Why saying there is nothing new for a Peter Parker Spider-Man movie is dumb

[Spidercide]

Here and there I've heard people say the only way to make Spider-Man movies fresh is to replace Peter Parker as the lead, usually with the suggestion that Miles take over.

To show you how this is catagorcally nonsense here are THREE different ideas for a high school Peter Parker movie.

Spider-Man vs the Mob

As many fans of Spider-Man comic books well know Spider-Man has an incredibly long history addressing street crime. The early Ditko Spider-Man stories vacillated to parables about science gone too far and crime noir.



Fans of the thus far five Spider-Man films and the more recent pathetic Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon are likely unaware of this long history since it’s essentially devoid in both. Sure Spider-Man might fight regular thugs, but that’s rarely if ever the plot or main thrust of the stories.

Quite aside from the Kingpin, Spidey actually has a whole host of other gangster villains with gimmicks which would make them film worthy.



Hammerhead


Silvermane


Don Fortunato



Tombstone



Man Mountain Marko



Mister Negative



The Rose



Delilah



The Crime Master



The Big Man



Black Tarantula



The Enforcers





Gang war storylines have occurred more than once in Spider-Man’s comics and having him caught in the middle of one, trying to end the war for the sake of the civilians would present a realistic, complex and far more difficult to solve challenge for Spider-Man than ever seen before.



Spider-Man could come face to face with the realities of crimes which exist in our own real world and see how it’s not a battle with a true ending but one which he and other people must constantly resist all the same.



Spider-Man and the media

As perfectly cast as J.K. Simmons was as J. Jonah Jameson in the original Sam Raimi Spider-Man film trilogy it must be said the movies downplayed the character compared to the comic books.



Whilst he served the same basic function as Spider-Mans loudmouth skinflint boss who used yellow journalism to slander Spider-Man and make the city mistrust and hate him, he was ultimately a bit player in the proceedings of the trilogy.



In the comic books especially the early days of Spider-Man Jameson was almost the resident villain of the series, a lot of panel time was dedicated to him and his irrational vendetta against our hero. He and Spider-Man often exchanged harsh words and it seemed his persecution of Spidey was unrelenting. He was in fact one of the three most important recurring characters in the whole series during the original Steve Ditko run next to Spidey and Aunt May themselves.



Doing a movie which is actually specifically about Spidey’s relationship with Jameson and making the central focus the ramifications of Jameson’s smear campaign would not only be something original for a Spider-Man film but fairly original for a superhero film in general. Jameson isn’t a super villain nor is he truly evil. He’s just a greedy man with an irrational hatred stemming from deepset issues which themselves make him a compelling character.



The film could thus be about the abuses of power afforded to those who control the media and examine the responsibilities and role the press should hold, with a greater focus being upon the press’ obsession with celebrities and the detrimental effects they can have on their lives.



Once more this isn’t an enemy or a crisis Spider-Man can truly resolve or defeat, so much as learn to live with, which is once again something fairly unique for a superhero movie.



But just so we can have our bam smack pow superhero action we could draw upon one of two classic Spider-Man tales to generate a villain or two.



In Amazing Spider-Man #20 Jameson infamously helps create the Scorpion as a natural adversary to Spider-Man only for his creation to turn on him thus justifying Spider-Man save him. The Scorpion has never been done on film and fits Marvel’s mould of villains who are dark reflections of the hero. In fact that is why Jameson created the Scorpion, he was based upon a fellow (but bigger) arachnid.



Alternatively we could draw upon a famous recurring element of Spider-Man lore, the Spider Slayers. Throughout his history Spencer Smythe and his son Alistair have created robots specifically designed to locate, capture and sometimes kill Spider-Man, with the designs of the robots offering a variety of interesting visuals. However many of the Spider Slayers were affiliated with Jameson who wanted to use them to rid the world of Spider-Man.







Perhaps one of the most famous Spider Slayer stories was the death of Spencer Smythe which involved Jameson and Spider-Man shackled together by a bomb counting down to their destruction. Adapting this would be a perfect way to bring the movie to it’s climax and focus in on the central relationship between Spider-Man and Jameson.





Peter Parker as a Mama’s boy

Love her or hate her, Aunt May is vitally important to the mythology of Spider-Man and his character. Hence she’s appeared in every Spider-Man movie to date.

She is also his mother. Not biologically, but in all the ways that really matter she is his mother.

Many stories (sometimes to an exaggerated extent) have showcased Peter’s affection for May and her doting attitude towards him. But like Jameson we’ve only seen this in the movies as part of larger plots where it isn’t really the point. When done right it’s really endearing and something relatable to most people.


Instead of a Spider-Man movie which is about Peter Parker’s romance with a woman, his rivalry with a new villain, the mystery of his dead parents or (ugh) his teacher/student relationship with someone like Iron Man, why not make the heart and soul of this movie about a parent and child, specifically a mother and her son.

