So what’s more noteworthy, to my way of thinking, is the hyper-compression of the overall cycle of franchise development that is now playing out, in contrast to the usual way of things. In the past a series of movies would be cranked out, gradually and inevitably declining in quality, and when the final installment was released it was not always immediately apparent that it was, in fact, final. Maybe it was apparent to the studio that owned the rights to the characters, or to the director or lead actor who definitively washed their hands of it, but as far as the public was concerned there always remained that possibility of a cast reunion and a new chapter in the saga. As time passed, the possibility seemed admittedly more and more remote, but the diminishing odds felt like part of a natural process. And sometimes, long after the possibility of a true continuation had dwindled to nothing, an announcement would be made that the franchise would be revisited in a new way. In the current case of Spider-Man, though, the studio was simultaneously announcing both Raimi’s departure and a complete reboot of the series, taking Spider-Man’s alter ego all the way back to Peter Parker, high school student. So any thoughts of Raimi and the studio heads eventually renegotiating and setting aside creative differences and agreeing to the exact arrival times of dumptrucks of cash money are now pretty well misplaced.
There’s nothing wrong with high school Spidey, by the by. The 2002 movie blows through high school graduation fairly early and moves on to Peter (and MJ and Harry) dealing with the adult world and all its problems and disappointments, but it’s not a problem to mine plenty of everyman trials and tribulations from the lives of teenagers. (I know, I know, the real motivation for de-aging the cast is no doubt to tap into the lucrative Twilight-fan market, but I’m going to put the best spin on it I possibly can, dammit.) In the comics, Peter was a high school student for the first 28 or so issues, plenty of which are stone cold classics. It’s the original milieu for the character and a highly workable one.
So I don’t begrudge the teeny-bopper reboot per se, and I’ll miss Raimi’s obvious love and understanding for the character but don’t think he’s the be all and end all, so what’s left for me to complain about? (Well, really, nothing at the moment, since no product as of yet exists, and this is all based on idle speculation, but I’d hardly deserve my geek cred if I couldn’t find something to preemptively snipe at.) In essence, it’s redundancy.
If Gossip-Spider comes out in, say 2011, it will be only nine years removed from the kick-off of the Raimi cycle. And yet there will be an almost irresistible compulsion to re-tell Spider-Man’s origin. Partly that’s because that’s just what super hero franchises have always done: start with the origin. Even if we just saw it done really, really well within recent memory in the same medium. Maybe, on some meta level, that’s actually further justification for recreating the origin, so that the audience will think of the new kid as the “real” Spider-Man and displace the memories of Tobey Maguire. But it’s still a terrible idea, because more than anything it’s going to feel redundant. It’s impossible to improve on the Spider-Man origin story, and dang near sacrilege to tweak it. (Raimi just barely got away with it, swapping organic web shooters for mechanical and a carjacking for a burglary.) Unlike Superman and Batman, who first appeared beating up bad guys and had their origins revealed incrementally over time (in the comics, anyway), Spider-Man was introduced by way of his origin story, a perfect morality play that utterly defines the character on every level, and as a result comics fans pretty much fetishize it. If the director feels he must at least touch on the origin (to cement the new lead in the role, to appease the slavish fanboys, to illuminate the backstory to anyone in the audience who might not already know how Peter Parker became Spider-Man, whatev) then I hope he does it in a title-sequence montage or mercifully brief flashback. Because thanks to this reboot coming so hard and fast on the heels of the Raimi trilogy, the next movie is going to feel like a part of it. It has to stand on its own, not retread the same ground.
Still, if the allure of the origin is irresistible, I will sigh but I will understand. On the other hand, if the reboot includes the Green Goblin as the villain I will scream. Again, it’s not that I don’t get the appeal. Gobby is rightfully considered Spidey’s arch-foe and hits all the right notes to claim that title: He represents anarchic power lust, the exact opposite of Spider-Man’s “great power great responsibility” mantra! He has gadgets and abilities that set him apart from Spidey yet give him an evenly matched fight! His visuals are great (in the comics), including the inherently evil colors of green and purple (just like Lex Luthor and the Joker)! But he’s not the only scallywag in the rogues’ gallery, and again, the sheer redundancy of two movies in nine years about Spider-Man versus the Green Goblin (or five years, if you count the Harry-Goblin from the third movie) would be crap.
