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# it'll always be the problem with spidey
you need a kid that looks like a wirey teen/very early twenties geek.
Poor Tobey Maguire can't fight ageing like drawings in a comic
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:08, archived)
# new spiidey suit
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:10, archived)
# yeah and as Captain Howdy pointed out, webshooters just visible
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:11, archived)
# yup :)
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:12, archived)
# that has nothing to do with it.
They could easily age the character in the movies, or just slap on the makeup to make Toby look young again. It's not like Toby is "old" old. The reboot is a cash grab and nothing more. It lets them make the same movies again and get people to buy tickets to effectively watch a repeat.

Reboots are Hollywood's answer to lousy scriptwriters.
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:11, archived)
# ah I gets it now
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:14, archived)
# yeah because fat middle aged blokes look great suddenly transforming in to slender cg characters for the stunt work
Spiderman is a comic, it reboots every other month and has multiple versions running at any time. It's also always formulaic, it's what the fans like, seems silly to do something too far different and end up with no audience.
Or are you forgetting these films are just made to make money?
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:15, archived)
# I need CG
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:18, archived)
# not all films are made just to make money.
Once upon a time, in a land far far away, people actually made films because they loved the source materials or wanted to make something memorable.

And Toby McGuire is hardly fat or middle-aged, and he looks way younger than he really is.

As for comic reboots - they reboot to change canon and usually provide alternative origins or alternative worlds. This new spidey film is the same origin, the same world, the same characters, the same villains. It's not even a re-imagining of the source material - it's a big fuck you to people who actually like decent comic book movies. The more hollywood insists on driving the idea of comic book movies into the ground, the less decent adaptations we'll see. We'll end up back in the bad old days where studios equate comic book movies with pathetic films that don't make money.

Although, that said, maybe that's what we could use - a period of time without a slew of shitty comic book cash-in movies.
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:22, archived)
# Being a professional artist is just that - a profession.
It's doing a job to make money.

Same with music, same with painting, same with drawing, same with movies.
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:26, archived)
# I'm appalled.
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:29, archived)
# If I may be a complete fanboy/attention seeker...
My bro is a screen writer and has just had his first movie produced - European release mid Feb. Go bro!

He's been doing some quite interesting blogging about his take on the creative/commercial processes and when and where 'ownership' lies in these sorts of things...

Thus...
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:30, archived)
# interesting reading.
A lot of it has been said before by various other new screenplay writers, but some good nuggets in there.
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:58, archived)
# I think this kind of reflective moment is part of the required progression for a budding writer...
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 12:03, archived)
# did I say
people don't make money from films? I must have blacked out when I typed that.

The two are not mutually exclusive - most of the highest grossing films were made by people that love the craft and love the material. The slew of crappy comic book films we're getting these days is just the studios churning out shit to get at the geek dollar.
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:30, archived)
# sorry but highest grossing films....
Avatar - crap tech demo with a rip off story
Titanic - Awful rehash story with effects
Lord of the rings (part 2 - the big CG fight, not much else)
Pirates of the Carribean - a theme park ride with effects
Toy Story 3 (3rd part of franchise therefore MUST be rubbish!)
Alice in Wonderland (2010 remake with effects)
Dark Knight - comic book reboot - why of why do they do this?!
Harry Potter 1 - Ka-ching!
Pirates of the Carribean 3 etc
Harry Potter 2 etc etc

Not spotting many arthouse or particularly credible films there. And I imagine being in that list is the main target for Spidey.
Just live with it and be optimistic that this one will be ace! :)
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:38, archived)
# avatar and titanic
are cameron's babies, which he puts a lot of love and work into.

LotR was Jackson/Weta, another director/studio famous for loving the source material and the craft.

Toy Story 3 - pixar - another studio famous for their love of the craft

Dark Knight - the new batman films are reboots done right. A director/writer with love of the material and craft.

The pirates films and alice are admittedly cash ins, ones that worked (I must admit to being absolutely gobsmacked that alice would place so high - the film was a joke)

And please don't put words in my mouth - I never said arthouse or mentioned credibility. Films don't have to win sundance awards to be good.

I wish I could share your optimism about the new Spidey, but I fear it's going to be an abortion. It's a reboot for all the wrong reasons. Most likely inspired by the excellent batman reboot. My fears were tripled when I read they are "making it more dark and gritty". If ever there's a phrase you don't want to hear it's that. "dark and gritty" should come from the material, not from studio orders. I predict more emo. Lots more.
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:48, archived)
# Yes - that's the point of business
Minimise outlay, maximise profit.

