Homecoming What should they do with the Spidey franchise? - Part 1

[fangz]

A premise ultimately doesn't decide a movie's quality. Sinister Six's success or failure depends on the writing, story and acting. And with Drew Goddard at the helm, I'm cautiously optimistic that it could succeed.

Totally. Exactly how I feel about it pretty much.

And I think we see this kind of reasoning a lot with stuff like 'female lead' movies aren't viable. or movies that are 'unrealistic' aren't gonna fly with general audience. or Superman movies that are like Donner aren't gonna work, or Superman movies that aren't like Donner aren't gonna work.
or too many villains, that's proven not to work. or anything with a Marvel logo is gonna make $700 million...

And it can start getting into complaints about 'plot holes' or continuity. Or lack of motivation, or background on characters. All kinds of stuff.
But you can get away with anything if you give people something to care about.

It's the singer not the song.
That's why we'd rather hear the song than read the chord chart. and why we see movies instead of just reading the plot summary.

 

[fangz]

And I think that Sony could easily turn things around for themselves as simple as turning in a great movie.

But I think there's a bigger thing with Spider-Man, and I know this is unrealistic, but here's what I think needs to be done...

Spider-Man needs to be split between movies and TV. The TV show would be expensive and best if it was kept to an 8 episode season, maybe 10 at the very most, on something like HBO. This would be the longview take on Spider-Man. and they would ideally get someone around 19-22 or so, who would sign on for about 15 or 17 years. haha. seriously. ideally. Peter wouldn't even be out of high school till probably middle of 3rd season.

And you would really get that whole soap opera aspect of the Spider-Man books, how stories would build naturally and kinda twist in and out of each other, and over years this would earn a feeling that things mattered in Peter's life. it wouldn't be one manic force fed 2 hour binge every three years. Animated Spectacular Spider-Man would be a good model in certain ways, but even more drawn out.

For example, first season, he's got his powers, you just jump past that, but the whole season is him dealing with crooks and gangs. Kingpin, Enforcers and that's it... nothing crazy. Peter learns the ropes, stops street level crime and slowly finds out about this Kingpin figure. But it would really establish his whole life at this time, and his friends and basically who he is and what he's about.

Second season, it would be full on Kingpin, Enforcers, Tinkerer, Shocker, Chameleon maybe and maybe the craziest it'd get is Vulture. and in the meantime you start meeting people like Curt Connors, and MJ and split focus on his life and Spider-Man work.

see what I mean? like that slow. seasons 3 would be like the rise of the Green Goblin and gangwar with Kingpin, and the Russians kinda on the side. season 4... more Goblin but maybe focused also on the Bugle and JJJ funding Scorpion and the Spider Slayers.
and you'd do that for 17 years. you wouldn't even be able to cover everything you wanted to. even going that long.

and this is necessary cuz the movies suck at any kind of honest to god world building. you'd have to make 3 Spider-Man movies every year to do that right. the movies are always gonna shaft us in this regard.

 

[fangz]

And then the movies, would be a whole separate thing. Continuity out the window for them. What they should be, is a director wanting to tell a certain story or put in their piece on Spider-Man. You'd listen to their pitch, and when you are sold on something great... you give them the keys for their movie. They pick the actor, they do it the tone they wanna do it... it's their Spider-Man movie. And it stands alone as purely that.

Maybe sometimes, you'd get someone with a 2 part movie pitch or a trilogy. But it would depend on whether this was justified and whether they actually had a genuine pitch for a planned out 3 part story. Sometimes that would happen. But that'd the rarity.

And the movies too, would really throw all continuity out the window. like the first one might be Peter's living with MJ, and it's a Kraven movie. And he's met Kraven before, there's history between them, but the movie would let us know that in a way that wasn't stupid. It would be each movies job to explain itself and tell it's story.

but then next one, might be he's just starting college, going out with Gwen and it's a Lizard movie. and then next one might be way later, and Peter is 31 and MJ is pregnant and the enemy is Venom and it's a two parter.

There would clearly be no expectation of continuity for the movies. In fact you would expect each one to be entirely different, in tone and cinematic style and everything, each movie would be really exciting to wonder what it was gonna be when it came out in a couple years. And the movies would come out about every 3 years.

And that's really what they should do with Spider-Man, I think. That would be perfect. Each format would be taking best advantage of what it is. Instead of being forced to try to be everything.

 

[spiderral]

If I had control:

Plan A: Move him into the MCU immediately

Plan B: Continue the current run, but dump all the people that worked on 1 and 2 except for Garfield, especially making sure to replace the writers and director. 1 was bearable, 2 was abhorrent.

