Monday, January 11, 2010

Along Came a Spider (and Hollywood Squashed It).


Sony Pictures did what not even Venom could: kill Spider-Man. In what's been regarded as an insane strategy since it was announced earlier today, the studio has decided to reboot the series for the 2012 release (hmm all those Mayan theories are making more sense huh?) after director Sam Raimi refused to compromise the series' artistic integrity by rushing into a filming without a definite screenplay.

Reboots have come a standard of sorts in Hollywood, but they have been relegated for series that were in serious creative issues or were being left behind by the moving times.
When they hired Daniel Craig to play James Bond and Christopher Nolan to retell Batman from the beginning, they were not playing around. Both moves were highly risky and paid off in the best ways: box office hits and critical darlings.

But what was so wrong about Spider-Man that needed a reboot even before the first film turned a decade old?

Now that there's not much to do about this, the issue that follows is the idea of their intended reboot; according to the official release from the studio,

Peter Parker is going back to high school when the next Spider-Man hits theaters in the summer of 2012. Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios announced today they are moving forward with a film based on a script by James Vanderbilt that focuses on a teenager grappling with both contemporary human problems and amazing super-human crises.

Don't they mean Smallville? or even worse Twilight?

If my memory serves me right Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) was bitten by the radioactive spider in the first movie, which means that whatever the studio has decided to tell in this new version will technically be set in what happened in about twenty minutes in the original film.
Hmmm perhaps because it didn't matter much?

The wonderful thing about Spider-Man was to see Maguire grow into those red tights. Remember that if it hadn't been for Raimi's genius casting of the atypical Maguire as a superhero we'd still probably be stuck with the likes of Val Kilmer and Billy Zane as comic book icons.
If Maguire hadn't been so perfect as Parker perhaps we wouldn't even have Craig as Bond or Robert Downey Jr. as Iron-Man.

It was this thinking outside the box that refreshed the superhero movie for the decade that was. With this Hollywood move we're reminded that the 2000´s are indeed over and done with.

More on the Spider-Man reboot:
Deadline Hollywood: "Spider-Man 4" Scrapped; Franchise Reboot for 2012 (includes complete statement from the studio)
Chud.com: The Devin's Advocate: Twilight for Spider-Man and Hollywood a wonderful analysis of what become the end of the blockbuster era or the perpetuation of zombiefied film production.
Cinemablend: 15 Reasons Rebooting Spider-Man is A Really Bad Idea all of them are spot on.

What does your Spidey sense tell you about this?

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