For one thing, anybody who knows me in the least bit knows that Sam Raimi's Spider-Man (2002) is without question my favorite movie of all time. No, it's not the best movie ever made. It's my personal favorite, and you better believe I will be watching it on my birthday in a couple of weeks (get excited, people of Bradley Falls).
So how do I feel about the reboot? At first, I was absolutely furious. It seemed absolutely unnecessary for Marvel to start over from scratch when they had just a great saga going. (Though the general consensus is that Spider-Man 3 is a terrible film.) I thought Marvel was being incredibly lazy making another superhero movie for the moolah. Upon further investigation however, this is what I discovered: Sam Raimi and the Sony executives were having a dispute over the 4th film in Raimi's saga. Seeing no resolution in the near future, Raimi dropped out of the project, with his stars Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst tagging along. Then Sony had quite a dilemma: who to replace them?
Enter music video and feature film director Marc Webb, whose (500) Days of Summer is without a doubt one of the greatest romantic comedies of the new century, if not ever. Next up, Maguire's replacement for Peter Parker/Spider-Man. The role eventually went to British actor Andrew Garfield. I was not excited at first because 1) he's British and 2) he's in his late 20s playing a high schooler. After the first few pictures and some thought, I realized Garfield looks decent as the nerdy Parker, and people in their 20s have been playing high schoolers forever (Hello, Grease!). So no harm done. Finally, who would play the damsel in distress? I guess since the filmmakers are going back to the beginning, they chose to bring back Parker's first romantic interest from the original comics. That's right, folks. Before red-headed bombshell Mary Jane Watson, Peter Parker had a thing for a cute little blonde thing called Gwen Stacy. (Disclaimer: I know this info from research. I've never read a "Spider-Man" comic book in my life.) Stacy actually made an appearance in Spider-Man 3 by Ron Howard's daughter Bryce Dallas Howard, but no matter because this is a reboot! In this film, Stacy will be portrayed by current "It" girl Emma Stone, which is pretty exciting because I looove her.
So there you have it. I still have my qualms. There is no wayyy this updated version is going to be anywhere near as good as the original. I haven't found out who is composing the music, but no one will be able to compare to Danny Elfman's score in the original. I still get chills every time I hear the opening of either of Raimi's flicks. I will admit, though, that this new film does have a good lineup thus far, including the one and only Sally Field is Parker's Aunt May. Also, the teaser trailer recently released looks impressive. That POV shot of Spidey scaling the buildings of NYC is pretty sweet. So I guess we'll just have to wait until next summer to see what happens.
In other news, I have joined the Twitterverse. Follow me @GimmeMoore24 for even more banal insight into my, er... exciting life! Later.
