Everyone Wants To Be Like Marvel-Part 3: Sony Pictures

In 2002, after years in development purgatory, Sony Pictures released Spider-Man through Columbia Pictures. The film had Sam Raimi, of Evil Dead fame, directing and it starred Tobey Maguire (Pleasantville, The Cider House Rules) as Peter Parker a.k.a. The Amazing Spider-Man. The film also starred Willem Dafoe (Platoon, The English Patient) as Norman Osborne a.k.a. The Green Goblin, James Franco as Peter’s best friend and Norman’s son Harry Osborne, and Kirsten Dunst (Bring It On) as Peter’s love interest, Mary-Jane Watson.

It was a critical and financial hit. It had the largest opening weekend of all-time (at the time) with more than $100 million at the box office—the first to accomplish such a feat. It was also the most successful comic-book film at the time.

Spider-Man 2 was released two years later and was, yet again, a commercial hit and an even bigger critical hit with many people considering it amongst the best comic book movies ever made. A majority of the cast returned to reprise their roles with Raimi again directing.

Then Spider-Man 3 came in 2007, and while the cast and crew returned and it became the highest grossing film of the trilogy, the critical reception was mixed and the fan reception even less positive.

In 2008, Spider-Man 4 entered development, with Raimi attached to direct and Maguire, Dunst and other cast members set to reprise their roles. Both a fifth and a sixth movie were also planned and, at one time, the idea of shooting the two sequels concurrently was under consideration.

However, Raimi stated in March 2009 that only the fourth film was in development at that time and that if there were fifth and sixth films, those two films would actually be a continuation of each other. James Vanderbilt was hired in October 2008 to pen the screenplay. The script was then rewritten by playwright David Lindsay-Abaire and rewritten again by Gary Ross in October 2009. Sony also engaged Vanderbilt to write scripts for Spider-Man 5 and Spider-Man 6.

Raimi expressed interest in portraying the transformation of Dr. Curt Connors into his villainous alter-ego, the Lizard; the character’s actor Dylan Baker and producer Grant Curtis were also enthusiastic about the idea. It was also reported in December 2009 that John Malkovich was in negotiations to play Vulture and that Anne Hathaway would play Felicia Hardy a.k.a. Black Cat.

However, as disagreements between Sony and Raimi threatened to push the film off the intended May 6, 2011 release date, Sony Pictures announced in January 2010 that plans for Spider-Man 4 had been cancelled due to Raimi’s withdrawal from the project. Raimi reportedly ended his participation due to his doubt that he could meet the planned May 6, 2011 release date while at the same time upholding the film creatively; he admitted that he was “very unhappy” with the way Spider-Man 3 had turned out, and was under pressure to make the fourth film the best that he could. Raimi purportedly went through four iterations of the script with different screenwriters and still “hated it.”

You may be asking yourself this one question: Why was Sony so eager on making another Spider-Man movie? It’s because the rights to the character were expiring. Marvel Studios just started up and was going around to the various studios that owned Marvel Properties, telling them that if they don’t make a movie with a certain character(s) by a certain time, they would reclaim the rights to put him, her, or them into the Marvel cinematic universe.

Knowing that Spider-Man was a cash cow and that they did not want to lose such a money-making character, they opted to reboot Spider-Man when they couldn’t get Raimi back.

In other words, Sony didn’t make The Amazing Spider-Man because they love the character of Spider-Man or the fans, they did it because as long as you slap the name Spider-Man on something it will sell and because of the existence of The Amazing Spider-Man films, we will never see Spider-Man team up with The Avengers!

The hardest thing about film criticism and film reporting in the age of 24/7 media coverage is separating the appraisals from the business side of movies to the creative decisions on the artistic side. We endeavor as best as we are able to be free of opinions on the less-than-admirable people and frequently less-than-noble process involved with making the film than the film itself. Sometimes, however, a certain acknowledgement of those factors can’t be avoided, especially in cases where what has gone wrong with the finished product is so clearly tied to the business of making it.

I try not to put my personal opinions on the articles since they are out to a mass audience and chances are my opinion will be different from others. If you enjoy Sony’s Amazing Spider-Man films and you believe Mark Webb was a perfect choice to direct and Andrew Garfield is a better Spider-Man than Tobey Maguire, go right ahead, I won’t blame you. The films have been received positively from fans, and critics seem to think that they are solid. And they have been making money—nowhere near the amount that the Raimi trilogy had but still, there is no excuse to complain when your first two films in your new cinematic universe have grossed $1.5 billion dollars.

If you’re excited for future Amazing Spider-Man films, if you can’t wait for the Sinister Six film set for November 2016, if you’re ecstatic for a spin-off featuring a female Spider-Man character—whether it’s Black Cat, Spider-Girl, or Aunt May—go ahead and be happy. But, in my opinion, Sony’s new Spider-Man movies are, so far, two of the most rancid, terrible, stiflingly inept, torturous to sit through, pieces of garbage whose every second of their unforgivably-overlong running times feels like the worst kind of passionless, cynical, mechanical, soulless, assembly-line, commercially-focused corporate filmmaking. Here we have films that exist not because somebody is desperately trying to tell a story, or bring a beloved character to life, to experiment with some new kind of storytelling, or even because there would be some gigantic profit in making a Spider-Man cinematic universe; these movies are being made to fill out a balance sheet.

Again, the Sony Corporation was obliged to keep the lights on in the Spider-Man department by cranking out at least one more movie before 2012 or else Disney and Marvel would have Spider-Man back, and deciding that starting over with a newer, cheaper set of actors and a more obedient director was the fastest way for them to do so.

To call this filmmaking by committee would be doing disservice to the idea of committees, this is filmmaking by accountants.