This is but one of the several versions of media announcements of the new casting of an actor to play Peter Parker in Sony’s re-booted Spider-Man franchise. Fans and followers of movie news had been buzzing for months after plans were announced to drop Toby Maguire as star and Sam Raimi as director after the studio couldn’t come up with another concept for a fourth film. And so with a new director, Marc Webb and star, Andrew Garfield, Sony plans to make film featuring a younger Parker in reportedly less costly films.
The rationale is, I believe, as as follows: The article mentions the story and scheduling issues–probably scheduling issues because of story issues. The last film, Spider-Man 3, was so bad, cobbling together an incoherent cluster of villains and storylines that lacked the heart and inspiration of the first two. And this was because Spidey 2 had pretty much exhausted the character’s themes and character arc, distilling decades of comic narrative into a marvel-ous feature. There was no way to top it, but the studio’s sequel imperatives demanded a third film and it was a huge b.o. hit.
And star issues because, by now, frankly, Tony Maguire is a little too grown up and many fans are tired of Kirstin Dunst. I imagine the studio simply wanted a fresh start except they’d be foolish to to drop J. K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson–hey, if the James Bond franchise can reboot their character as a newly minted double-O, and keep Judy Dench as M, carried over from the previous Bond, Pierce Brosnan, the perfectly cast Simmons should stay as well.
Sam Raimi has said everything I think he could with the character but Sony can only see dollar signs in reviving the character on film–so, apparently the plan is to take him back to his high school years that the first film jumped over and make it closer to a CW teen-angst series thus hitting a major demographic and explore Spidey as a teenager with real problems–which had really been the source of his original appeal. But the picture of the new actor cast as PP looks more collegiate or beyond so this seem strange. In fact, he’s 26, having been born in 1983, so that’s no real difference between where we left Toby and where this guy’s starting, so not even that rationale seems right.
I’ve also read that these films will cost less and thus, it would seem, be smaller films, a less spectacular Spider-Man. Sounds like the Twilight approach: keeps costs down, release one every year or so and target the teens. Hey, and think of the possibilities if the next film actually has Spidey fighting vampires: (Scroll down)
It sure worked for the Twilight films–all that teen angst and blood sucking. And while we’re discussing vampires in Spidey’s next film, how about these guys?
OK, it does seem too calculating, but while I hope the films get Spider-Man right, but I don’t yet see a very different concept working here.
Keith agrees with you. Simmons was the best Jameson EVER! He can make Keith laugh in that spastic goofy way that Keith has.
Only I wish they’d waited a while. It’s still too fresh from the last one to start over. At least with Batman, they waited a good 8 years to start over. And they waited 20 years for a Superman reboot. Three short years is hardly long enough to whet the appetites of the viewing audiences to make them hunger for more. Kinda like the law of diminishing returns. It’s why certain decades become popular again, like the big revival of 50s influence in the 80s, or the resurrection of the 60′s flower generation in the 90s. You have to wait for people to miss it before you can bring it back to a joyous refreshing start.
Comment by Ashley — July 9, 2010 @ 8:33 pm |