If Spidey gets immediately moved to the MCU and they finish the TASM series (in 2017?) and keep the cast then I'd perfectly happy with that.
The cast has been the one good thing about these movies and I'd really like to see Garfield have his final shot at playing Spider-Man and leave with a bang, especially due to the fact that he's really enthusiastic about the character and really loves Spider-Man.

I know it would be odd jumping between studios like that but either way, I just want the cast to have some really good material to work with in a decent end to the TASM trilogy and just leave it there. They can do whatever they want with the Spider-Man franchise afterwards.

 

[Spooderman]

As long as Andrew Garfield isn't in the MCU as spider man I'll be fine.

 

[Frodo]

I think diversifying the product between tv, one shot short films, and feature films would be the best option even if the product were to stay at Sony. If they are emulating the WB and Disney models, then that would be the way to do it. I would think that would be a way of holding onto the rights without necessarily putting all their chips in one basket and falling short.

 

[Angryfantasyfan]

I think diversifying the product between tv, one shot short films, and feature films would be the best option even if the product were to stay at Sony. If they are emulating the WB and Disney models, then that would be the way to do it. I would think that would be a way of holding onto the rights without necessarily putting all their chips in one basket and falling short.

I think such a move runs the risk of overexposing the character. The WB and Marvel have hundreds of heroes at their disposal. It's not possible for Sony to do the same thing with just one property.

Also, it doesn't look like Sony even has the TV rights to Spider-Man.

Like the Spider-Man movie series, Spectacular has been produced by Sony, but yesterday, Spectacular's Supervising Producer, Greg Weisman, made a surprising revelation – Only days before the huge news broke that Disney was buying Marvel, he had been told that Sony had relinquished all television rights to Spider-Man, including animation, in exchange for "some concession vis-a-vis the live action Spider-Man features."

http://www.ign.com/articles/2009/09...ular-spider-man-studio-loses-spidey-tv-rights

 

[Frodo]

I think such a move runs the risk of overexposing the character. The WB and Marvel have hundreds of heroes at their disposal. It's not possible for Sony to do the same thing with just one property.

Also, it doesn't look like Sony even has the TV rights to Spider-Man.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2009/09...ular-spider-man-studio-loses-spidey-tv-rights

I think if they wanted to due their who expanded universe thing you do it the way I suggested though I didn't know about the tv rights. That aside, SOny stated goal as of now is to have different films in an expanded Universe featuring the Sinister six, Venom, A female led spin off , and ASM 3. Now there are rumored cancellations , shifting dates, etc but right now the official word is about expanding the property multiple ways so what I suggest might not be that far off from what their stated goal is.

Your argument is one of those against Sony's current position which I don't entirely disagree with. However, if Sony does what its claiming it wants to do , then expanding the property is probably what they'll try to do within their legal obligations.

 

[Dasher10]

Totally. Exactly how I feel about it pretty much.

And I think we see this kind of reasoning a lot with stuff like 'female lead' movies aren't viable. or movies that are 'unrealistic' aren't gonna fly with general audience. or Superman movies that are like Donner aren't gonna work, or Superman movies that aren't like Donner aren't gonna work.
or too many villains, that's proven not to work. or anything with a Marvel logo is gonna make $700 million...

And it can start getting into complaints about 'plot holes' or continuity. Or lack of motivation, or background on characters. All kinds of stuff.
But you can get away with anything if you give people something to care about.

It's the singer not the song.
That's why we'd rather hear the song than read the chord chart. and why we see movies instead of just reading the plot summary.

Action movies with female leads have proved to be successful. Aliens, The Hunger Games, Divergent, etc.

 

[CaptainWagner]

Something just hit me. Dracula Untold failed with critics and audiences both stating that making Dracula a hero instead of a villain felt forced and alienated them. Now picture Sinister Six with Doctor Octopus being made into the protagonist and think about how both critics and the general public will react?

More importantly, what's going to be different this time around and if people didn't like TASM2, then what's going to be different this time to win them over with a premise that people already proved that they dislike?

What's different is that Dracula has ALWAYS been a villain, through and through. Doc Ock has been treated sympathetically for years and, most importantly, in his last big screen appearance.

But that's beside the point, as Ock isn't likely to be the main protagonist. That role will most likely go to Harry.

 

[Dasher10]

I think if they wanted to due their who expanded universe thing you do it the way I suggested though I didn't know about the tv rights. That aside, SOny stated goal as of now is to have different films in an expanded Universe featuring the Sinister six, Venom, A female led spin off , and ASM 3. Now there are rumored cancellations , shifting dates, etc but right now the official word is about expanding the property multiple ways so what I suggest might not be that far off from what their stated goal is.

