Many of you who read this will have probably seen, or at least heard of the spider-man movies. The movies that were put out were financially successful, and two out of the three were really good movies (the third being the odd one out). Given this information you would assume that a fourth installment was well on its way. However, Sony (the company with the rights to spider-man) announced that they will be re-booting the franchise in 2012 with a new director, new story, and a new cast. Sony pictures has attributed this re-boot to the resignation of director Sam Raimi, who resigned because he felt that he could not meet the company's deadline without sacrificing artistic integrity. So why did Sony simply not hire a director that could meet the deadline? They had a full cast, writers, and producers yet, they decide to re-boot everything because the director resigned? Surely a movie with such a famous character (in an era of great interest in super hero movies) would draw many good directors to the project. More importantly, why did Sony decide to scrap what they've done so far and start over? There are many answers to these questions, and many reasons for them, I choose to believe the one that makes the most sense to me as a devoted spider-man fan. Sony screwed up. Badly. They brought the films to a point where it did not make sense to continue the storyline. Don't believe me? Just look at the ideas they were coming up with:
(entry taken from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man_in_film )
"that Anne Hathaway would play Felicia Hardy, though she would not have transformed into the Black Cat as in the comics. Instead, Raimi's Felicia was expected to become a brand-new superpowered figure called the Vulturess."
The Vultress? It's like they are trying to piss off the fans.
Furthermore, with Marvel Studios putting out great movie after great movie,the pressure was on Sony to make a truly classic spider-man film, something that they could not accomplish by continuing the mess they created. In this mini series I will break down exactly why Sony could not continue the story they wove, where I think Sony made critical mistakes, how they can correct them, and what this ultimately means for spider-man.I will preface my breakdown with a bit of my own background on the topic. I am a big fan of super hero movies, super hero TV shows, and super hero comics. I do not particularly favor Marvel Comics over DC comics, I am just a sucker for cool heroes. One of my favorite characters in the comics world is Spider-man. I have read a fair amount of the comic (including the 'Amazing', 'Spectacular', 'Web of Spider-man', and 'friendly neighborhood' series). I watched the much loved 90's cartoon, and all three of the movies. In addition, I watched another (more recent) cartoon about spider-man titled: 'Spectacular Spider-man'. I begin my critique of Sony's handling of spider-man with this particular television show, which will be part one of this series.
