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?

Brothers **

Director: Jim Sheridan
Cast: Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman
Sam Shepard, Mare Winningham, Bailee Madison, Taylor Geare
Clifton Collins, Jr., Carey Mulligan

If you have seen the Danish film "Brothers", you will have a hard time swallowing the sweetened American remake. Story's the same: Sam Cahill (Maguire) is deployed to Afghanistan days after his brother Tommy (Gyllenhaal) is released from jail.
His wife Grace (Portman) is left behind taking care of daughters Isabelle (Madison) and Maggie (Geare), when news arrive that Sam has been killed, Grace begins to get close to Tommy until
Sam returns from the dead.
Sheridan tries to emulate the humanity he created beautifully in "In America" (and he does get splendid performance from his young actresses) but "Brothers" mostly feel like it's pretty actors playing house.
Portman, whose quiet sensitivity isn't enough to muster motherhood gravitas, underacts her way through every scene reaching a point of indifference.
Gyllenhaal, who has the most interesting character in the movie, suffers from lack of nuance. This might not be his fault because the screenplay has shaped Tommy into the archetypal "bad seed" who has visible tattoos (Sam has one on his chest meant to be only seen by Grace we can assume), gets drunk, smokes and changes Thomas Newman's score whenever he appears from tranquil piano motifs to rockier tunes.
Maguire also has trouble conveying the moral dilemma that plagues Sam in the film's second half. One would assume that the actor's barely there look would serve him to evoke loss, but it only makes him seem like he forgot his dialogues.
In all the major problem with "Brothers" is that it suffers greatly from its change of setting. The Danish version inspired encountered feelings as the soldiers were participating in a war they never even started and are serving as proxies from their army's previous commitments.
When translating this to a nondescript American town (when one character is asked where did they grow the answer is "twenty miles from here" keeping the anonymity of the town as ways to inspire a feeling of-it could happen to you- universality) the plot looses its ability to question the system and is reduced to what almost all Afghanistan/Iraq films have come to in the last decade: a politically correct tale that empowers the army while trying to grasp the pain people in the outside world go through.
If not why then should Sheridan linger more on the death of an American soldier than the equally brutal killing of an Afghan?
And why is it only the death of said American that traumatizes Sam?
What director Susanne Bier achieved with the original movie was a raw evaluation of where the world stood when a global power sucks the rest of the countries into its sinkhole, what this "Brothers" offers us is a simplistic tale of Oedipal complexes (at the service of Shepard who plays the Cahill's patriarch) set to a U2 song, because if Bono sings about it, then it must be true.