Spider-Man Begin Again

So, Sam Raimi is no more.
Tobey Maguire, the face of geek chic from 2002 to 2006, is now just another actor, Kirsten Dunst is, well, James Franco, poor guy, and Dylan Baker, they got screwed over didn't they.

Yes, if you need that rock pushed over to see the Sun again it'll be a shock to the system to hear, mere hours after the 'confirmation' of John Malkovich as Vulture in Spidey 4, that project was cancelled, the creative team kicked out and in it's place, Sony are going for a new origin story of Spider-Man, in 2012, the world will end, and doing the destruction will be a retconning of one of the biggest film series in recent history, one full of critical acclaim, fanboy love, and worst of all, isn't even a decade old yet.

You may stop me right now and say But Andrew, how about The Punisher, that had big actors, but they did a change up, hell, look at Hulk, then look at 2008" And I'd say, 1, shut up, this is my piece, and 2, they weren't well received, be it financially, critically or both.

Whilst I found Tom Jane's Punisher well done, or Eric Bana a good actor, the films ultimately were wrong for the franchise, and myself, I'm glad that these changes occurred, the Ray Stevenson Punisher was nastier, more silly and much more violent, perfect, whereas the Ed Norton Hulk had a well rounded plot, needing only 3 action scenes, great cast, and lots of fun.
But if the Daredevil reboot ever starts going, I'll throw a hissy fit there, I find, and me only, Daredevil to be more than just a solid flick, I think it's one of the best superhero films ever made, it's not revolutionary, but it knew the formula, abided by it well, and made it entertaining, unlike, say, Iron Man, which just did everything in a ridiculously slow and dull manner like a kid doing paint by numbers whilst having already done the image yesterday, and today he's distracted by bigger, shinier CGI.

I wish I could say "I'll reserve judgement" for this Spider-Man idea, but lets face it, the great stuff comes out of ideas that were going no where, aren't anywhere near as close to our hearts, do you remember Spider-Man when it first came out? I sure as hell do.
Spider-Man was the first film I saw in the cinema without an adult, my first independent film, if you will. It was action packed, funny, scary, well acted, well shot, some great set pieces, yes the CGI was never amazing, but you could ignore that because you were invested in Maguire's Parker, he was sweet, geeky but you believed he could get the girl, change into the brave hero, Dafoe was freaky, he knew too much, he was insane, a perfect villain.

The template for all forthcoming superhero films, Spider-Man leapt off the success of the first X-Men film, a film which was differently structured to all other comic book films now, and between them, the humour was never pushed too much, and retained the more serious aspects, obviously they couldn't take the subject matters completely seriously, but for films about mutant heroes and men with the powers of spiders, they both managed to retain a lot of key themes and didn't mock the ideas, instead they were willing to go deeper into what the powers would do to the heroes and people around them.

So, what can we expect from Sony with this film?
Well, they've already stated that they'll be going back to Parker in high school, so, maybe the whole film will be based around the somewhat slow first 35 minutes of the first film, before the action kicked in. Whilst it'll be nice to get away from the too many villains issue that was going to plague Spidey 4 as well as ruined number 3, which Sony are clearly blaming Raimi for, though who pushed for Venom to be in it when Raimi stated that he wasn't a fan of that villain? Yeah, thought so.
Sony, the studio behind such masterpieces as 2012, are going to give us some 90210 Skins style superhero film, young good looking people in the roles now synonymous with other actors, it's got Star Trek 2009 written all over it. (The gag reel on that DVD actually has the new actors messing up, and then their names come up with the characters they portray, not the actors they are ripping off, and yes, Chris Pine is ripping off an actor, Mark Hammil)

On top of seeing new faces, which is always hard, there are some key elements to the franchise which will be lost. Namely the build up for Dylan Baker as Dr. Connors who would have become Lizard at some point, and you can sense some darkness and apprehension in his performances, a well structured 2 film arc that will never get it's conclusion. It's a shame because Baker has done so much good work it would have been great to see him suddenly be thrust into the limelight of the Spidey series, not just the lecturer Peter goes to for problems, as unenlightened kids presume he must have been.

Whilst Baker's performances have been for nought, do you know who suffers most? Bruce Campbell.
How key was Campbell? To the point where he was the narrator for tutorial levels for the Spider-Man games. The cameos were always the things to look out for, be it silly as all get out as the French waiter i number 3, or the hysterically annoying usher in number 2, his work really brought the normal life back to Parker, the difficulties of the mundane, like an episode of Seinfeld, and helped the films balance the super moments and the normal elements.

So, what can we expect from the new film?
Who will play our heroes, villains, who, in fact, will be chosen to be the first villain Spidey must fight? Will it end up being a straight remake of the original?
We'll have to wait until the teaser in 2011 to really make up our minds, but for now, we have to ask Sony, was Sam Raimi such a bad choice? Really?