Of course I have a humble suggestion for the villain of the reboot, but before I get into it let me skewer something about trends in superhero movies that consistently disappoints me: they keep killing the villains. I understand that the conventions of drama practically mandate that the hero’s triumph is only considered sufficient when the villain is utterly vanquished, and death is the most operatic way to represent that. Comic books, as monthly periodicals, have a lot more to gain by setting up recurring grudge matches so that Wolverine fights Sabretooth again and again and again, with minor victories rather than final battles; movies have to match different expectations. Still, when Jack Nicholson bought it at the end of the 1989 Batman movie, I was pretty disappointed. Ditto when Alfred Molina goes gently into the goodnight at the end of Spider-Man 2. Bombastic showdowns are blockbuster gold, but doesn’t a constant thorn in the hero’s side have value, too?
Enter J. Jonah Jameson, the richest vein of material you can mine from the Spider-Man canon. He’s Peter Parker’s boss (inasmuch as freelancers have bosses) at the Daily Bugle, and provides a capricious source of income for a super-hero who actually has money problems. The newspaper setting itself is good for exposition, and for allowing our hero to learn breaking news about nefarious goings-on. Jameson is a terrible boss, self-important and impatient and rude and most other qualities anyone who’s ever hated their boss can relate to. He’s also a self-appointed talking head in the media, who has made it his mission to take down Spider-Man because he doesn’t like him. Raimi’s movies hit all of those notes, but one area from the comics they never explored was how much farther than writing editorials Jameson was willing to go to destroy Spider-Man. J.J.J. actually plays a significant role in the origin of a Spider-villain. More than once.
My favorite of these is the Scorpion. Jameson hires Mac Gargan, P.I., to follow Peter Parker and find out how he gets his exclusive photos of Spider-Man. When Gargan fails at that, Jameson convinces the guy to be a test subject in a science experiment that bonds Gargan with a scorpion-styled weapon-suit (read: “green longjohns with a hefty, barbed tail”). Gargan goes after Spider-Man at Jameson’s insistence and eventually goes insane due to suit side-effects. Scorpions are bad-ass and scary, so basing a villain on one is a no-brainer. They’re also arachnids, which sets up a nice totemic symmetry with Spidey that I’ve always appreciated. As far as movie-readiness, I’d think it would be a great role to play as Gargan quickly goes from being a street-smart investigator to reveling in the brute strength of his Scorpion identity to total screaming crazy. The look would have to be updated, but a bio-organic H.R. Geiger-esque version would be something to see. And if the movie demands that Spider-Man kill the Scorpion (or, via movie-logic, that Scorpion destroy himself) so be it – as long as J. Jonah Jameson stays alive.
Jameson gets played for comic relief but I maintain that with a little nudging he could be Spider-Man’s movie arch-enemy. In fact, he could be both: fuming, eccentric megalomaniac publisher in most people’s eyes, and slightly disturbingly obsessed Spider-hater who meets with mad scientists behind closed doors in makeshift labs under abandoned warehouses. If I were pitching a trilogy of movies, that’d be my hook. Start the first movie with Spider-Man about a year into his career, still in high school but already having fought not only countless purse-snatchers and bank robbers but also the Vulture, Electro, Mysterio, whoever looks good in the opening credits montage. Jameson’s editorial campaign against Spider-Man should be well underway as well. Elide over Peter Parker's origin and get right down to Jameson’s origin as a supervillain creator, set Scorpion on a rampage, build to a Spider-Man/Scorpion showdown, and in the epilogue bring the focus back to Jameson. Second movie, same formula, this time riffing on the comic story of the Spider-Slayers, robots built (with Jameson’s funding) expressly to hunt down Spider-Man. This time around Jameson will be more directly involved in fighting Spider-Man, operating the robots by remote control, even revealing his involvement when it seems Spider-Man is finished. Of course Spider-Man defeats the Spider-Slayers but now he knows Jameson’s secret. Third movie sets up an inevitable Jameson/Spidey showdown, and Jameson hires some mercenary muscle as bodyguards (Rhino? Hobgoblin?) but ultimately the supervillains double-cross Jameson and Spider-Man finds himself having to save Jameson in the course of thwarting the bad guys. The Jameson/Spidey feud isn’t necessarily over in the end (leaving room for ever-crappier sequels) but Jameson has in a sense been defeated because he owes Spider-Man his life, and if he continues his vendetta it can only be as a hypocrite and a fool.
Not gonna happen, of course. J.J.J. will be a supporting character at best in the reboot, if they can even find anyone willing to follow in J.K. Simmons’s footsteps. And odds are good the villain will be either the Green Goblin or someone Goblin-like. I just can’t help thinking about the possibilities, in this incredibly brief interval during which they still exist.
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