As almost the entire nerd and geek community are aware, yesterday Sony dropped a bomb. They announced that Spider-Man 4 has been cancelled and that Sony will move forward with a reboot of the franchise, aiming for a Summer 2012 release.
Probably more than most of the bots on this site, I have invested quite a bit of time keeping up with the development of Raimi’s fourth installment of the series – from the resigning of the cast to villain speculation, and more recently, the production hold and Malkovich’s confirmation of the Vulture being Raimi’s villain of choice. Upon hearing the news of the cancellation, I have mixed emotions about it. I’m going to break down my thoughts for you and I want you to share what you think in the comments below.
I want to start with the bad, so hopefully I can end on a fairly positive note. And let me be clear, overall, I do think this can be a positive thing.
So, let’s face it, while Spidey 3 wasn’t fantastic, most fans of Raimi and the franchise seemed to be willing to give it a pass in hopes of a better 4th installment. There were several stories wrapped up in Spider-Man 3, but it also left a lot of things open. A few things I would have like to see come to fruition at the hands of Raimi:
- Peter and MJ’s relationship status was questionable at best at the end of 3, we will never get a resolution to how bad Peter screwed the pooch on this one.
- Would have liked to see The Lizard character take form
- Over the course of three movies, we never got to see Peter truly be Spider-Man. He was always just learning to use his powers, questioning them, or falling to a “dark side”. Aside from the end of Spider-Man 2 I feel we never got to see a confident “I’m Spider-Man and I’m going to fight the bad guy” Peter Parker.
- Finally, on my abbreviated list, we never saw a good ol’ fashioned purely evil villain. All of the villains from the films had some sob story about them to try to make you feel bad. Not once did we see a villain bent on destroying Spider-Man that didn’t care who or what got in his way. I would have loved to see some villain show up and truly go toe-to-toe with Spider-Man, with Spidey having no choice but to kick his ass into next week.
Perhaps had Spider-Man 3 been better and wrapped more things up I would be a lot more excited about a reboot, but I feel a lack of closure with the current series that even perhaps one more entry from Raimi could have remedied.
Above everything else though, the most negative part about this is this little tidbit from the press-release from Sony:
“Now everything begins anew, and that’s got us all tremendously excited about what comes next. Under the continuing supervision of Avi and Laura, we have a clear vision for the future of Spider-Man and can’t wait to share this exciting new direction with audiences in 2012.”
If any Spider-Man fan could only name one person to blame for the bad of Spider-Man 3 I think most would agree on one man: Avi Arad (now, not to say Raimi wasn’t 100% excused from being part of the problem). Essentially, he forced Raimi’s hand into putting Venom in the film among other aspects. The sheer fact that the reboot is in the hands of Sony and this man makes me weary. Just when I think a lot of people breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing Riami will have more control over the major decisions of the fouth installment we hear that Arad and Sony will be again at the helm for a reboot. I doubt even the biggest haters of Spider-Man 3 are at least a little weary about this fact of the reboot.
And finally, just today, EW has published news/rumor/specualtion that Sony may be wanting to go for a more gritty reboot like Batman Begins. Let me be clear, Spider-Man is not that gritty. Spider-Man 2 had just enough light-heartedness and reality to keep it balanced. You turn Spider-Man into a Batman and you will lose some of what’s so great about Spidey.
Now, for the positive.
The set-up. For as much of a lack of closure there is after Spider-Man 3, there is a fact that the writers had kind of written themselves into a corner. Were they going to flesh out the Stacy’s? What kind of leap of faith would MJ have to take to stay with Peter? While there are a lot of directions we would have really liked to see the next installment go, realistically there were only a few roads they could take without asking the audience to either just ignore some of the movie’s continuity or take a leap of faith with some plot holes. So with a reboot, we have a fresh start to hopefully learn from mistakes and create a continuity and story that can feasibly be carried across multiple movies.
The cast. I really like the idea of a new cast. I’ve never been a huge fan of Toby being Peter, I hated Dunst as MJ, and the fact that Franco went back to do some soap opera episodes says a lot. In fact, I think the best casting that was done was JK Simmons in the part of J. Jonah Jameson – and he was at best a supporting role! So bring in a new cast, do a better job at casting the parts. I am actually excited about this.
A new beginning. Sony explicitly stated in their press release they want to explore Peter’s roots. I would love to see perhaps a little younger Peter, perhaps Ultimate Spider-Man style? Keep him in high school longer, let him deal with that aspect of beeing a teenager, high school student, and superhero. I would also love to see Gwen Stacy played out and have MJ come in later.
Finally, fanboy speculation. Remember before the first movie came out? All the excitement and wonder about how Spidey would be handled on the big screen? Well, we get to experience that again. All the hopes, ideas, fanboy lists of demands – it’s all back at square one and even with all of the concerns from the first time around, anything is possible at this point!
Overall, while I would have liked to see some closure and another entry that was more in Raimi’s control, this reboot will probably have more positive than good. Hopefully, Sony will see the success Marvel has had with their own movies and allow for more input from them. There are a lot of good up and coming writers and directors out there that I’m sure will be able to do this franchise justice, and I for one am looking forward to the next interpretation of everyone’s favorite wall-crawler! If anything, we not longer have to be forced to watch Kirsten Dunst’s horrid interpretation of MJ anymore! Rejoice!
Now that we can lay all of this Spider-Man 4 drama to rest, start watching for Spider-Man reboot news and rumors!