Sony To "Reboot" Spider Man Franchise

Today I read an article about Sony's decision to do a "reboot" Spider Man movie in lieu of creating the much anticipated "Spider Man 4" that they had been expected to do until recently. The article I read was unusually harsh, and focused mostly on anger over Sony's decision not to shoot the movie in New York. Reading this article compelled me to write one of my own, with my own perspective on the matter, because I have some positive things to say about the new film, despite being upset that they decided against making a fourth installment of the existing series.

Learning that Sony had inexplicably decided not to produce a fourth installation of the Spider Man saga that had seen so much success over the past decade, in effect also dropping Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst from the lead roles in the new movie, my first instinct about what to expect was negative. There are some bad precedents for other film studios' attempts to start successful major movie franchises over again from scratch or change the storylines of such sagas, and also when they replace popular lead actors from such franchises with new actors.

Terminator: Salvation is the most glaring example of how a studio destroyed one of the most profitable franchises in history. The first mistake they made was by choosing Christian Bale to replace Nick Stahl who had played John Connor in Terminator 3. This decision made no sense because Christian Bale does not look like a John Connor. So the claim that this decision was made because John Connor needed to look older makes no sense. What did make sense was the previous choice that if Edward Furlong who played John Connor in T2 were to be replaced, Nick Stahl was an excellent choice, becuase if you look at what Edward Furlong looked like in T2, and compared him to Nick Stahl- they look enough alike to make the transition between T2 and T3 to be believable. Terminator 3 was, in my opinion, the best Terminator movie ever. Another sensible choice was Thomas Dekker to play John Connor in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series. He really does look somewhere in between the younger Edward Furlong, and the twenty-something Nick Stahl. He was credible as a John Connor and the TV series was excellent. Then out of nowhere Cristian Bale, who looks nothing like Stahl, Dekker, or Furlong... gets casted as John Connor. None of the actors who pulled off credible performances as Connor look anything like Bale, and you can tell that if even 10 years were to pass, all three of those actors would look pretty much the same as they do today. In 20 years, maybe they will have a few gray hairs, at most. So the notion that John Connor in the space between Terminator 3, and Terminator Salvation, would suddenly look like a 45 year old, was totally ridiculous and cost the newer movie a lot of credibility. Then, to make matters worse, they scrapped the role of Catherine Brewster which had originated with Claire Danes' appearance in Terminator 3. In T3, Arnold Schwarzenegger's good guy Terminator character claims that in the future, John Connor dies but his wife then leads the resistance. But in T-Salvation, there is no Catherine Brewster character at all. How can John Connor have a wife in T3 and then suddenly she disappears and his character has no memory of her having ever even existed? T-Salvation didn't pick up where Terminator 3 left off - John Connor and Catherine Brewster were supposed to be hiding out in an underground Presidential fallout shelter and coordinating resistance-organizing efforts via radio transmissions with a microphone. Another confusing casting blunder... in T-Salvation they tried to create a "lookalike" Terminator model designed to appear SIMILAR to Arnold's model... this was a disaster because all this did was make the movie look cheap. They could've casted Kristanna Lokken or Summer Glau to play Terminators in the movie and made the film have SOMETHING in common with the earlier films or show. T-Salvation made no sense to me, I watched it on a friend's DVD twice to try and make sense of the plot, and the movie could only be explained as having nothing to do at all with any of the three prior movies or the television series. It is no wonder the movie flopped. It was a disgrace to the Terminator name. Also, why they decided to cancel the extremely well-written and well-produced Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series remains a mystery.

Then there is the Batman Series, which, interestingly, also has Christian Bale in the lead, as Batman. This is the series which got restarted with disappointing results. In the 1990's series the lead role of Batman was played by different actors in almost every installation. Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, and George Clooney all played Batman. Chris O'Donnell gave the final two installations some consistency by playing Robin. Since Keaton, Kilmer, and Clooney are all middle aged adults anyway, the transition of leads didn't make much of a difference, and in this case, the casting of Christian Bale later in Batman Begins was not offensive or ridiculous. That said, I watched Batman Begins and The Dark Knight and was bored to death by them. Dark Knight was better than Batman Begins, but these movies didn't have the comic-book feeling to them that the 1990's films had. They felt like surreal dramas instead of action-adventure films. These two films did very well at the box office, but they still serve as another example of a studio re-starting a franchise of popular and exciting films, and ruining them. My favorite Batman movies remain Batman Forever and Batman & Robin.

All that said, if there is anyone who would be biased against a new Spider Man movie that doesn't have Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst in the leads, it would be me. It's really unfortunate that they decided to cut the series off at Spider Man 3 without finishing the storyline of Peter Parker's love affair with Mary Jane Watson. They would've been expected to finally get married in Spider Man 4, if the movie had been made. Knowing that audiences will not get to see the two get married is extremely disappointing. The scene in Spider Man 3 where Tobey is falling through the air and more concerned with saving the ring with which he plans to propose than he is with saving his own life was one of the most touching moments I've ever seen in an action movie. There was a strange comment posted underneath the article I read today where someone claimed Sony replaced Tobey because he was getting too old to play Parker, and this makes no sense. Tobey looks identical today to the way he looked in the first Spider Man movie. So this argument didn't make any sense. Yet once they did decide to re-start the series rather than to continue it, one would assume this means they would be replacing the lead actors as well.

If they had made a bad choice for a replacement for Tobey, I would be boycotting the new Spider Man movie and telling everyone else to do the same, but it happens the actor they chose for the role truly is deserving of the role, and this is why I felt the need to write my own article about this matter. An actor named Andrew Garfield was chosen to be the next Peter Parker. I am already familiar with his work, since he played one of the leads in Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep's 2007 film "Lions For Lambs". This movie was a political movie with a strong antiwar message, a movie that dramatized the way politicians and media pundits were mutually responsible for the lies and effects of the misinformation campaign waged by the Bush administration in the leadup to the Iraq war. Garfield plays a student called into his college professor's office to receive a lecture about his academic and personal potential, in which he's also told a tragic story about two students who volunteered to serve in the military only to die in the Iraq war. Garfield's performance alongside Streep and Cruise showcased a talent worthy of being casted in a lead role alongside them. It is for this reason that I am actually excited about the new Spider Man movie, and this is why I felt compelled to write this article. Garfield not only looks the part of Peter Parker, he is capable of pulling off a performance of equal caliber to Maguire. I recommend that anyone interested in getting to know Garfield's work, rent Lions For Lambs on Itunes by clicking here. Also, coming to theaters later this year is another of Garfield's projects, a movie called "The Social Network", where he plays a lead alongside Jesse Eisenberg, Rashida Jones, and Justin Timberlake. I've seen the trailer for it, and the movie looks great. Something a little along the lines of a modern day spin off Ryan Phillipe, Rachael Leigh Cook, and Claire Forlani's now-classic techno-thriller "Antitrust".

So with all that in mind, I have to give a thumbs up to Sony (not for rebooting the Spider Man series because 1-3 deserved to be followed with a 4, and there is no justification for them to think Maguire and Dunst warranted replacement) but instead my accolades are to the fact that since they did decide to remake the series, they at least decided to recruit an actor of equal caliber to Maguire, a sign that they intend to create a film that audiences will enjoy just as much as the prior Spider Man films. It doesn't matter where they decide to shoot the film, since the New York skyscrapers are usually done with blue-screens anyway. What matters is the talent involved in making the movie, because it is the talent that makes a movie worth seeing, not the budget.

For more information of Andrew Garfield's upcoming movie "The Social Network", you can visit http://www.thesocialnetwork-movie.com

Here is the trailer for "The Social Network":