In part one I mainly talked about the cancellation of the spectacular spider-man cartoon. In part 2 I elaborate on why the movie series had to be re-booted.
No need for introductions, that was covered in part one. In this part I will list what the problems were with the movies and throw in a suggestion about what could have been done differently. Before I get into it, I would like to say that I am a fan of the first 2 movies, they were really good; but they worked better as stand-alone movies, not a series (which is why 3 sucked). The criticisms you are about to read are directed towards how Sony screwed up basic concepts which would have enabled them to continue the story of spider-man, rather than re-boot it.
Here we go.
*note: the order that I list the problems in does not matter. you can flip the list and the basics will be the same.
Villain choice
The Green Goblin is Spidey's greatest villain. He tormented him, turned his friends against him, blackmailed him, and killed his first love (Gwen Stacy). If you want to make a spider-man trilogy (or whatever you call a series with more than three movies), the Green Goblin would have to be involved at one point. The first movie should not be that point. The Green Goblin should have been developed (as Norman Osborn) for at least one movie before assuming the green goblin role. Saving the goblin for the second movie would have enabled more focus on the origin story, given us more scenes of Peter discovering his powers (who doesn't like these scenes?) and allowed for a lesser villain to be featured first. Ideally, this villain would be someone like the lizard. A character that can actually be developed in a movie due to his being Dr. Connors. The Dark Knight (the best super hero movie ever made) was the second of the series. The first focused on Batman's origin, and featured him fighting lesser villains, somehow I do not think that the series would have been as good overall if the Joker was the main villain of movie #1. Its just too difficult to fit in such key details about a character (origin and greatest villain) in one movie; allowing each element to have its own movie to develop makes for a more polished story. Just imagine that the first spider-man did not have the Green goblin as a villain. Now imagine that the movie has ended and you read somewhere that there is a scene after the credits. This scene turns out to be Norman Osborn donning the Goblin mask. How cool would that have been? But I digress. A-list villains like the Green Goblin, Hobgoblin, Dock-Ock, and Venom should not be featured with other villains in the same movie. B-list guys (Vulture, Rhino, Mysterio, Chamelion etc.) can be featured two-at-a time. Ideally you want to build up villains so that they can join forces in later movies. A classic example being the 'sinister six', where 6 of spidey's villains team up to take him down (this would sort of work like current Marvel movies building up to the Avengers). Here is how I would have done the movie villains:
Movie 1: Origin Story + B-list Villain (for arguments sake lets use the Lizard)
Movie 2: Green Goblin
Movie 3: Vulture + Rhino
Movie 4: Scorpion + Mysterio
Movie 5: Sinister 6 (5 previous B-list guys with the 6th introduced in the movie-Electro?)