Your argument is one of those against Sony's current position which I don't entirely disagree with. However, if Sony does what its claiming it wants to do , then expanding the property is probably what they'll try to do within their legal obligations.

So Sony can't even do a live-action Spider-Man show. Fox negotiated for those rights back to do X-Factor but for whatever reason, Sony seems to enjoy being suicidal with anything not related to Playstation or James Bond.

Ava Arad is a cancerous tumor upon Sony who was held back at Marvel by Perlmutter and Feige. Amy Pascal needs to keep him on a tighter leash lest he do any further damage. It's impossible to build an expanded universe around one character. Marvel has the Avengers (except for Spider-Man), Guardians of the Galaxy, Inhumans, Defenders/Heroes for Hire and Eternals. Fox has the X-Men, X-Force, X-Factor, Fantastic Four, New Mutants and Alpha Flight. Sony has one character who's also an Avenger. A shared universe around one guy cannot work, it'll just overexpose Spider-Man and two spin-offs to a failed film is a recipe for failure.

 

[fangz]

Action movies with female leads have proved to be successful. Aliens, The Hunger Games, Divergent, etc.

Yeah, but I was giving examples of things that you hear people say as broad determiners of a truth that are actually superficial to something's success.

it'd be the same thing the opposite way saying... look at Aliens, The Hunger Games, Divergent and see...? female fronted leads are what people like.

and premise or the gender of a lead or all kinds of different factors aren't at all what determines how good or how accepted a thing is. if something looks good and is attractive to people, people don't care about the premise.

 

[LEVITIKUZ]

Making a cinematic universe for Spider-Man is like making a cinematic universe for Harry Potter. You can't do it on one character.

 

[Spooderman]

Making a cinematic universe for Spider-Man is like making a cinematic universe for Harry Potter. You can't do it on one character.

They're doing that with the Fantastic Beasts movie.

 

[Mr.M]

Guarantee you Potter will appear in that series if it is a hit, and when Radcliffe and Grint need that payday again after a string of Indy films.

 

[degraves93]

Sony needs to get off their asses already

 

[UltimateWebhead]

If they were to go that route my strong preference and advice would be to:

A) Have the new version already be established as being Spiderman, for at least several years. Don't put him back in highschool . Maybe Grad school at the most, and most of his rogues gallery should already be established.

B) Don't redo the origin again, even in flashbacks. People know his origin after 5 films, and I think another reboot goes over alot easier if you don't waste time showing him become Spiderman, uncle Ben being killed etc all over again.

C) Don't go back to the Osborns and the Goblin saga, let alone the stuff about his parents.

A) Totally agree.

B) Flashbacks used to a minor degree would be beneficial even to all the people that are aware of the origin. Certain moments from his past could be used to create great dramatic effect and help to draw people into the emotion of certain moments when Peter may be hurting or feeling down. Overuse of flashbacks would be a bad thing, imo.

C) Definitely stay away from the parents storyline. Talk about a back fire. But I'm still waiting to see a proper version of GG on the big screen. Dafoe came close minus the outfit and his lack of a decent motive after becoming the GG.

And I think that Sony could easily turn things around for themselves as simple as turning in a great movie.

But I think there's a bigger thing with Spider-Man, and I know this is unrealistic, but here's what I think needs to be done...

Spider-Man needs to be split between movies and TV. The TV show would be expensive and best if it was kept to an 8 episode season, maybe 10 at the very most, on something like HBO. This would be the longview take on Spider-Man. and they would ideally get someone around 19-22 or so, who would sign on for about 15 or 17 years. haha. seriously. ideally. Peter wouldn't even be out of high school till probably middle of 3rd season.

And you would really get that whole soap opera aspect of the Spider-Man books, how stories would build naturally and kinda twist in and out of each other, and over years this would earn a feeling that things mattered in Peter's life. it wouldn't be one manic force fed 2 hour binge every three years. Animated Spectacular Spider-Man would be a good model in certain ways, but even more drawn out.

For example, first season, he's got his powers, you just jump past that, but the whole season is him dealing with crooks and gangs. Kingpin, Enforcers and that's it... nothing crazy. Peter learns the ropes, stops street level crime and slowly finds out about this Kingpin figure. But it would really establish his whole life at this time, and his friends and basically who he is and what he's about.

