Ten years after the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man franchise started Hollywood is rebooting it. As this article states, there’s a new Spider-Man actor (Andrew Garfield), a new love interest, new villain, and a new approach to the back story. Now, the character and story of Spider-Man has been around for a long time. The question this article attempts to answer is, “With such a recent connection to the previous franchise, how different could this movie be?”
And part of the answer does go back to the fact that Spider-Man has been around for awhile, starting in 1963. That’s two years before I was born and three years before Star Trek started! Talk about a long time ago! 
Anyway, for those who may not know the original back story of Peter Parker aka Spider-Man here’s a brief synopsis.
Parker originally started off as your garden variety high school nerd. Bullied, shy around girls, but brilliant both in theoretical and practical knowledge. He constructs his original web shooters; they just don’t magically pop out of his arms. Gwen Stacy is his original love interest although most of us are more familiar with the fiery redhead Mary Jane Watson. And he’s not universally acclaimed as a superhero but considered nothing more than a vigilante for a great part of his early career. The new movie taps into this back story. It also incorporates the mystery about his parents’ disappearance. The villain is one not immediately familiar to most casual fans or people off the street and who will be played by Rhys Ifans, whom you might remember as Xenophilius Lovegood in the Potter movies.
The movie should be in theaters July 3rd of this year. Usually I’m fairly pessimistic about superhero movies and while the trailer for this film didn’t really overwhelm me with confidence, I’m still optimistically cautious about this film. The article I referenced above really does pique my interest in the film.
Is anybody else really interested in the new film? Really desirous of seeing it or might just see it as part of a normal weekend movie outing or have no desire at all to see it? What do you think of the trailer? And how do you feel about a movie franchise being rebooted so soon after the last movie came out? Feel free to share!
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
The problem with me watching Spiderman movies is that heights totally freak me out. The last few seconds of that trailer make me giddy.
I never got into Spidey in any incarnation, so we’ll see if I see the new–but it looks well-made, and you just gave me a whole lot of information I didn’t know. Andrew Garfield is a new name for me, but Xeno could probably play a pretty good villain.
hmmmm……Some things that I think are interesting are:
1. the use of Gwen Stacy- Gwen Stacy is is first love… If you don’t count Betty Brant (which I don’t) or Liz Allen. These two were of course the staple of the love triangle when Peter was in High School. So does this mean that Peter is going to start off in College?
2. The Lizard as the main villein- the lizard is important in the spider man world particularly because of the relationship Peter has with Dr. Connors and the rest of the Connors family. it is a very different villein to have because it is a personal villein.
Somethings that make me wonder…
1. Is Uncle Ben not dead? that is bad, spider man becomes spider man simply because of the way Uncle Ben dies. besides Uncle Ben is the only person in the Marvel universe to stay dead, why? because his death is very very important. More important then the death of Gwen, and Bucky- whose deaths are pretty darn important… well Gwen’s was I don’t really know enough about Capt to really know the repercussions of Bucky’s death. but hey if a character in the marvel universe stays dead for a long…long time it generally means that their death set things in motion that were really important that would be under minded if they were to come back from the dead.
2. Dr. Connors/ the Lizard is not really a big threat. I mean yeah he is a criminal but he isn’t really a big threat in the city and I am pretty sure I know the origin story of the Lizard (barring any recent retcons) and I am not so sure about this idea that Dr. Connors and Peter’s parents connection is such a good idea. I mean it seems that the movie may be moving really far from the comic. which sure it is okay for it to have it’s own life, but stray too far and you ostracize the comic book fans who have loved this guy so much they have hunted down the original comics. or even if they are just fond enough of the character to spend hours listening to a pod cast which explores every comic, cross over, and appearance of Spider-man.
3. I didn’t see the Daily Bugle that is more then a little disconcerting to me.
well those are my thoughts.
The only problem I have with this trailer is the fact that they are billing it as the “Untold Story”. Yes, we haven’t really gotten any background on his parents before, but that’s about it….
Reminds me, I have been meaning to share this comic XD : http://www.the-gutters.com/comic/229-richard-clark
I have been kinda “meh” about the movie up until I saw this, I just hope my higher expectations don’t ruin the movie for me ^^;
Ohhhh, I liked this trailer a lot! This certainly has grabbed my attention with the whole background issue.
Lurking in the way Peter Parker’s background was depicted in the trailer are elements both of X-Files (where Mulder has a father who got tangled in some shady conspiracy things and then got killed as a result) and of one’s Shadow Self. I especially like Parker’s/Spidey’s line that he does have to go after the villain since he was partly responsbile for creating him…. It also reminds me of Viktor Frankenstein’s having to rein in the monster he’s created with his theoretical knowledge and desire to unlock nature’s secrets.
In short, way cool!
Andrew Garfield was probably a good choice; he has the acting chops for the role but whether he’s directed accordingly remains to be seen. Rhys Ifans seems to be taking a bit of a sidestep away from his usual roles, which is nice, but I’m not sure how he’ll do as a supervillain.
At the moment, from what we can see here the visual style looks like it owes _significantly_–and perhaps too much–to Chris Nolan’s Batman films. (To say nothing of the child-feeling-guilty-about-parents-becomes-a-vigilante side of things, but that probably goes with the territory.) Anyone else notice that?
Gloria, good thoughts and questions.
Regarding #1, I think they’re just starting with Gwen Stacy as Parker’s first love interest and moving it back into high school rather than college.
#2, using the Lizard/Curt Conners as the villain certainly is a different move, both for the fact he’s not well known & also for the facts you note, that he has a very personal connection to Spider-Man.
Plus, as you note, he’s not really that big of a threat. Personally to Spider-Man, but not really to anyone else, for the most part.
Regarding The Daily Bugle, I think they chose to replace the antagonism of J. Jonah Jameson towards Spider-Man with Gwen Stacy’s father & the police’s targeting of Spider-Man for vigilantism.
And I have no idea what’s going on with Uncle Ben.
Mr. Pond, I didn’t notice anything about the visual style because I’ve never seen any of the Nolan Batman films.
Jessica, the comic you shared was funny. And yes, they are taking liberty with the whole idea of “untold story” but I suppose that’s to be expected. Since Spider-Man has been around forever & been retconned or rebooted many times in comic form, it’s quite likely the story is “untold” in some sense of the word.
Anyway, on the subject of retconning or rebooting, I’ve never been quite sanguine about it. I like continuity. Plus, I feel rebooting et al is just a lazy way for writers to ignore history & promulgate their own ‘new’ history. As someone with a degree and background in history, that annoys me.
Not that I’m totally against it. I have liked some rebooted franchises. And I can see, besides laziness, why people would do so. Taking something older and unfamiliar to people and representing it to them and possibly then turning them on to the older material. I just think rebooting tends to be overused. And there are some things that just should not be redone.
Revgeorge actually part of the reason that Reboots happen is because if the company doesn’t produce a movie in x number of years they lose the rights to that movie.
Ah, yes, I’d forgotten about that. Still, though, I don’t have to like it.
I don’t like the frequency of the reboots. There are so many great books I have read over the years that could be made into fine motion pictures. The reason the studios do it is they don’t want to take any risk they want a sure thing money maker not a great movie. I didn’t see any of the rebooted Batman at the theaters and probably won’t see Spiderman either.
Jenna, couldn’t agree with you more on fear of high places — but I’ll raise you one and add my arachnophobia. I’m with Ron on this one! I struggled along with Ron in both the book and film editions with Mad Eye Moody’s first DADA class; not to mention Sam Gamgee’s encounter with Shelob. YeeK!