Marc Webb And Sony's 'Cast A Director By Word Association'
Marc Webb has just made a few million dollars and also created uncomfortable situations for himself and Sam Raimi when they randomly appear at parties together. The great new idea that Hollywood has come up with is the reboot. The origin of the reboot started sometime at the beginning of the 2000's. Possibly something to do with Dracula 2000 restarting the Dracula-lore and missing the boat by about nine years.
Sam Raimi no doubt had issues with the direction that Sony wanted the Spider-Man franchise to go - and fortunately he was a great fan of the Spider-Man mythology so gave the characters a great amount of respect. Sony sadly is the company with the money and the rights and the ability to say yay or nay and sadly for the fans of Spider-Man that leaves them in a dilly of a pickle. They get another origin story and Peter Parker is stuck in high school for the next three to six films.
The Spidey fans are a tingling with the whinge, but what about the Marc Webb fans?
Does Marc Webb even have fans? I mean, out of his oeuvre who really looks back at Fergie's 'London Bridge' clip and recalls its amazing visual flair, or the routinely annoying Regina Spektor's 'Fidelity' clip full of ahh's and oohhh's, or maybe you just have to put on Ashlee Simpson's 'Invisible' one more time.
Maybe not fans of his music, but when somebody creates a debut film as interesting, beautiful, enjoyable and just down right loving as (500) Days Of Summer, well, you sit up and pay attention to what their next film will be. Granted, the second film blues are much the same as second album blues. The praise can be deafening, and the criticism for the second film can be blinding. Having a look over Marc Webb's music clips there doesn't seem to be any major visual style like your Michel Gondry, Anton Corbjin or Spike Jonze. Yet Sony have seen something and that something is quite obvious when you look at how much money they've put aside for the film.
$80 million.
That's nothing. $80 million would almost just cover the actors and director fees for Spider-Man 4. Spider-Man 3 was made for almost half a billion dollars. Given the film brought back just over that it's no surprise that Sony probably wanted Raimi to reign it in. Where Webb's film (500) Days Of Summer is considered an indie hit (more on that in another whine), it excelled in creating one hell of a duo with Joseph-Gordon Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, an extremely believable couple going through an interesting relationship.
Translate that and you've got Peter Parker and Mary Jane going through an interesting relationship, and that's what Sony is banking on. They see the Twilight saga being successful and want to monopolise on that success. Who needs special effects when you have two teens dealing with super powers and trying to be in love? Isn't that all that people want in movies nowadays? Throw in a vampire villain and Sony's got themselves a potential hit.
Even if the fans of the films or the comics don't end up slamming their $20 down to see it opening weekend, there'll be enough people who will go and see it opening weekend to break a record or two and make Sony enough money to call it a great big filthy hit.
Marc Webb is in a unique and great situation - he may be able to prove that he can make blockbuster films and earn a great reputation for himself, but the thing is that Marc Webb is hardly going to be a director on this film at all. He is this decades equivalent of David Fincher on Alien 3. Making another installment in a cash cow and performing as a tranquiliquists dummy. It all boils down to how well Webb can take orders from above.
Maybe Webb is an intelligent man who only made (500) Days Of Summer to get where he wants to get - a high paying director making relatively successful films. How else do you explain his consistent music clips with My Chemical Romance, Fergie, Regina Spektor and Evanescence?
I can't say I'm disappointed as this has happened before - David Slade made an interesting (for some) film in Hard Candy and then went and turned in the bland and boring 30 Days Of Night and now he's moving onto Twilight 3.
I can say that I'm confused by this reboot phenomenon. Especially rebooting Spider-Man. Having been an impressively successful film series - one of the best of the past decade - there is no reason to reboot. Yet, here we go again. I'm not a major fan of Spider-Man, but there are a lot of thirty-something men out there who are holding on to their Spider-Man blankets and underwear in hope that this is all just an early April Fool's.
Rambling nonsense about films, music, games, books and sometimes it's just rambling nonsense.
1 comment:
I am confused by the title of your blog, I think it is offensive to women who enjoy cheeseburgers and your company and considering your blood ties to McDonalds you shouldn't use the lord's name in vain. If they are going to reboot spiderman then they need to call it spiderman 1 not 4, i mean in spidey 3 he was going through early male menopause so to have old parkey go back to high school and call it spiderman 4 is fucked, what is this quantum leap??
As for the rumours in all the trashy women's magazines that old rob patto who cares o is going to be spiderman, puleez he couldn't be the world's biggest franchise whore and besides he needs to hold out for his oscar winning role in bushy eyebrows 2 the brits bite back.
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