Spider-Man Concept Art From James Cameron Script Surfaces Online
Some Spider-Man concept art from James Cameron's script has made its way online. Famously, the Avatar director wanted to make a Marvel movie about the hero back in the 90s. It was going to be an even more grounded take on the character than even the Sam Raimi movies. As the Avatar: The Way of Water press tour has been making the rounds, Cameron took some time to reflect on that vision. While the period for him to make a Spider-Man movie has clearly passed, some fans wonder about that branching timeline where he actually got to make the project. In the image posted by Chris Evangelista, you can see Spidey climbing the wall. (Funnily enough, the color treatment here feels like the 90s Spider-Man: The Animated Series.) But, the eyes are much bigger and Peter Parker is shrouded in shadow except for that gleaming mask. It would have been interesting to see a variant of the Wall-Crawler that was physically trying to get that suit right on film in-between trying to juggle his personal life.
"I think it would've been very different," Cameron explained to Screen Crush previously. The director would also mention getting Marvel legend Stan Lee's blessing on the script and the advice he received from the creator. "I didn't make a move without asking him permission," he said before breaking the whole thing down.
James Cameron’s drawings for his never-made SPIDER-MAN movie pic.twitter.com/ilsYkYkwYV
— Chris Evangelista (@cevangelista413) December 23, 2022
"I wanted to make something that had a kind of gritty reality to it," Cameron elaborated. "Superheroes in general always came off as kind of fanciful to me, and I wanted to do something that would have been more in the vein of Terminator and Aliens, that you buy into the reality right away. So you're in a real world, you're not in some mythical Gotham City. Or Superman and the Daily Planet and all that sort of thing, where it always felt very kind of metaphorical and fairytale-like. I wanted it to be: It's New York. It's now. A guy gets bitten by a spider. He turns into this kid with these powers and he has this fantasy of being Spider-Man, and he makes this suit and it's terrible, and then he has to improve the suit, and his big problem is the damn suit. Things like that. I wanted to ground it in reality and ground it in universal human experience. I think it would have been a fun film to make."
Do you wish he got to make Spider-Man? Let us know in the comments down below!