While awesome, the Spider-Man movie was riddled with bad decisions. I believe the next one will be, too. My solution probably wouldn't fly with a non-fan audience, but I have a vision anyway:
The first movie features Peter, his surrogate parents, J. Jonah Jameson (more screen time), Betty Brant (main love interest), Joe Robertson (cameo), Eddie Brock (cameo), Dr. Otto Octavius (main villain), Captain George Stacy, Norman and Harry Osborn (cameos), Mary Jane (cameo) Flash Thompson (as the character truly is) maybe a couple small-scale side villains and petty crooks briefly, and whoever else needs to be here. When I say "cameo", I mean it could be several scenes, but not integral to the main plot. Parker is witty, and Spider-Man is a smart-alecky, dynamic hero who bounces off the walls too fast for crooks to draw a bead on him. He has fun taking down robbers using moves he used in the comics. This is during high school. Betty is the lead love interest-- Peter's first girlfriend. Doc Ock had dealings with Betty in the comics and took her hostage a couple of times, so this should satisfy continuity buffs and nitpickers. Mary Jane is a peripheral love interest that a jealous Betty sees as threatening. The groundwork for the Osborns' characters could be started here, but not fully delved into yet. Brock has a peripheral part that has him hold resentment toward Spider-Man.Captain George Stacy will be killed during a battle between Doc Ock and Spidey-- it's Otto's fault, but Spidey takes heat anyway. By the end of the movie, Betty has broken up with Peter because he is too secretive and seems to crave danger in his work. Peter will NOT give the "friend" speech, he will just accept that he won't be able to have normal relationships while he wears the webs.
The second movie features everyone from the first, plus Gwen Stacy, Colonel John Jameson (cameo), more side villains and petty crooks, Dr. Connors (cameo), and whoever else sounds like a good idea. Jonah Jameson and Joe Robertson will have a bigger part, as will Harry Osborn, Mary Jane and Norman Osborn will be the main villains. Gwen blames Spider-Man for her father's death but falls in love with Peter. Mary Jane digs Spidey and Peter, but Peter loves Gwen. Harry dates Mary Jane but it doesn't work out. Love triangle with Peter, MJ and Gwen is dramatic but light-hearted and not sappy. Norman Osborn wears a decent costume and has actual criminal goals, runs afoul of Spider-Man and has a feud with him throughout the film. John Jameson mentions that he is going into space; Jonah is proud, loud, and cantankerous. When Norman learns that his son's roommate Peter is Spider-Man, he goes even more nuts and kidnaps Gwen. They do the bridge bit, and either Gwen dies, or they can wimp out and have her get saved. If she is saved, she will move away to England to live with Uncle Arthur (as she did briefly in the comics before her death... so don't think this is out of left field here), traumatized. Green Goblin dies by his own glider. Mary Jane comforts Peter, who is considering quitting the hero game. At the end, a super-villain (take your pick) shows up, causing mayhem, and Peter instinctively puts his mask on and gets into the action, ending on the note that, surprise, surprise, he ain't quitting.
Third movie features Venom as the big bad. The alien symbiote will come to Earth via John Jameson's return flight. I don't know, they did it in the cartoon, and it's the best way to do it quick without doing the Secret Wars. Anyway, Eddie Brock has fallen on more hard times, supposedly because of that accursed Spider-Man. The symbiote finds him somehow and they get their Venom groove on. Mary Jane is now the main love and she and Peter are together. I don't have much in mind for this one except lots of character drama, more character comedy, and a bad-ass Venom trying to tear Peter's life apart without attempting to reveal his identity to the public. At this point, all kinds of things could happen. Most of the good villains in Spider-Man came before Venom, so there are many to choose from as side plots and scenes.
This is my humble, too little, too late vision of a Spider-Man trilogy. It would never make it in the movies, partly due to the way stars are cast. You probably wouldn't have all the great actors who are just "perfect" for their parts making cameo appearances and peripheral plots in earlier movies in preparation for their spotlight in a future movie. Some might, if they were really nice and liked the movies, but it's not realistic. These people get better offers that would conflict.
I'd keep Dafoe as Goblin, Maguire as Spider-Man, and definitely, definitely J.K. Simmons as Jameson. Could he be any more awesome? Simmons is good at everything he does.
Let me know what you think of this. If you've been reading all this. If you have, go lie down. It's not good to look at the monitor for this long!!
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I'm the best there is at what I do, but what I do isn't very nice.
well I read the first paragraph and you have doc ock in both movies so I did not read anything after that.I dont like the idea of Doc being in both the first and 2nd one so I dont like the idea.
well being a true venom fan, the only people that look enuf like him that i know of are Brock Lesnar, dolph Lungren, and that huge guy from gladiator. unfortunatley there isnt much acting talent here and thats kinda necsseary to pull off how mentaly unstable he really is.
Mr Parker, I guess I forgot to exclude Octavius from the "everyone from the first" statement. I meant to leave him out, or only give him a cameo or flashback. He would definitely not be a primary villain. But hey, don't tell me it wouldn't be awesome to see him stewing in prison, making his list and checking it twice, ranting and dreaming of revenge on Spider-Man and everyone else who's wronged him. He's funny like that.
I meant to comment earlier on Bakerboy's post about Doc Ock being a good guy. I think that's completely disrespectful and ludicrous. Granted, Doc Ock does not possess a very rare personality type. Dr. Doom is very similar, as are many others. The point is, he's different enough from the Green Goblin that he can be true to his character origins and still entertain us. Brilliant, arrogant, intolerant, megalomaniacal. This is Dr. Otto Octavius, and if they betray that very simple, very essential point, I'll... I'll... umm... I'll probably not see the movie a second time until it comes out on DVD! That'll show 'em!
