Re: Spider-Man: The Reboot!
and Sony goes the trendy reboot route?
Here is the thing. Reboots are supposed to "cleanse the pallet" right? Let's look at Keaton's Batman franchise, he instituted a dark overall feel, a troubled almost jaded Bruce Wayne, a Gotham that was corrupt and that was run by the mob and it all had a very Gothic feel to it. His sequel then continues Bruce's issues but removes the mob as if Joker's death eliminated it and continues corruption but on an individual level. He definitely with this film allowed more of his styling to be seen with Penguin's design even the character of Max Shrek. Then Schumacher takes over and keeps Wayne troubled, but removes darkness by adding comedy. The cops make jokes, the villains make jokes, Two-Face wears outlandish bright suits, their henchmen easily identified, their schemes more grandose. A connection is there but loose. Then with Batman and Robin comes in and you see Schumacher really let loose. While there were gothic statues in Forever in B&R every ____ing building looks as if it were held up by some statue like a city filled with Atlas guiding its inhabitants. Everyone knows Batman, he isn't a myth, the characters become more cartoony, he has a ____ing credit card. No one is complaining that after all of that you needed to reboot to cleanse because Nolan's world would seem ironically way out of place against the Gothic backdrop of the first two of the cartoony one of the last.
So let's look at Raimi. They've made changes, organic web-shooters so you eliminate much of Parker's scientific prowless as well as a well used story element of Pete having to work so he could pay for supplies to fight crime. Pete remains very geeky after high school, another change from the books where by the time he was in College he had a good group of friends supporting characters and had come into his own still caring for his Aunt May but still very much a young adult with issues and problems facing him other than just villainy.
You had the combination of characters, Mary Jane was almost every female in Spidey from Liz Allen to Gwen Stacy to glimpses of Mary Jane herself who strangely enough doesn't have the sultry sassy Mary Jane complex who likes to ____ with Pete's head but dates Harry and is a pain in his ass as much as an object of desire. Yet there isn't anything to play off of. Gwen begins to hate Spider-Man because Doc Ock kills her father by accident and she blames him. While they had that relationship in their with Pete and Harry and that was in the books it was never more taxing on Peter than having the woman he loved hating who he was and that is just one example.
You have Spider-Man who was so secretive of who he was to protect those he loved that he even left the Baxter Building once with a bag over his head, suddenly take of his mask or get damaged enough to always see his face, hell a car full of Subway passengers has seen his face.
You have a continual ____ing with canon. Spidey loses his powers but almost a year's worth of dealing with it and regaining in the books is smashed into 5 minutes and we smile, why? Spider-Man 2 was a good movie overall so we forgive. If Spider-Man 3 was we'd be forgiving as well. You have Mary Jane living next door where he could pine over her for years instead of being Anna Watson's niece who comes in and knocks him for a loop from the get go. Mary Jane is a loser, Pete is a loser, hell even Harry is one. The whole crew gets to be a group of misfits put together trying to make their way even down to the mopey Aunt May. One of the big ones is first the crook kills Ben, then he doesn't. Then it was Sandman, yes in Burtonesque form the main villain suddenly gets tied back to the hero's past only for them to meet again, I expected Church to say "Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?"
The biggest? You had a ____ing Spider-Man day. A celebration where Spidey swings in and gives a Public Photo-op complete with saving a damsel in distress and having everyone love him. One of the funner things in the books is that Spider-Man is hated. He laments how people love Iron Man, love Captain America, love The Avengers but thanks to his own Negative Press Representative in J. Jonah Jameson, people still hate and fear him, they think he is a crook. That is a common point of comedy that he has to change people's perceptions one save at a time. Don't get me started on the lack of humor that comes out of Spidey's mouth, where was my wisecracking web-slinger who even in getting his ass kicked still cracked a joke.
I would say that a cleanse is in order. Why? The next director if continuing would have to continue this trend where Pete is the "why me?" character that is even having troubles in college, while in the books he is so great a Science and loves it so much that he even teaches it for a while. They have to continue the boring Mary Jane characters and their relationship. They'd have to accept Raimi's Spiderverse where people love him despite JJJ and years after high school Pete still can't get his ____ together. Pete had his problems but was never a total ____ing mess where he is eating cake in the room of his landlord's daughter's kitchen instead of blowing off steam by even webslinging, remember that? How Pete sometimes stumbled upon these supervillains while clearing his head and kicked the ____ out of them because of something else going on in his life? Almost every dealing with The Rhino was like this. The next director to continue his universe couldn't radically change this because it'd be amazingly noticable.
Did Raimi's films have merit? Of course, Spider-Man 2 was the bar held for Comic Book movies until TDK. I loved how the characters no matter how cartoony were being pushed to be grounded in reality. How the suit looked so close to the comics compared to the conceptuals it could have been. I liked the inclusion of Curt Connors although now it was just a cocktease and I was dying for more inclusions of side characters instead of eliminations. Flash Thompson anyone? Raimi films were good for what they were. He took a boring Tobey Maguire who had no real charisma up there and a trainwreck of Dunst and made them characters you at least rooted for. He made the amazing miscasting of James Franco work even though that wasn't the Harry we knew or expected.
They weren't perfect. They do not deserve to be immortalized as untouched. Donner's Superman films weren't perfect but they were good they are what you remember but the character shouldn't be off limits all of a sudden. Singer's X-Men weren't perfect even Nolan's Batman films aren't perfect but at least they are keeping the characters in the public consciousness. Just like there are still Burton Batman fans or Reeve Superman fans despite what goes on they'll always be Tobey Spidey fans but let them cleanse the pallet and give us hopefully something closer to the books (which would cause them to go back to High School), something fresh and original and something for new fans to follow. If they can't it'll be schumachered and then we'll see another in a few years but at least we'll see it.