By: Russ Burlingame on June 21, 2012
Yesterday, we took a look at some of the changes that Marc Webb’s upcoming Sony Pictures release The Amazing Spider-Man has in store for Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker. Today, we figured that turnabout was fair play and that we could take a look at the changes the Spider-reboot has in store for the ol’ Webhead himself–the actual masked Spider-Man side of Garfield.
No J. Jonah Jameson
While we’ve seen a little bit of the Daily Bugle (reinvented as a cable news network not entirely unlike what happened to the Daily Planet in the Superman title following the New 52 reboot), Peter hasn’t been seen working for the newspaper, or even with a camera in his hands, that I can remember in these trailers and clips. Instead, we get a version of the character who exists as an intern at Oscorp.
Aside from a little “poop-where-you-eat” problem being created by his alter-ego working the same place all his villains come from, what does this mean for Spider-Man? Well, the biggest thing is that we’re less likely to see J. Jonah Jameson. While the media might still be suspect of the webslinger, his most visible critic likely woin’t actually appear onscreen, at least as far as J. K. Simmons, who played J. Jonah Jameson in the Raimi films is concerned. A while back there were rumors that if the character was to appear in this film, Simmons would be the one to get the gig…but he didn’t.
Captain Stacy’s 500 men
Just because J. Jonah Jameson won’t be leading a witch hunt against Spider-Man at the Daily Bugle doesn’t mean it’s a mano a mano between Spidey and The Lizard. Nope, Captain Stacy has hundreds of cops on Spider-Man’s tail, according to a line that’s been present in virtually every trailer we’ve seen for the movie so far.
That’s right, folks–just like in Batman Begins, the reboot of Spider-Man features a version of the character who’s not quietly frowned upon by the police but instead actively hunted for his acts of vigilante justice. That makes life a lot harder for a guy–knowing that the night isn’t done when you vanquish the bad guy and swing out of sight, but that there might be a police chopper somewhere taking video of you from above.
Webshooters
The whole “organic” craze is soooo 2007.
We’re talking about Spidey’s webshooters, of course, which were altered in the original version of the film to be a part of his power set. Fans liked it so much that the comics quickly followed suit during J. Michael Straczynski’s fan-favorite run on Amazing Spider-Man. Soon, though, the changes wore out their welcome and by the time JMS’ run began to wind to a close, fans were unhappy with a number of elements of the run, at which point pretty much the whole thing was retconned by the One More Day/Brand New Day changes.
As unpopular as One More Day was, resetting Spider-Man to a pre-marriage status quo has been seen by most as a pretty good long-term strategy for the comics, and so it’s probably not surprising that when the films were relaunched there was no great hurry to hook him up with Mary Jane and settle the pair of them down in a nice little place in The Village.
All of that said, it might be a little surprising that Spidey is suddenly rebooted back to the old “scientific webs” days, except for a couple of things: first of all, it’s more in line with the Peter-as-scientist direction they’re taking things in. Second, frankly, it’s kind of strange that the old “I ran out of web fluid” thing has never made it onscreen. Is it a tired old trope in the comics that most readers probably never need to see again? Sure–but the movie audience has never seen it and it’s a tried-and-true way to get him into trouble that the story then has to write him out of.
The costume
Even when Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man came out and there were a bunch of changes made to the superhero’s story, he pretty much always appeared in just a textured, lifelike version of his comic book costume in the first trilogy of movies. This time, though? Not so much. Yeah, it’s close and obviously identifiable, but this time around we get a tweaked look that includes a different logo, different motion lines on the costume and even a external webshooters–that’s something we haven’t really seen since the “big spider” version of the costume the character got after the failure of the Clone Saga.
