The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Based on ASM2's box office and quality, was rebooting a mistake?

[OcStat]

This all depends on if the next film ends up mediocre or not. Yes it is the same team, as far as we know right now. I don't think Webb is the problem, i can say I wouldn't mind a change in the writers. Which could be likely. Hasn't the team of Orci and Kurtzman split? And if Orci is locked in for Star Trek 3, that could take him off the board. Change could very well be in the air.

Ramsus, the X-Men example is valid, and accurate. Catch is, I don't think First Class was a movie that was going to put the franchise back on track. Just like ASM2, the best thing that movie had going for it was it's two leads. MacAvoy and Fassbender. It is a step up from the two before it, but still not anywhere near X2. I enjoyed the movie (I enjoy most of these movies) but I wasn't surprised by the film's financial reception.

Yes, ASM2 should have been the movie to put Spidey back on track. Unfortunately, woth the final product, that didn't end up being the case. I'm not saying Sony is going to have it easy. But you really think they aren't paying attention now, more than ever? I am assuming ASM3 will still be out in 2016 because as of yet we haven't heard otherwise. It could very well be postponed to make sure it delivers. And if it's really good, that is all it will take. Just as you mentioned with 007, some people will stick it out because Garfield owns the role, like Craig, but if the new movie is exceptional (and even I can admit at this point, it really needs to be), it won't matter how the previous film was received.

 

[Visualiza]

^I don't think they'll be able to get away with rebooting again, even 20 years from now. If the franchise becomes so deadpan because they mishandled it so thoroughly, I don't think there's an audience in the world that would tolerate it.

This time around, they have to stick to their guns...sink or swim. They made their bed, after all.

 

[Mace Dolex]

I hope that's the case because that feels hopeful. I agree with you about Spider-Man needing a break. I love him too much, I don't want to see him suffer because of over exposure and underperforming films.

It's like how sometimes you have to be seperated from someone for some time to realise how much you miss him/her.

You make a good point, for me my ideal Spider-Man was from the cartoons of the 80's and 90's which I consider still as the best representation of Spider-Man, you rarely get cartoon nowadays that last 65 episodes.

I can't say I'm tired of Spidey getting overexposed in popular culture but SM3 was such a letdown to the fans that I just didn't want to see another SM film for awhile and the comic storylines are a whole other story what with Brand New Day, One More Day, Civil War, it was just too much to soak in that it really alienated me there.

I even resorted to selling my Ultimate Spider-Man comics because quite frankly those are garbage when you look back on it since it's just an imagined universe that it comes to a point when you just don't care since it doesn't fit in with the Marvel 616 universe.

 

[Slushy]

Rebooting was not a mistake; I think Raimi's trilogy ran out of steam and given how the fourth one was panning out it was obvious they needed to throw in the towel and let another team take a crack at it.
The mistake was how they've handled certain aspects of this reboot, although overall I haven't disliked either movie they've made so far.

I disagree. What they should've done was have Sandman & Vulture for 3 as originally planned. Then you could finally introduce The Lizard in Part 4. Electro for 5 along with the symbiote coming into play and Venom being introduced as the cliffhanger.

Then finally get to the end of the series with Part 6 being about The Sinister Six with the return of The Green Goblin, Dr. Octopus, The Sandman, The Vulture, Lizard and Electro to exact revenge!

After Spider-Man and Venom have an epic fight scene, they wind up becoming allies to take down Doc Ock's group. Now, how awesome would that have been?!!

 

[LizardMan07]

Slushy, that would have been amazing!

 

[Ita-KalEl]

Rebooting was not a mistake. The mistake was thinking to generate with a Spiderman reboot the same numbers of The Avengers or The Dark Knight.

Spider-man and Spider-man 2 of Raimi were very good sh movies. I can't believe that someone could have thought to re-tell almost the same story without adding nothing and think to make more money.

