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Spider-Man 4 is a win-win scenario
Link to articleSam Raimi's departure from the Spider-Man franchise has sent shockwaves through the geekosphere. But he can go back to doing what he does best, and we can forget the disastrous third film
Posted by Stuart Heritage
Wednesday 13 January 2010 13.11 GMT
guardian.co.uk
Back to the beginning … the new Spider-Man could be going back a little further, though. Photograph: Getty
This Spider-Man 4 kerfuffle has already prompted all kinds of panic from concerned fans. Who'll direct the new movie now that Sam Raimi's gone? Who'll take over from Tobey Maguire? Will Spider-Man 4 still be called Spider-Man 4, or will it get a new name like Spider-M4n or Spider-Man Begins or Spider-Boy or Crazy Days at Spider High?
But the bulk of the panic seems to come from Sony's line that the rebooted Spider-Man would focus on Peter Parker as a "teenager grappling with contemporary human problems and amazing super-human crises". To some, the implication seems to be that Sony wants Spider-Man to be a little more like Twilight – to the extent that Taylor Lautner and Robert Pattinson have already emerged as favourites to fill the vacant Spidey Suit.
Now, obviously, the thought of making a movie where a brooding Spider-Man does little more than bite his lip, listen to bad emo music and stare into the middle distance without a top on is both terrifying and extraordinarily cynical on Sony's part. But even if that does turn out to be the case, the gibbering internet fanboys seem to be forgetting something important – a Spider-Man reboot of any kind might not be such a bad thing.
Whatever your thoughts on the sudden personnel change, you can't deny that the old team faced its fair share of problems. On one level there were practical concerns: by Spider-Man 4's scheduled release next year, for instance, Tobey Maguire would have been a few weeks shy of his 36th birthday. That would have either called for an unconvincing impersonation of a teenager, or for the inclusion of a more age-appropriate plot strand where Spider-Man grumbles about interest rates during a Sunday morning trip to Habitat's soft-furnishings department.
Then there's the sense that Sam Raimi was becoming less and less comfortable behind the wheel of a $2.5bn studio juggernaut – why waste time trying to please everyone by slotting together an unmanageably large focus-grouped monolith like Spider-Man when he could go out and throw something as tremendously satisfying as Drag Me to Hell together for comparative peanuts instead? Now that he isn't being weighed down by Spider-Man, Raimi has the opportunity to cut loose and be as daft as he likes – which is fantastic news for anyone who's ever grinned their way through Evil Dead 2 or Darkman.
The most convincing argument for the Spider-Man reboot, though, must be Spider-Man 3. Wrong in just about every way imaginable – too long, too many baddies, too many queasy lurches in tone, too many musical numbers, too many emotions signposted by the protagonist's ever-changing haircut, too many scenes of Kirsten Dunst frying eggs and dancing the twist – Spider-Man 3 has become shorthand for unfocused studio bloat. It was one set of rubber nipples away from being Batman and Robin – and look at what an overhaul did for Batman's fortunes.
It might be the unpopular opinion at the moment, but starting Spider-Man 4 from scratch could be the best option for all concerned. If it works, great: it undoes some of the mental anguish that Spider-Man 3 caused. If it fails, great: that way Sam Raimi was right all along, and we've all got another reason to mistrust Hollywood studios. Whatever happens, everyone wins.
Unless Spider-Man 4 turns out to be that Twilight rip-off, of course. Then nobody would win.
