It’s All Geek to Me: Spider-Man‘s Ultimate Reboot

Share on Facebook posted 01-21-10 by Dan Kaufman

Most of the chips have finally fallen in the Spider-Man film franchise kerfuffle. After it was announced that Sam Raimi would no longer be helming the next installment (due to those darned “creative differences”), Sony recently confirmed that Marc Webb will be the one responsible for rebooting the story of Peter Parker. Feel free to insert your own Webb/Spider-Man joke here.

This has left many fans with the same burning question: Who the hell is Marc Webb? Well, he’s a young director of several music videos, as well as last year’s indie film, 500 Days of Summer, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. After all, nothing says superhero excitement quite like quirky independent romance and Green Day. But maybe Sony has made a better move than we think. They’ve expressed interest in taking the franchise in a more intimate direction, based not on the Amazing Spider-Man canon, but on the Ultimate Spider-Man version of the character, who is still currently in high school.

The Ultimate imprint of Marvel comics was created ten years ago, as a complete reboot of their entire line of characters in a separate, more tightly focused universe, with the intent of drawing in new readers and rewriting their superhero mythologies for a modern audience. Ultimate Spider-Man was the first title released for the imprint and was written then, as it still is now, by revered comic scribe Brian Michael Bendis.

As a big fan of Ultimate Spider-Man myself, I’m cautiously excited by the idea of it being used as the source material for the new interpretation. Bendis didn’t radically change the Spider-Man mythology so much as contemporize it. His command of everyday teen banter and dialogue really brings Peter Parker and friends to life in a way no one has before. The classic stable of villains are still used, but with slight cosmetic changes, and a more connected back story that seems tailor-made for a movie trilogy. The problem is, even with a reboot of the franchise, it might be too soon to have Spidey fighting the Goblin or Doc Ock on film again, which leaves us with a few, not-as-exciting prospects for villains. Kraven the Hunter? Eh. The Chameleon, a supervillain whose sole power is pretending to be other people? Yawn. Kingpin was used in Daredevil, so he’s stuck at Fox. Electro might be cool. Or Hydro-Man. Or even The Vulture, who John Malkovich was supposed to play if Raimi had stayed on the project.

But what really sets Ultimate Spider-Man apart is the greater focus on Peter’s personal relationships. Bendis takes great care to show how being a superhero wreaks havoc in his life as an adolescent – how it affects his school life, his home life with (a younger) Aunt May, and his relationship with Mary Jane Watson, who goes to high school with Peter in the Ultimate universe. Bendis famously devoted an entire early issue of USM to a single conversation between Peter and MJ. It was an important conversation, but still, nothing more than that. And it was awesome.

If it’s this attention to Peter’s emotional life that Sony is striving for in the reboot, then I’m all for it. And Marc Webb, who earned praise for his portrayal of contemporary romance in 500 Days might be a perfect fit. But I worry about the action. I just don’t want Sony to swing the pendulum back so far in the direction of a soap opera that they overlook the fact that this still needs to a superhero movie with some epic battles and kick-assery. Raimi’s fight scenes were the best part of his Spidey films for me. He has this great, kinetic way of shooting an action sequence where the camera almost becomes another character in the scene with a vibrant life of its own. Whether Webb will have the same affinity for superheroics remains to be seen. Still, it’s all certainly a better direction than the “darker” and “grittier” Dark Knight–esque Superman reboot that Warner Brothers has been threatening.

In other Spider-Man news, still no word on an opening date for repeatedly delayed imminent flop Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, the Broadway show with music by Bono and The Edge. And there was much rejoicing.