The "sad" truth is that in 2006 in this forum we talked about Superman and Batman unable to do great numbers at b.o. and the power of the Spider-man franchise. Now not only Man of Steel has been far more successful than TASM2, but TASM2 will probably do less money than Superman Returns adjusted for Ticket Price Inflation

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/franchises/chart/?id=superman.htm

 

[Fizicks]

I haven't read most of the posts here, but here are my two cents.

I think rebooting was a sensible idea. The original series has kind of run it's course after Spider-man 3, in my opinion.

With that said, the thing is that the reboot did not do very well in deliver something fresh. TASM went through so much of the same things from the first Spider-man, but less well.

The one thing the reboot did well was Peter and Gwen's relationship.

 

[Lord]

I disagree. What they should've done was have Sandman & Vulture for 3 as originally planned. Then you could finally introduce The Lizard in Part 4. Electro for 5 along with the symbiote coming into play and Venom being introduced as the cliffhanger.

Then finally get to the end of the series with Part 6 being about The Sinister Six with the return of The Green Goblin, Dr. Octopus, The Sandman, The Vulture, Lizard and Electro to exact revenge!

After Spider-Man and Venom have an epic fight scene, they wind up becoming allies to take down Doc Ock's group. Now, how awesome would that have been?!!

What about Harry Osborn? His role as New Goblin would have been in Spider-Man 3 one way or the other.

 

[OcStat]

We can talk hypothetical scenarios of what may have happened if Spider-Man 3 was different all day.

But the Spider-Man 3 we have was a fitting end to the franchise. It's "all about a girl"; his relationship with MJ. The ending of Spider-Man 3 shows us no matter what they face they are going to work through it.

The fact remains that Raimi was unable to deliver a film he thought would be up to par. He stepped down, he was not fired.

Ironically, The Amazing Spider-Man was released the same time Raimi's Spiser-Man 4 would have been, if Sony gave him more time and pushed back his release date. So again I must say, the question on whether rebooting was a mistake or not is irrelevant, rebooting was inevitable.

The question really is, was it a mistake to reboot so soon?

Maybe it would have been better to give Spidey some time off before his return to the big screen. But there is literally no evidence that another Raimi installment would have fared any better than the new Amazing films.

 

[Lord]

SONY was kinda dumb, even while Sam Raimi was planning his next film, they were trying to push the idea of a reboot, even releasing it on the date Raimi had asked them to give him, they were obviously inspired by the success of Batman reboot. Now with the new film they instead tried to make a film like The Avengers due to that having been even bigger.

 

[OcStat]

According to the special features on Amazing Spider-Man, it was Raimi's idea that to tell the most interesting parts of Peter's life they had to backtrack to him in high school. Now admittedly, considering the source we should take that with a grain of salt, but there isn't anything yet that has said otherwise. He didn't want to stick around and put out a underwhelming movie. And from what I've read of SM4, it is the only Spider-Man movie so far to really make me want to put my head in my hands.

I don't think they were deliberately trying to swoop those other films tone. The Batman Begins influence is debatable I'll give you that, but to say they were trying to copy Avengers?

Avengers is the Marvel comics tone. This is a movie based on a Marvel comics character. The tone is more on par for Spidey in this movie than the last one, and I don't think Avengers has anything to do with that.

The Avengers influence on the entire franchise is more valid, but it didn't over take this whole movie. We have 1 scene and the end credits which establish a little bit of world building, giving us an idea of the future of the series. And it works for Spider-Man, it is something that was missing last time around no matter how you look at it. And the movies will still be isolated to Spider-Man's world. It isn't like they are digging through Spider-Man's associates to spin off Spider-Woman, or Alpha, or Cloak and Dagger. They are setting up his villains for the future of Spider-Man's own films.

 

[GuestStar2004]

While I certainly feel it was right for Sony to reboot so they could have a fresh slate to play with, Raimi made it hard to bring back certain characters, but they are doing it wrong by trying to copy other franchises, even more so doing it in the rushed way they are without realising why them franchises worked in the first place

 

[random_havoc]

Where's the option to vote for "SO Glad Raimi's gone but ASM2 was also a flaming turd"?

