The Amazing Spider Man

Erik Kain 27 Comments

This looks good, but…I keep getting this nagging sense that we just made a bunch of Spider Man movies not that long ago. I’m a little … confused by the reboot. It just feels too soon.

 

So does anyone know why they’re rebooting this series, beyond simply making a bunch of money?

Erik Kain

Erik writes about video games at Forbes and politics at Mother Jones. He's the editor of The League though he hasn't written much here lately. He can be found occasionally composing 140 character cultural analysis on Twitter.

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27 Comments

  1. I don’t understand the rapid turnaround either (same for Superman). The first one with Tobey McGuire was very good IMO. They went downhill from there.

    I’ve read several negative remarks about how dark this one looks. Spider Man is supposed to be fun.

        • Both the Hulk movies were connected to each other and even the Hulk in The Avengers is the same once as in the other two movies, just with different actors.

  2. Time to feel old:

    The first Spiderman teaser trailer had Spidey catch a helicopter in a spiderweb… between the Twin Towers. Yes, *THOSE* Twin Towers.

    That said, 10 years *DOES* seem to be much closer together than previous remakes/reboots. What’s the second closest one? The Planet of the Apeses had 33 years between them. The Amityville Horrors and Fright Nights and Nightmare on Elm Streets had 26.

    The Taking of Pelham 123 was 25… and Total Recall (released next year) will be out 22(!) years after the one we all remember so fondly.

    So Spiderman is cutting all of those distances in half (more than).

    Which really is something… but, then again, maybe this means that they’ll make movies using the good ones as a template while people still remember what made the crappy ones crappy.

    Maybe.

    • meh… I get that it’s been over a decade since the first Toby movie came out, but I feel like I haven’t had time to get to a place where I’m no longer tired of Spidermans (Spidermen?). This doesn’t feel like, say, the Batman reboot Nolan did. It feels more like what I’d think if they announced they were going to release the Fast and Furious franchise rebbot this November.

  3. It seems to me that there’s no reason to plan a series of movies shorter than five, in my opinion.

    I thought the Spiderman follow-ups were pretty good. They burned through too many villains too quickly, though. Pacing! They need pacing!

      • Fair enough, though there were five by my count. Two Green Goblins, Doc Ock, Sandman, and Venom. Three of which in the last movie. So really, I guess it was the third movie that went off the rails. Venom *really* should have been a set-up for the fourth movie. Costume in the third, Brock in the fourth.

        Come to think of it, though, there were other villains they definitely could have used without rebooting. Grumble.

    • Here’s my pitch:

      I would like Spiderman to fight 17 villains in his next film.

      Both Green Goblins, Kraven, Chameleon, Doctor Octopus, Electro, Hobgoblin, Sandman, the Lizard, Mysterio, the Vulture, Rhino, Hydro, Scorpion, the Shocker, Venom *AND* Carnage.

      AND THEN WE’D START THE OPENING CREDITS!!!!!!!!!

      Nickleback has already been signed to do the soundtrack.

      • Wait – in the real movie Nickleback is doing the soundtrack or in your 17-villain edition?

        Because I won’t see the damn movie.

  4. I feel the same way. Maybe the filmmakers will put a new and worthwhile spin on the story? I hope so. Otherwise, what’s the artistic point?

  5. It’s interesting that toward the end of the trailer, you can practically hear the voices of the people making the trailer saying, “OK, what can we do to wow audiences that’s different than just showing Spiderman swinging around? Everyone’s see that, and we can’t do it any cooler than they already did.”

    • It looked like the preview to the companion video game. In fact, the graphics were such that I think it was a video game.

  6. The reason for the reboot of ASM is that Maguire and Dunst were getting too expensive (for instance, Maguire wanted 20 million to come back), and if Sony didn’t make another Spider-Man movie by 2012, the rights revert back to Marvel. So, there’s your reason.

      • Why recast when it has such a bad success rate in superhero movies (Hello, Val Kilmer and George Clooney) when it’s much easier to just reboot the thing?

        • Batman Forever did very, very well at the box-office. Batman & Robin was a bust. And a terrible movie. So terrible that it reached back in time and made Batman Forever worse, accentuating everything that wasn’t quite right about that movie.

          Anyhow, people weren’t going to see Spiderman because of Tobey McGuire. You don’t really need a star anymore. You make one. Then, when he or she moves on, you make another one. That should be the template.

          As they’re doing it, they lose the interest of people like me. I’m totally up for Spiderman IV and would probably see it in the theater. I would probably buy the DVD in order to complete my collection. New Spiderman… I’ll probably rent it. Probably.

          Rebooting makes sense when the original is either a complete bomb or more than a decade old (or, in the case of Captain America, both).

          • I looked up Batman Forever and it turns out it was as successful as Batman Returns. Now, I don’t know profit and such, but same domestic box office gross. So, I’ll take a hit on that.

            As far as your argument in replacing Tobey Maguire, I agree. Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man wasn’t drawing anybody in. But, the problem wasn’t just that Maguire wasn’t returning. Dunst wasn’t returning. Raimi wasn’t returning. Hell, even JK Simmons has said he wouldn’t be back.

            So, why continue a series where you’d have to replace the whole cast and cram in 3 movies worth of continuity when you can just as easily deage Parker, tell a story that’s always successful (the Hero’s Journey), especially when there’s a whole bunch of 16-year-olds who just entered Kindergarden when the first Spider-Man came out?

            The truth is, that crowd outnumbers the people who won’t go see this version of Spider-Man because it’s new and different.

            Now, personally, I wish they would’ve gone with continuing the series (or in a perfect world, letting the rights revert back to Marvel), but looking at it at a financial level, it makes sense to reboot these types of series every ten years because there’s a new audience every ten years.

  7. I don’t really care about reboots as long as the reboot is good. After all, the best spider-man comics around these days are from an seperate reboot universe that marvel established around the time the first movie came out.

    Tobey Mcguire’s spiderman always felt wrong. He’s a dopey nerd, while parker has always been more of a witty nerd. Quips are right up there with Webs in defining superman, and the movie version never managed to pull it off.

    The trailer doesn’t give me much hope for a better Parker (though it doesnt reveal much of Parker at all, honestly. The first-person camera doesn’t work at all. Focus on the parents is interesting, though. And seeing people I’m assuming to be Gwen Stacy and Kurt Conners in a lab together reminds me of the excellent Spectacular Spider-man cartoon series.

  8. FWIW, they are doing Ultimate Spiderman, so it’s not so much a reboot as a side boot.

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