Films like Logan prove that that can work but the unique twist of this movie would be that the focus isn’t upon someone learning to be a parent or a father/son relationship or a mother/daughter relationship or even a father/daughter relationship. Rather it’d be the far less focussed upon mother/son relationship.

Even in movies which do focus upon a relationship like this things typically play out wherein the mother is fridged, or it’s about a woman learning to be a mother, or a woman struggling to survive for the sake of her son or where the relationship is strained (think Tony Soprano and his mother).

Instead this would be a movie about a kid and his mother figure coming to together to cope and survive in a world now bereft of the most important person in both of their lives who supported them both.

And the central basis of this movie could be arguably THE most iconic Spider-Man storyline of all time, the Master Planner trilogy. Allow me to give you some cliffnotes from the story.



A new gang working for a criminal called the Master Planner who plans his schemes meticulously so they go off without a hitch butts heads with Spider-Man. Meanwhile Aunt May is feeling incredibly unwell as Peter Parker goes to his very first day of college. Later she collapses and we learn that she’s dying, poisoned by a blood transfusion Peter gave to her many issues ago. A potential cure can be created from the expensive ISO-36 chemical.

Peter pawns most of his and May’s possessions to buy the chemical but the Master Planner steals it believing it could be of use in his experiments. Spider-Man uses a Daily Bugle journalist to help him get a lead on the whereabouts of the Master Planner and he proceeds to bust up the criminal underworld, desperately seeking information of the MP.

Finally he learns that the MP is in a secret underwater base so Spider-Man has to swim beneath the Hudson river, infiltrate the base, fight off the hordes of armed henchmen and finally confront the Master Planner himself, who is in facto DOCTOR OCOTPUS.

As they fight Spider-Man is trapped under several tons of heavy metal rubble, with water quickly filling the room and the ISO-36 just out of reach. Then in an endlessly homage and utterly iconic scene Spider-Man ruminates upon how he cannot allow himself to fail Aunt May like he did Uncle Ben and gradually summons all of his strength and in a supreme act of willpower throws off all of the rubble in the greatest Spider-Man splash page of all time.

He then gets the ISO-36 swims back to the surface, fights some of Doc Ock’s goons underwater, then despite his exhaustion single handily kicks the rest of their asses before getting the chemical to the doctors just in time to save Aunt May.



Now sure that isn’t everything that happened and you’d have to tweak a few things to make it work as a self-contained movie about a high schooler...but...goddam...how does all that NOT sound like the most baller Spider-Man movie ever!?



There’s action, there’s tension, irony, human drama, heroism; it’s got everything!



Now you see those three idea I just tossed out?



Well with one exception all of them are based upon the original Steve Ditko run of Spider-Man. In fact not even all of the Ditko run, just the first 33 issues.



None of them involve retelling Peter Parker’s origin.



None of them involve repeating material or storylines we’ve seen in other movies before apart from Spider-Man fighting Doctor Octopus which is in my suggestion not even the point of the movie.



I just made all of those suggestions up off the top of my head based upon less than the first five years of Peter Parker’s existence.



I could probably make up even more if I cast my net further and spend a bit more time considering it.



How are there no new ideas for a Peter Parker Spider-Man movie and why do we need someone different to be the lead to make the franchise fresh again?

[CrimsonEchidna]

You seem to have a fixation with people criticizing Pete on tumblr.

[Huntsman Spider]

Fourth idea, albeit one that didn't necessarily stem from the Steve Ditko run but would nonetheless be more original than rehashing Oscorp/Green Goblin --- Spider-Man vs. corporate crime and corruption. The Green Goblin takes this to an extreme, in that he became an outright super-villain just so he could hold onto his company at any cost, even the cost of human lives and such, but what about the guys who are more subtle about it? The ones who don't put on costumes and go around hurling pumpkin bombs at people, but instead more-or-less legally cheat their way to gaining or keeping wealth and power, and despite the clear immorality, the obvious wrongdoing, in their actions, there's nothing that can be lawfully done about it because the law is rigged to their advantage?

Enter a vigilante called Cardiac, by day a genius doctor specializing in revolutionary medical technologies that have nonetheless been stymied from going on the market because the big pharmaceutical conglomerates don't want to be put out of business and by night a surgically enhanced avenger of those who've been harmed by corporate malfeasance and wrongdoing. Examples include companies that build pollutant-spreading factories in poor neighborhoods with little lobbying power or legal representation to fight back against them, pharmaceutical companies whose price-gouging renders lifesaving medications or treatments prohibitively expensive, effectively condemning poor people to die just for being poor, insurance companies that refuse to pay out for those same medications or treatments on the pretext of a "preexisting condition," companies that use effective slave labor in the developing world to construct their products and have their manufacturing done primarily in countries that have a bad habit of killing anyone who attempts to form a labor union, and so on and so forth.