 

[Tacit Ronin]

Spider-man 3 did not guarantee a reboot. People make it out to be Batman & Robin when it's not, it is simply a mediocre movie. A temporary slowdown of Spidey's momentum. And like Skyfall proved following QOS, nothing a good Spider-man 4 couldn't have bounced momentum back from. The audience was evidently there. The same audience that did not show up for the noticably weaker box office of ASM; perhaps feeling they were betrayed of their investment. Again, it wasn't a B&R situation when the public mocked and wanted nothing to do with Batman. It was so bad that it had to take a DVD resurgence of Begins to get them on board again.

 

[I SEE SPIDEY]

Yes I think it was a mistake. I thought it was a mistake when the news broke and I still think it's a godawful mistake even more now.

 

[BestGirl]

Where's the option to vote for "SO Glad Raimi's gone but ASM2 was also a flaming turd"?

This is the option I would choose.

 

[Frodo]

Spider-man 3 did not guarantee a reboot. People make it out to be Batman & Robin when it's not, it is simply a mediocre movie. A temporary slowdown of Spidey's momentum. And like Skyfall proved following QOS, nothing a good Spider-man 4 couldn't have bounced momentum back from. The audience was evidently there. The same audience that did not show up for the noticably weaker box office of ASM; perhaps feeling they were betrayed of their investment. Again, it wasn't a B&R situation when the public mocked and wanted nothing to do with Batman. It was so bad that it had to take a DVD resurgence of Begins to get them on board again.

The problem SM3 had imo, much like ASM2, was that they had basically used up alot of future potential storylines in one film, thus writing themselves into a corner by the end. The Osborns were dead, the Peter MJ relationship was basically ruined and both characters were unsympathetic, Venom was used then destroyed, and the baddies that were left weren't all that strong, and the actors were getting old. Since the 3rd film tied up the plotlines from the first two, it made more sense to leave it a trilogy. You have a similar situation with ASM 2 though in some ways they're in a worst spot because they built their series on a weak foundation, and have already written themselves into a corner in only two films.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

The only thing they really couldn't work around was the Osborns being dead, but we had just had three Osborn heavy movies and probably could have used a break from them for awhile. TASM immediately going back to Oscorp was one of the mistakes I thought they made. Aside from Oscorp, they used Electro, Lizard, and Rhino, three characters that were certainly available without rebooting.

Even if Raimi left along with Maguire and Dunst, there was no need to reboot. They could have easily recast and continued. I don't understand this obsession by certain fans wanting a reboot every time there needs to be a cast change. You see it with the MCU too, acting like Iron Man and Captain America are going to be done when RDJ and Chris Evans are. There is no reason Webb, Garfield, and Stone (as MJ instead of Gwen) couldn't have done SM4 instead of ASM1.

The real question here is, would Sony have made more money from SM4 than ASM1? Given the dramatic drop in box office from SM3 to ASM1 and the numerous complaints about them redoing the origin, I would say that the answer is 'yes'. If the answer is 'yes', then it was a mistake.

Note that I'm not saying that Sony would never have to reboot. Eventually it might have gotten to that point. But they weren't there yet. There were a lot of places they could have taken the story following SM3.

 

[guitarsingerguy]

Kevin Smith hit the nail on the head when talking to IGN about it. Sony is going to pound that **** into the ground until it no longer turns a profit regardless of quality, and then they'll let the rights go back to Marvel where maybe a team up can make him relevant again.

 

[kguillou]

The only thing they really couldn't work around was the Osborns being dead, but we had just had three Osborn heavy movies and probably could have used a break from them for awhile. TASM immediately going back to Oscorp was one of the mistakes I thought they made. Aside from Oscorp, they used Electro, Lizard, and Rhino, three characters that were certainly available without rebooting.