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I'm the best there is at what I do, but what I do isn't very nice.
But when the symbiote covers him and he becomes Venom, he could be replaced by an advanced CGI character with someone else to do the voice, that would give the desired mentally unstable effect.
Oh Okay now that I see that you have Doc Ock left out of the 2nd one,I like it.You know something I would like to see Logan is I hated it when Gwen died,she was by far my favorite supporting character,I was pissed that the 90's cartoon blew a golden opportunity to not use her in it.What I would really like to see is that Peter is in love with Mj in the first film but "MJ" is the love interest of Peters that dies by the goblin in the 2nd film and there is this love triangle between Gwen,Betty and down the road in a 4th film,Felicia Hardy because we then get The Black Cat in the 4th film.Thus we get to see a catfight between Gwen Stacy and Black Cat over Peter,wouldnt that be something.
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Last edited by Mr Parker on Feb 2nd, 2004 at 05:35 PM
Mr Parker, I don't know what to say about the cartoon series, which I thought had too many competing love interests as it was, but I know that you can't kill off MJ and have Gwen live in the movies. Maybe in Ultimate Spider-Man they will twist things even further (I hope they don't, since MJ and Peter are so friggin' cute together in that comic) and make that the case, but to do so in the official movie adaptation would be blasphemy and the fans as a whole wouldn't stand for it. Hell, I personally wish that Movie MJ would go sidewalk-diving while Peter's on the john, but that's just because they failed to make a decent MJ in the first film (probably second, too). I think having Gwen die would be a ballsy movie if they did it in a movie, but the way I thought it out (which won't be possible, seeing how the first plots were written), you wouldn't need to kill her off to continue the series.
I pretty much blanked on the third part of the trilogy and only had Venom in mind, but now that you reminded me, I think the Black Cat should be in that one too. She would be like Ultimate Black Cat, with action similar to Daredevil in his movie. Another love triangle, another vigilante.
Anyway, thanks for reading my idea. Thanks for the comments.
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I'm the best there is at what I do, but what I do isn't very nice.
Yeah THAT would be pretty cool if MJ dies in ultimate.I doubt that we will ever see gwen in a spider-man film as long as sony as producing it though which is just as well because I would hate to hae her brought back just to die again.we wont ever see gwen is long as sony id producing it,these were the same morons who decided they wanted him to become manspider after all.
You have completely contradicted what you stand for, Mr Parker. You complain that Sony has bastardized the Spider-Man name by introducing organics in place of your beloved original webshooters... but NOW you want to kill off one of the trademark characters from the series because you feel that Gwen Stacy was not properly used throughout the story arc?!?
I see now... it's not that Sony has completely gone against Marvel's development of the Spider-Man franchise, it's that they have not pandered to YOUR ideal version of the story.
yes sony has bastardized the name of spider-man with the organics.It would just be cool to see MJ by it and Gwen live, that way there would be no chance of that god damn marriage happening which looks like it will in the sequels,with sony in charge,I have no doubt it will happen. .Believe it or not,I hated that damn marriage 5 times worse than I do organics and I stopped reading spider-man after they went and got him married.Thats why I was really dissapointed that spider-man blue was only a temporary magazine because Gwen Stacy was in them and he wasnt married in them.That sucked that they didnt make that magazine a permanent series.
Mr Parker, Screwhead has a point about your wish to see Gwen switch places with Mary Jane in the Ultimate title. That would be a bastardization as well. As it is, I like the changes they made to Gwen's character, because I've read the original stuff, and it wouldn't be as interesting for the second time around (unless Stan Lee was writing it) if they kept her the same. I was pissed off that they switched MJ and Gwen in the movie. They shouldn't have tried to make MJ a damnsel in distress. The proof that she is a strong character is in the years preceding her marriage to Peter. She's faced down supervillains and common thugs. Even if you liked Gwen better, she's dead now and the only way to bring her back in regular continuity is to (heaven forbid) bring back her clone or make a new clone. We can't have that. Not again. If they had Peter and Gwen live happily ever after in "Ultimate" then that would be too large a deviation from the source material.
I should also mention that Sony is probably no different than any other production company in their treatment of Spider-Man. Movies have a way of screwing with characters and stories. A big part of the movie was based on Ultimate Spider-Man, as you can probably tell.
Oh! Let me add this to my list of unforgivably bad decisions made by the film makers: the genetically engineered super-spider. The super-spider was not shown dead or dying in the movie. It could bite any number of people. However, even if they did have the basic intelligence to show this properly, it would be moot because of the other huge mistake: there are 14 other friggin' spiders just waiting to bite people and create an army of Spider-Men! Of course, this could be intentional so that they could use the super-spiders as a way to create more metahumans, but that's stupid, considering the multitude of ways the Spider-Man villains got their powers in the comics, so it's another huge FAILURE on the part of the film makers.
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I'm the best there is at what I do, but what I do isn't very nice.
Well thats a good point about how Mj shouldnt die but organics are every bit just as much of a bastardization of his character as that is.Like I said,I hated that god damn marriage even 5 times worse than I do organics believe it or not,so thats why I would not mind seeing Mj die. That way the marriage would not happen again in the movies.Your point about the spider walking off not dying and those other spiders being around is ANOTHER thing I just so hated about this movie.That was something I mentioned on another thread of mine when I reviewed the movie.David Koepp sucks as a screenwriter.I cant believe he could be so stupid to actually write a screenplay like that.Thats one of many examples you listed that made this movie look like it was written by somebody with the ideas of a 5 year old,that was just plain horrible script writing at its worse.
KMC Community Forums
My Spider-Man trilogy... what do you think?
Jan 30th, 2004 05:56 AM
...I mean, have you seen Masters of the Universe?
