As everyone knows by now, Marc Webb's
The Amazing Spider-man will use mechanical web-shooters instead of Raimi's organic ones, which should be noted is true to the comics as written by Stan "the man" Lee and drawn by the legendary Steve Ditko. But was this wise? With the new origin story focusing seemingly on the purposeful manipulation of Peter Parker's genetics with a spider, wouldn't it be even more natural to have kept the organic web-shooters?
To be honest, I am still somewhat skeptical that this new Spidey movie will be accepted as well as Raimi's movies were. I was surprised when they scrapped Raimi's Spider-Man 4 and announced the reboot back in January 2010. While Spider-Man 3 had it's problems (the strutting disco walk and dancing scene--ugh!), it made a LOT of money and I figured the franchise would get back on track with a 4th film. So, when Sony went with the reboot I was not particularly thrilled with the idea. My concerns were validated when we learned that we would be put through yet another origin story with Petey back in high school. Can't our heroes ever grow up? Why to they keep rebooting them younger? What's next? A Spider-Baby movie?
But I digress. So, back to the topic at hand... When Sam Raimi took Spider-Man to the screen in 2002, he made a major departure from the classic mythology of the character by portraying the webbing as a organic substance created by Parker’s mutated biology. The move seemed to smartly streamline the origin but some purists complained that it tampered too much with tradition. Webb says that when he took on the reboot project he wanted to go his own path, which meant breaking from the Raimi movies in places where it made sense — and when it came to the webbing he sought out some very specialized counsel.
“I had a meeting with Stan Lee and we talked about the web-shooters,” Webb said. “I was curious about the incarnation of them [because] of course in the previous films [they went away from them] and we wanted to reestablish ourselves. That was one thing but the other thing was the fact that the web-shooters were able to dramatize Peter’s intellect and I thought that was really cool. ... It was in the comics and we have a different design but it’s a cool element to have. It’s not something we over-use or over-exploit. To me, it’s something I remember from when I was a kid and thinking ‘It would be cool if I could build those.’”
While highlighting Peter's intellectual, scientific background is all well and good, in my humble opinion, I think Raimi improved the story in his films with the organic web-shooters. It made much more sense. How can you be identified as being part spider WITHOUT webbing? That is an essential component of spiderhood! Especially since the focus on this new Spidey is the idea that Peter's genetics are altered purposefully.
But of course, what do I know. Let me know what you think in the poll and comments below.
The Amazing Spider-Man stars Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Denis Leary, Rhys Ifans, Martin Sheen, and Sally Field, the films swings into theaters July 3, 2012 in 3D!
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