Even if Raimi left along with Maguire and Dunst, there was no need to reboot. They could have easily recast and continued. I don't understand this obsession by certain fans wanting a reboot every time there needs to be a cast change. You see it with the MCU too, acting like Iron Man and Captain America are going to be done when RDJ and Chris Evans are. There is no reason Webb, Garfield, and Stone (as MJ instead of Gwen) couldn't have done SM4 instead of ASM1.

The real question here is, would Sony have made more money from SM4 than ASM1? Given the dramatic drop in box office from SM3 to ASM1 and the numerous complaints about them redoing the origin, I would say that the answer is 'yes'. If the answer is 'yes', then it was a mistake.

Note that I'm not saying that Sony would never have to reboot. Eventually it might have gotten to that point. But they weren't there yet. There were a lot of places they could have taken the story following SM3.

Raimi's SM4 DEFINITELY would have made more money. And if it was actually a great film, it probably would have made close to $1 billion.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

Despite what I said above, a reboot could have worked. But they went about it the wrong way, by redoing the origin story which we had already seen just ten years prior. It wasn't like Man of Steel, where the origin was last on screen 35 years ago in a pre-CGI industry. People weren't interested in seeing essentially the same story again. ASM had problems regardless, but they lost a lot of viewers right away by doing that.

ASM2 is different. Its failure has nothing to do with the reboot.

 

[guitarsingerguy]

Despite what I said above, a reboot could have worked. But they went about it the wrong way, by redoing the origin story which we had already seen just ten years prior. It wasn't like Man of Steel, where the origin was last on screen 35 years ago in a pre-CGI industry. People weren't interested in seeing essentially the same story again. ASM had problems regardless, but they lost a lot of viewers right away by doing that.

ASM2 is different. Its failure has nothing to do with the reboot.

Exactly. I know I had zero interest in seeing the origin again, and the so-called untold story stuff about his parents clearly wasn't interesting enough to justify it either.

 

[Spider-Fan]

The only thing they really couldn't work around was the Osborns being dead, but we had just had three Osborn heavy movies and probably could have used a break from them for awhile. TASM immediately going back to Oscorp was one of the mistakes I thought they made. Aside from Oscorp, they used Electro, Lizard, and Rhino, three characters that were certainly available without rebooting.

Even if Raimi left along with Maguire and Dunst, there was no need to reboot. They could have easily recast and continued. I don't understand this obsession by certain fans wanting a reboot every time there needs to be a cast change. You see it with the MCU too, acting like Iron Man and Captain America are going to be done when RDJ and Chris Evans are. There is no reason Webb, Garfield, and Stone (as MJ instead of Gwen) couldn't have done SM4 instead of ASM1.

The real question here is, would Sony have made more money from SM4 than ASM1? Given the dramatic drop in box office from SM3 to ASM1 and the numerous complaints about them redoing the origin, I would say that the answer is 'yes'. If the answer is 'yes', then it was a mistake.

Note that I'm not saying that Sony would never have to reboot. Eventually it might have gotten to that point. But they weren't there yet. There were a lot of places they could have taken the story following SM3.

100% well said! Plus, for all the whining the villains die, Ock easily could have been resurrected in a future movie if they wanted. Like you said, they needed the reboot to basically do the Goblin saga again, despite the main villains (Lizard and Electro) had not been done in the Raimi films. Plus, we still have a plethora of other Spidey villains you can make movies with without resorting back to Goblins. Heck, you want another Goblin saga? Why not RODERICK KINGSLEY! Do the Hobgoblin! That was a great Spider-Man storyline. They didn't have to reboot the series. Loose sequels would have been easy. I agree. That was a giant miscalculation.

 

[I SEE SPIDEY]

I would have been okay with loose sequels to the 3rd film or even a reboot that bypassed the origin but no pointlessly we got another origin film.

 

[Erzengel]

They whiffed on an easy back story for Venom in SM3 by making JJJ's son become Venom. MJ leaving him at the altar at the end of SM2 plus bringing the symbiotic from space? I can write better stuff.