The Amazing Spider-man Reboot Fiasco (Waiting to Happen)
To me, this story reads like an episode of “How-Many-Bad-Ideas-Can-We-Come-Up-With-At-Once” produced and directed by, and starring Sony Exec’s. No one is going to deny that Spider-man 3 was a letdown. Sure the film made ka-gillions but the story was all over the place, the ‘Peter Parker as an asshole segment’ was just cringe-inducing and most people just wanted to smack Topher Grace everytime he was on screen. For me personally, it’s only saving grace was the performance of Thomas Haden Church (and of course the obligatory awesome Bruce Campbell cameo). Even Raimi has voiced his displeasure with the end result a number of times citing ‘studio-interference’ and other restrictions as the reasons we didn’t get the film he wanted and envisioned.
So now, in Sony’s infinite wisdom, they have decided to let Sam Raimi walk away from the franchise and decided that a reboot is necessary. A reboot – why didn’t we think of that? We only made $2.5bn with the last 3 films and that Raimi-guy can be a bit stroppy at times. Besides, who’ll remember the ‘old’ franchise by the time the new one hits?
Reboots (as you can guess) annoy me. If they’re justified then that’s okay (see Daredevil) but rebooting an already successful franchise just cause everyone else is doing reboots makes no sense. The Spider-man franchise was solid – simple as that. It cost money but it made a shitload more than it cost. That maths seems fairly simple to me. You had a director who actually cared about the story and characters and big-name actors queueing up to be in it. What was the problem? Okay, rumour has it that between Raimi & Maguire they were walking away with nearly 25% of the takings not to mind their actual fee for the films. That’s big money and in my estimation this decision comes down to nothing more than Sony trying to cut their costs and still cash in on the Spider-man name while it’s fresh in everyone’s mind.
So what of Marc Webb, the man who’s been tapped to take the directors chair. Well Webb is the unknown part of this new equation. Coming off the back of last years hugely critically successful (500) Days of Summer, Webb is aMusic Video director turned Feature Director. To his credit, he has publicly acknowledged the huge mountain he faces with following in Raimi’s footsteps. But is that good enough? He’s only directed one film. Sure it was great but it wasn’t a $80 million blockbuster, tentpole was it? Will he be able to handle the Spider-man name and do it justice. Personally I hope so. But then again I’d be happier if we got more films along the lines of Spider-man 2.
Whatever happens, they just need to make sure to remember the Bruce Campbell cameo….
