Comments on: THWIP!+CTRL+DEL

By: Myles McNutt

Myles McNutt — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 16:56:42 +0000

What’s most interesting to me here is how fractured the audience for this film is going to be. These audiences will include (but are not limited to):

a) the fans who are upset with the decision but who will want to see it anyway to see how “bad” it is
b) the fans who hated Spider-Man 3 and want to see the series return to its former glory
c) the fans who love Spider-Man but hated all of the movies (because of Tobey McGuire, because of Raimi’s horror influences, or many other justifications) and want to see the story done right
d) the general moviegoers who know who Spider-Man is and will go see it with no idea it’s a “reboot” (the marketing, after all, is unlikely to seem discontinuous).
e) the coming-of-age teenage moviegoers who may have balked at mid-mythology Spider-Man but will totally eat up a High School-set origin story (I’m waiting for the “Spiders are the new Vampires” tagline)

If the movie actually manages to be good, I think Raimi’s Spider-Man legacy was tarnished enough by the third film that lament over the Spider-Man 4 that could have been will be limited. However, I think that if the film fails, or if the film is seen as going off the rails as early as director selection and casting, then the project will become much maligned and start to alienate further audiences that, for now, are probably still likely to see the film.

By: Avi Santo

Avi Santo — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:14:39 +0000

My curiosity is about how all this plays out with fans of the franchise invested in its current continuity. Following discussion threads on Newsarama, it seems that many are none too happy with this decision. Though I agree that this is an attempt to reassert control over the franchise on Sony’s part, desperately as you point out, since they have a limited window to continue exploiting their licensing agreement with Marvel, the ramifications of rebooting a continuity/ replacing a creative team that is beloved by by its fan base is risky. Of course, Spiderman fans balked at the A New Day reboot, but still bought the comic book. If this proves to be another Clone Saga debacle though, can Sony just go back to pretending like the reboot never happened (look, that Jonas Brother we cast as the new Peter Parker, he was really produced in a test tube; Tobey Maguire’s been held captive all this time by The Jackal)? Probably not.

By: Kyra Glass

Kyra Glass — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:07:57 +0000

If Sony really wants to make a clean break that strikes me as naive, as these other franchises have shown you can’t just erase a franchise’s textual baggage.

By: Kyra Glass

Kyra Glass — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:06:14 +0000

I’m very curious to see whether or not this is effective. Batman and Star Trek were both able to pre-boot, to restart the franchise story slightly earlier then the previous iteration told it. This let them retell the story in their own version of the universe without feeling too derivative too close to a previous film’s release. Spiderman seems unlikely to be able to do this, Peter Parker before being bit by that radioactive spider just isn’t very interesting. As a result this new Spiderman will be in direct competition with the relatively recent McGuire Spiderman and likely will be forced into telling at least some of the same story. How this reboot works or fails to work may speak volumes about how quickly reboots can be employed for future franchises. Great post!

By: Jonathan Gray

Jonathan Gray — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 02:07:23 +0000

So, maybe NBC just needs to reboot The Jay Leno Show in high school too, with someone younger and actually funny playing Leno? 😉

By: Derek Johnson

Derek Johnson — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 01:10:38 +0000

You’re right: comics too rely upon the reboot to sustain production of an ongoing property, so there’s certainly a similarity there. This IS a very comic book way of sustaining serialized film production. There are some differences, however, between the ways Spider-Man, for example, has been rebooted in comics, and the reboot being proposed here. In the case of Ultimate Spider-Man, Marvel created a parallel continuity to be produced concurrently alongside the original. So that reboot did not magically wipe away any of the challenges they faced with the original production. Or, in the case of Spider-Man’s recent “Brand New Day” storyline (or other comic book events like DC’s Infinite Crisis), the act of rebooting/retconning WAS a part of the story. Whereas Sony just wants to make a clean break. In this light, the recent Star Trek film is maybe a little closer to comic book textuality than the Spider-Man films, in the sense that it wants to reboot WHILE preserving the old stuff.

By: Jonathan Gray

Jonathan Gray — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:54:20 +0000

I wonder, Derek, how you see the reboot in film franchising perhaps working differently than reboots in comics, which can be quite common? Are these different beasts? Might this be bringing the textuality of film comicbook heroes closer to that of print comicbook heroes?