Second season, it would be full on Kingpin, Enforcers, Tinkerer, Shocker, Chameleon maybe and maybe the craziest it'd get is Vulture. and in the meantime you start meeting people like Curt Connors, and MJ and split focus on his life and Spider-Man work.

see what I mean? like that slow. seasons 3 would be like the rise of the Green Goblin and gangwar with Kingpin, and the Russians kinda on the side. season 4... more Goblin but maybe focused also on the Bugle and JJJ funding Scorpion and the Spider Slayers.
and you'd do that for 17 years. you wouldn't even be able to cover everything you wanted to. even going that long.

and this is necessary cuz the movies suck at any kind of honest to god world building. you'd have to make 3 Spider-Man movies every year to do that right. the movies are always gonna shaft us in this regard.

Spectacular is THE model for success, imo. But I like your ideas for a possible show...draw out the storylines, develop more.

Sony needs to get off their asses already

You mean get off their faces, right? I can never tell the difference with Sony.

 

[meanmc]

I was looking forward to a cinematic universe for Spider-Man at the beginning. But after ASM 1 i was pretty sure, that it will not work. (as they did so many mistakes)

With ASM 2 they proved, that i was right!

If you like to do a Spiderman cinematic universe, you have to do it on a different level (than Sony did it)!
Maybe they did not have enough time to plan it, or, more likely, they had not the right people to do the job well...

It is a shame, what they did with Spiderman!

 

[W/ Great Power]

To this day, I still think the decision to go with an expanded universe came after TASM1.

Had they planned that prior to the reboot, there's no way it would have unfolded the way it has.

 

[spiderral]

I'm pretty sure the decision was made during TASM2's filming and production, hence the messy direction they took towards including the Sinister Six in the film and them teasing that through set photos they released.

I have a feeling that, initially, Sony's ideas for TASM2 were more streamlined (that's if they just left it as Electro with the only villain) but they decided that what they had wasn't really enough and they decided to do more world-building stuff by including Smythe, Ravencroft, Oscorp having more importance, Richard Parker's secret lab etc.

 

[Venom'sDad]

Who knows when they actually planned to expand the Spideyverse.....bottomline, it's not working well.

 

[W/ Great Power]

I'm pretty sure the decision was made during TASM2's filming and production, hence the messy direction they took towards including the Sinister Six in the film and them teasing that through set photos they released.

I have a feeling that, initially, Sony's ideas for TASM2 were more streamlined (that's if they just left it as Electro with the only villain) but they decided that what they had wasn't really enough and they decided to do more world-building stuff by including Smythe, Ravencroft, Oscorp having more importance, Richard Parker's secret lab etc.

That definitely does make more sense.

You know, I would not have been opposed to the idea of Electro if they had solely focused on him in a Spidey film without the universe expansion. If they were to take out Harry/Goblin and Rhino, while focusing on developing Max's story, they could have created better motivations for him and he would have been much more impactful.

However, since they are going with the expansion, i truly think they wasted Electro (unless they're going to add him in the S6). Even if they wanted 3 villains in TASM2, why not replace Electro with someone who will be in the S6? It makes much more sense to use someone that will actually play a role in the future.

 

[Venom'sDad]

It doesn't matter whether they had focus on Max/Electro or not....they still would have given us the same characterization, and suggestion by Foxx.

 

[UltimateWebhead]

I'm pretty sure the decision was made during TASM2's filming and production, hence the messy direction they took towards including the Sinister Six in the film and them teasing that through set photos they released.

I have a feeling that, initially, Sony's ideas for TASM2 were more streamlined (that's if they just left it as Electro with the only villain) but they decided that what they had wasn't really enough and they decided to do more world-building stuff by including Smythe, Ravencroft, Oscorp having more importance, Richard Parker's secret lab etc.

This.

The 'world-building' ideas were implemented as they were filming. Probably why they cut out MJ and was the source of a big chunk of the issues the movie developed. Tolmach even said so, to paraphrase, "the idea that everything coming from Oscorp was sort of a progression that we made as filming was progressing."

You just don't make changes like this to your film. It's never a good thing and the results are similar across the board when you look at movies that have done the same thing. It's like they learned nothing from SM3.

 

[UltimateWebhead]

It doesn't matter whether they had focus on Max/Electro or not....they still would have given us the same characterization, and suggestion by Foxx.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that the end result would have been the same however, having a bad character is less of an issue than having a bad film. If they would have stuck to their initial plan with the movie instead of changing things mid-production, the outcome for the film may have been different. And we might be sitting here saying the movie itself was good but had a bad villain within it rather than saying the entire film was a downer, villain included.