Ok, except for the big two (Superman & Batman) I’m not much of a fan of comic book movies because they usually suck. Plus I’m not a fan of comics (or graphic novels) to begin with.
But I get why they quickly rebooted The Hulk. They wanted a tentpole, action-adventure, mega-blockbuster, superhero franchise film, and they got an Ang Lee chick-flick. A bad Ang Lee chick-flick. And I get why they’re rebooting Superman. Although Superman Returns did respectable business (and I though it was pretty good) it didn’t do quite well enough. Plus vaguely linking it to the first two Donner films hurt more than helped (for the life of me I don’t understand with they bothered with that, it was completely unnecessary). And of course Schumacher obviously (and utterly) ruined Burton’s Batman.
But why a new Spiderman so soon? I can’t say that I’ve really seen all three of them all the way though, but what I have seen of them all seemed pretty good. The last one kind of ran out of steam and got a little goofy, but not Batman & Robin goofy. So is it just the Hollywood money franchise machine driving it? Or was the last one rejected so much by the fans that it fast-tracked a reboot?
Why? Because the Batman, James Bond and Star Trek reboots all made a lot of money. Reboots are the thing nowadays. Since they weren’t going to rehire Sam Raimi and Toby Maguire anyway, they may as well tap into all that good reboot money.
Because Sam Raimi refused to make the movie that Marvel and the Producers kept trying to get him to do.
When he was planning the third movie, he had cast Ben Kingsley as the Vulture. They forced his hand to instead centre it around Venom.
When he agreed to the fourth movie, he now cast John Malkovitch as the Vulture, but Marvel still didn’t like that idea. Even though every other Spider-Man movie where Raimi had the control was a runaway hit and really proved he had a sure touch, they still didn’t trust his skills.
As he wouldn’t comply with their edicts, they fired him, reset, skewed deliberately younger, so that they could keep all the movies set at High School or College and have a Twilight aged audience.
It may end up being a good movie, but it’s way way too soon for a reboot, and it really looks like they found a compliant Director, which I am expecting means it will be a “too many cooks” result.
The last one was a pretty big stinker and left a bad taste in fans’ mouths. And the first one, in hindsight, didn’t age well (the second one is still mostly well-considered). Add to that the need for a new cast and director. Why not reexamine the myth from a fresh perspective?
Comic geeks consider it acceptable for Marvel to run multiple Spider-Man continuities at once, right? The most comics-inspired way for Hollywood to handle this would be to make this reboot, then Spider-Man 4 with Raimi and Maguire, then a sequel to the reboot, etc.
Wasn’t there something about the studio losing the rights to Spider-man if they didn’t make a film soon, and that’s why there’s a new one coming out, or was that the case for the latest X-men movie??
The whole point of having multiple marvel continuities is to be able to do things that would be impossible in the 616. Making everyone zombies, setting everything in the future, killing off Peter Parker, etc. But this looks to be essentially the same story as only a decade ago, and I doubt that they’ll do things different enough to really warrant a reboot so soon after the previous films. At least the Incredible Hulk had the decency to skip the origin we already knew so we wouldn’t have to sit through it all over again.
Especially if it was Bruce Campbell (the irony made all the more delicious when you consider Campbell’s roles in the Raimi films!) who blew him away with a boomstick!
This is why. Marvel would like to reclaim the rights to Spider-Man that it sold to Columbia (now Sony). Sony would like to make lots of $ off of Spider-Man movies, and that would not happen if Marvel reclaimed the rights. As Sony’s plan to continue the continuity of its prior Spider-Man films fell apart, they are rebooting the franchise.
This is different than why Superman is being rebooted. Marvel has now established an overarching continuity through strong movies. DC wants to do the same. They tried for strong movies… and got Superman Reurns and Green Lantern. They put Amanda Waller in Green Lantern to lay groundwork for an overarching continuity… but it was unfortunately in Green Lantern.
Now, plans for the Batman franchise are apparently being laid for much the same reason as for the Spider-Man franchise – Nolan and Bale are done, so they’ll need to reboot anyway.
It’s not at all too soon. Today’s thirteen-year-olds were two or three when Spider-Man came out. The cast, which was never beyond acceptable overall, was aging, expensive, and indifferent. Dumping Dunst is a good enough reason to reboot. If we get a skinny and witty Spidey out of it, bonus.
This will probably be a dumb, sacrilegious question but why didn’t they toss Spiderman into the upcoming *Avengers *supergroup movie as a better way to reboot it? Rights again?
Yeah, as much as I dig cutie-pie Kirsten Dunst even I knew that the chick from the Spiderman comics was not a buxom blonde…
Go ahead and do the reboot, but do we have to start with the “Bitten by a radioactive spider” origin story every damn time? Superman Returns did fine without stating over from the beginning, so just give a small flashback or two in the middle of the story and give us Spider-Man at his peak.
