Dougies Blog Thingy

Dear Sony/Columbia Pictures,

So a Spider-Man reboot eh? I thought you said that Spider-Man would be a James Bond-esque franchise that could go on forever and ever? So after sticking your nose in with Spider-Man 3 and playing a big part in it being the greatest Spider-Man movie ever, you promised Sam Raimi creative control on Spidey 4. You don’t give and he walks, so you finally get to reboot the series… we can all tell you had been planning to all along, because you just happened to have a script waiting in your drawer.

Since, no doubt, you’ll be peering all over Marc Webbs shoulder to make sure he delivers a quality movie like Spider-Man 3 and not rubbish like the first two Sam Raimi movies I have decided to give you some helpful hints. Please read these, take them on board. No one wants to see Dancing Parker again. Really.

1. Make the costume a bit rubbish.

• One of my biggest problems with the Sam Raimi directed Spider-Man trilogy is the costume. Peter Parker is a kid with no money – really. He has no money, that’s like, a massive part of the story. He goes on and on about it, and that’s why he gets into wrestling and things go tits up. The costumes for the movie cost about $100,000 EACH! And they look expensive:

$100,000. Pocket Change.

The cheapest “fan costume” I’ve seen that even looks close costs about 500 bucks. That’s still too much money for Peter Parker to be spending on a costume. Now look at this costume:

Cheap, shitty costume. Better.

Shit, isn’t it? The webs are all over the place, they don’t line up, the eyes are odd… it doesn’t fit properly. It really, really sucks… but it’s something Peter Parker could afford. Now, I’m not suggesting you make something quite as crap as this… this was crap in the 70′s. It would be like having Peter Parker run around in a Rubies costume.. The not-we’s wouldn’t go for it. But let’s not go too flashy okay. Raised webbing, shaded muscles? Nah. The alternative is to go the ‘Ultimate Spider-Man’ route and have someone make him a bad-ass costume when he becomes a professional wrestler.

But we haven’t got time for that crap.

2. World build.

• Marvel is loving building their Marvel Cinematic Universe at the moment. The Marvel films are full of little nods and cameos… now since Sony owns Spider-Man we can’t have that, but why not set things up for the future. You spent a couple of films building up Curt Connors – but all that is out the window now. Introduce Norman Osborn and other bad guys for the future – that way you won’t have the development restricted to one film. That way we can avoid “Hey look it’s Eddie Brock he’s… oh well he’s Venom now and… oh he’s dead.

3. Stop fucking unmasking him.

• I know why you did it – the first film came out and the critics bitched that you couldn’t see Peter Parker emoting, then in every other film you had to have Spidey losing his mask and every bad guy finding out who he is. That means you have to kill them. That sucks – Gobby, Ock, Brock… all dead just cause they saw who he was. Lame.

4. Make him funny

• In the Sam Raimi trilogy Peter Parker is as funny as getting kicked in the face. Twice. We know Tobey could do it – he did it tons in the video games… so either the screenwriters weren’t doing their job or someone else fucked up. He spends most of the movies brooding and mooding, kicking small puppies and sulking. In the comics he’s a cheeky bastard. It doesn’t all have to be doom and gloom. Have him crack-wise now and then, really it’s part of the character. Fix it.

5. More real life stunts.

• Hire this guy. You don’t need to do everything CGI. CGI is not that great to be honest, use as little of it as possible. It’s tons more impressive than CGI when you do something for real.

6. Scale back the Dawsons Creek stuff.

• Drama is good. Badly written teen drama is not. Make the characters real, not caricatures of the modern teenager. Peter Parker does not need to burst into tears every time Mary Jane looks at someone else. Seriously, do you think the people who go to see these movies want that crap? We want to see Spider-Man and some other guy beating the shit out of each other. Character development is good, bad drama is… bad.

Of course, you have made the decision to do this film ‘on the cheap’ (compared to the others anyway)… so of this list I’d guess we’ll see a shitty costume and not much else. No doubt we’ll see lots of bad drama in the absence of expensive action scenes and that’s just…. sad.

Of course all this doesn’t mean you’ll make the perfect Spidey-Movie… but they can’t hurt.

Fin.