Those are Cardiac's primary targets, entities and people who think that their money and power place them above the law and entitle them to do as they please in the name of holding onto said money and power, regardless of who they hurt. The conflict at first is that Spider-Man thinks Cardiac's just a nut going after respectable citizens for no good reason, but then he finds out what these so-called "respectable citizens" have done to people and Cardiac's personal tragedy that led him into vigilantism, and the conflict turns to finding hard evidence of what these people have done so that the law will have no choice but to hold them accountable for their wrongdoing . . . assuming he can find said evidence before Cardiac chooses to exact his own idea of justice. Then there's examining the ethics of vigilantism as practiced by Spider-Man vs. Cardiac and whether or not Spider-Man has any more of a right to do what he does than Cardiac does, which could be very compelling drama. If it had to be done with a teenage Spider-Man, it could be a hard lesson for him on the difference between fighting regular thugs and super-villains that openly menace innocent people and dealing with wrongdoers he can't just punch out because they wear respectable public faces while privately engaging in the worst sorts of crime and vice and depravity.

[Spidercide]

You seem to have a fixation with people criticizing Pete on tumblr.

Dude CBR itself wrote a whole article talking about why Miles would be better for the movies than Peter

[CrimsonEchidna]

Dude CBR itself wrote a whole article talking about why Miles would be better for the movies than Peter

In that case, didn't you already make a thread complaining about this then?

[Spidercide]

In that case, didn't you already make a thread complaining about this then?

No.

That thread was to ask the question if people felt that there was one character being praised at the expense of the other.

This one is to point out the idiocy of saying how Peter 'is done' as a character for the movies and has either nothing left to offer or else far less than Miles does.

Like I said, I'm no writer but I just threw out three different possible film ideas based upon the early days of Peter Parker alone, not the other 50+ years he's had. Thus the argument really isn't a valid one.

[Mister Mets]

I'm in agreement, although you're probably preaching to the converted here. We're the people aware that 50+ years of Spider-Man comics can provide enough material for more than six movies.

It's still a worthwhile exercise to ponder what major story beats haven't been done in a Spider-Man film.

A few that come to mind for me....

- An imposter replaces Spider-Man
This was a basic idea that got excellent results in Kraven's Last Hunt, and Superior Spider-Man. It can definitely provide material for a decent film, showing the effects of the wrong person with Spider-Man's power, and how Peter's loved ones react to him going missing.

- The Unstoppable Foe
There have been some really good stories about Spider-Man's consistent efforts against a much stronger villain he has the opportunity to escape (Nothing Can Stop the Juggernaut, Coming Home)

- Framed
This could fit into a Spider-Man VS the media story, but it's a dynamic we've seen a lot in the comics (since the first issue of Amazing Spider-Man) but not in the films. What does Spider-Man do when everyone's against him?

There is also the reality that existing films haven't always been the best possible execution of potential storylines.

[Scott Taylor]

Agree strongly with those, Mets. The movies so far have lacked many of the "defining moments" for Spider-Man as a hero.

Also, Overcoming Impossible Odds. The classic is in ASM #33 when he was going to be crushed and dug deep inside to hurl the big weight off of him so he could get out and go save Aunt May (and fight back against Ock). We did get that with him stopping a runaway train in SM2, but it somehow felt less epic. And it looks like they are doing something similar in SMH with a boat. But it looks to me like the boat scene is going to involve Iron Man - lame!

Another one was in ASM when Spider-Man took personal time and saved the kid in the car. It was compassionate and showed how he can empathize with the scared and weak, another of Spider-Man's defining attributes.

[Daveismyhero]

I think some of your ideas would potentially go over with people knowledgeable about Spider-Man, but it would probably be hard to sell them to general audiences that the studio heads target. Spidey vs. Don Fortunato, for example, probably wouldn't resonate with many people.

[Spidercide]

I think some of your ideas would potentially go over with people knowledgeable about Spider-Man, but it would probably be hard to sell them to general audiences that the studio heads target. Spidey vs. Don Fortunato, for example, probably wouldn't resonate with many people.

I'm not saying Don Fortunato specifically. If you wanted to bottom line it it would be "The Untouchables but with multiple Al Capone's and Spider-Man instead of the police"

[Spiderfang]

I really wish we could get a "Nolan-esque" Spiderman movie in the future featuring an underutilized villain, but alas the movie studios will always capitalize on the popular "big" villains such as Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus and Venom.

[WebLurker]

I really wish we could get a "Nolan-esque" Spiderman movie in the future featuring an underutilized villain, but alas the movie studios will always capitalize on the popular "big" villains such as Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus and Venom.

Can't say I wan't a dark and gritty Spider-Man movie (since I do not at all), but I very badly want a Spider-Man movie with Mysterio.