’t as wise-crackin’ as he needed to be, and Peter was just straight-up boring. Not once did I connect to those characters the way I did while reading the comics.
And maybe that’s my problem–while these movies have been box-office successes, I think most of that relied on the special effects crowd coming in for what China Mieville called in his Wall Street Journal article “wow porn.” And although the story was certainly there, the performances weren’t–a lot of which you have to blame on the director. These were, overall, morose films. I understand if the Dark Knight is, well, dark, because that’s the character and world Frank Miller established. But Spidey was always the playful character in Marvel, and there didn’t seem to be anything playful about these movies.
I, for one, am looking forward to the reboot.
Yup, we disagree. I thought Peter was as wise-cracking as he needed to be (why don’t you let mommy and daddy talk a while, here’s your change). Any more of it and it would become a parody of Spider-Man.
And that’s what we are going to get in 2012.
As far as China’s comment about “wow porn,” as I wrote earlier I completely disagree with that author’s assessment. For instance, Spider-Man 2 actually made me teary in the movie theater at its end. It still does. That kind of emotion didn’t happen because of the “wow porn” going on the screen; it happened because I was emotionally invested in the characters.
Sounds like you just hated the casting, Pomerico. To that, I agree to a point. I hated Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane. She is not Mary Jane, at all. Tobey was closer to Peter Parker though, in looks and attitude, a dork of the highest order.
To each their own.
As clearly stated in the description of the comic Spiderman #1 is a Marvel Adventures title. Marvel Adventures titles are distinct entities from the regular Marvel Universe typically directed at younger readers.
Mike, that’s all well and good. Still, it begs the question: Why?
On another point, this was just released today from bits and pieces Marc Webb has said since Sunday, which makes the reboot movie sound even crappier, in my opinion:
“The plan for the movie is to be in the $80 million range and feature a cast of relative unknowns. 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.”
“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.”
This sounds crappier and crappier by the day.
As one of my net friends said this morning, “we thought the glimpse of Emo-Parker in 3 was bad… now we’re getting a whole movie of it!”
Man, we could not be more opposite in our outlook on the movie reboot. I’m a big fan of pre-Ultimatum Ultimate Spider-man and by and large enjoyed the whole run on that series. I’m an even bigger fan of casting unknown, and I hope, age appropriate actors.
As I said, in my article, I have no interest to revisit high school. In fact, I’d have more respect for Columbia Pictures if they wanted to tell the last tale of Spider-Man, when he is 80 years old ala The Dark Knight Returns! haha At least it would be fun to see what he’s learned over the years.
Everything they can throw at us about high school we already know.
“I’m an even bigger fan of casting unknown, and I hope, age appropriate actors.”
This, I agree with full heartedly. Just as I hope they cast an unknown for Mr. Bilbo Baggins, Gentleman Thief.
In fact, why don’t they set the movie between movies #1 and #2? Peter isn’t connected to Mary Jane yet. He is single. He is in college, which is almost just an awkward a time as high school.
Why must we go back to the origin story again? Why high school? They could place the movie between #1 and #2, have Peter date the daughter of the Vulture or whatever they wished. They could make it funnier if that was the direction they wanted to go. I might even go see that movie.
But why go back? I just don’t get it.