It's how every single business in the world runs.

You know when they say that they're all about the customer, or all about the planet, or all about caring, or all about the art? That's not true. It's just a sales pitch designed to get you to part with your cash. They have entire departments dedicated to working out what to say to whom to get them to buy the stuff.
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:43, archived)
# wasn't that my
original point? The reboot is just a cash grab?
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:53, archived)
# Yes but it sounded resentful.
Like movies are anything other than machines to make money.

And we can't have you resenting people making money.

That's just not what Davy C's Big Society is all about.
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:57, archived)
# DaveyC can stick
the big society up his gaping arsehole (after Murdoch pulls out).

I am resentful - not so much about the money making, but about the way Hollywood insists on sucking everything good out of films in pursuit of that money. Approx ten years ago saw a new golden age in comic book adaptations, where studios were seeing the rich characters and stories, all laid out and ready for the screenwriters. We had some real beauties come out, but now they are intent on turning anything remotely comic booky into a film, regardless of quality.

I blame the comic book geeks. It seems like they could stick a giant poster up saying "this film will shit in your mouth and fuck you in your ears" and they'll still flock to it in droves, just because it's based on a comic book they liked as a kid.
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 12:03, archived)
# "this film will..."
That's quite a niche market, though...

;-)
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 12:12, archived)
# Ah now there I have to disagree.
In fact I'd say this rebooting nonsense occurred at the very tentative release of Batman Begins, but the proper influx of comic book films now have been affected the death of an actor who happened to do a cracking performance of a fictional character. With that in mind many came to see The Dark Knight who weren't comic book afficianados.

It's true that perhaps for a long time studios are seemingly in tune with some nerds as they're offering some nostalgia trips from geeky material which has aged considerably but become that hallowed type of cult classic. It's just a shame they can't write scripts as well as they can come up with lucrative ideas.
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 12:15, archived)
# nah, the hollywood
shit-train was at full speed long before Ledger died. Although his stellar performance and the massive profits on BB/TDK no doubt gave the shit-train another boost.

The problem is more to do with the timing of the new spidey film. When batman begins was released, the old (by which I mean burton-era) batman movies had been forgotten for a few years. People were ready for a new batman movie, and the studio recognized this, recognized the great source material, and out a great team on it. And the results were great. Sony, with the new spidey, are putting a cheap team on it (about 1/4 the budget of the spiderman 4 film that got cancelled) and are effectively releasing it in lieu of a sequel. That's a recipe for good-old-fashioned home cooked turd stew right there.
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 12:30, archived)
# Well I know the shit didn't start there, but I think the reasoning for all the reboots have started there.
What I meant to say was it's the popularity of such reboots - some darker, some merely taking an unconventional spin on the material, Batman Begins, Casino Royale have inspired studios to not worry about keeping with a film canon which might have been so important a while ago. I do know that there were many Batman films is pre-production after Batman and Robin, including one with a script by Frank Miller, all of which never really got off the ground. So it seems apparent that as the shit Burton/Schumacher ended the studio released the campy stuff whilst mildly amusing was shite.

Maybe when Marvel movies have made their escapade into a massive Avengers film and other films to introduce you to the characters they'll focus on actually telling a fucking cinematic story.
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 14:20, archived)
# we can but dream :)
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 14:33, archived)
# or maybe this will be the best one
wiping away the memory of the rubbish Sam Raimi ones (for the people who didn't like those)
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:28, archived)
# I liked the first two.
Molina's doc oc was ace. The third one was a train wreck though.

Used to be that when a series goes off the rails they simply didn't get a sequel. These days they get a reboot instead.
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:33, archived)
# Spiderman 3 still made a ton of cash.
Clearly things were going pear-shaped, so I suppose bringing in a new team seems like a good idea. Like Happytoast said, it's what they do with the comic itself when it's getting stale.
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:37, archived)
# Spidey 2 was shit to me mainly because it should have been Oliver Platt as Doc
plus the continuing problem with Tobey Maguire in the suit
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:41, archived)
# really?
I do not see Platt as a very good doc oc at all. Unless you're going for the more campy 80s cartoon version of doc oc.
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:52, archived)
# This is to with that avengers bollocks, frankly.
His age has very little to do with it, I imagine.
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:44, archived)
# You don't have to go and see it or buy it.
It's called the movie Industry because it's an industry - it's designed to make money.
(, Fri 14 Jan 2011, 11:19, archived)