Spiderman 4
Spider-Man 4 was to be the fourth film in the Spider-Man series, starring a 35-year-old Tobey Maguire as the teenage titular character. It has been scrapped in favor of a reboot, having succumbed to Supervillain Inflation Syndrome.
Just The Facts
- The most recent Spider-Man movie grossed nearly $900 million worldwide, despite being awful.
- Spider-Man 4 was set to have the same cast, and to be written by the guy who wrote the Wolverine movie.
- It was set to feature no fewer than three villains, the fatal number for a superhero franchise.
The Original
After a decade of rumors from fans that James Cameron would make Spider-Man his post-Titanic film franchise (he wrote a treatment for the film that is widely available on the Internet) Cameron instead chose to focus his time on doing absolutely nothing for an entire decade.
Instead of getting the director of Aliens and Terminator 2, fans wound up with the director of The Evil Dead 2, Sam Raimi, which most did not realize at the time was an upgrade.
The original Spider-Man was released in 2002 and set the all-time record for opening weekend grosses. It was widely not hated.
Villains:
The Green Goblin.
The Sequels
Spider-Man 2
... arrived in 2004 and somehow became one of the best-reviewed films of all time, according to its 94 percent positive rating on RottenTomatoes.com. That means it scored exactly the same as No Country for Old Men and The Dark Knight, and was considered by critics to be a better film than There Will Be Blood, District 9 and Inglourious Basterds. Many film experts say this proves that judging a film's worth by its RT score is retarded.
Naturally, since it was the most critically acclaimed film of the series, it was also the least successful worldwide. However it still wound up as the #2 film of 2004 in America, behind Shrek 2 and ahead of The Passion of the Christ. This reaffirms the commonly held belief that as a pop culuture icon, Spider-Man ranks behind Shrek but ahead of The Lord.
Villains:
Doc Ock, Harry Osborn.
Spider-Man 3
...debuted in 2007 and was widely regarded to be a turd. It also contained a massive "retcon" of the storyline (that is, a retroactive rewrite of a previous plot point in the mythology for the purposes of the current story) which would be fine if they weren't retconning a crucial plot point that just happened two movies ago.
The film's writers then fell into the same pitfall that ensnares nealry all comic book movie writers: Supervillain Inflation Syndrome. Rather than exploring the character in greater depth or challenging the audience's notions of what it means to be a superhero, the writers simply choose to cram in as many villains as possible. This might possibly have something to do with selling action figures.
Once the number of villains reaches three--the maximum number science says is possible in a feature-length film without robbing each of the screen time needed to develop them fully as a character--the franchise collapses and must be rebooted, preferably with just one villain (though two is possible).
Villains:
Sandman, Venom, Green Goblin II
Spider-Man 4
...will apparently never be filmed. Tobey Maguire and Sam Raimi have walked away from the project, and the studio has decided to "reboot" the franchise, Dark Knight-style, to debut in the Summer of 2012.
The now-canceled project was to again include the fatal number of three villains, tentative plans mentioned The Lizard (Dylan Baker) The Vulture (John Malcovich) and The Vulturess (Ann Hathaway).
Critics lament the loss of the film, as many believe it had the potential to be ridiculous in a way that would have altered our culture forever.
Lizard? Vulture?! VULTURESS?! WHO THE HELL PICKED THESE CHARACTERS?!
ReplyI decree Batman Forever to be Freakin' awful.
Replyanyone stoked for the amazing spider man? Lawyer up asshole!
ReplyDidn't batman returns have 3 villains? Penguin, Catwoman and the guy played by Christopher Walken. Also, who was that guy in the pic in the middle for Fantastic 4 2?
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesI think that's supposed to be Galactus
Although Galactus NEVER SHOWS UP ONCE.
It's called twisting the facts, writers do it to give more credence to a point or idea then there actually is.
Shouldn't Fantastic 4 get a Mulligan, because there are four heroes?
ReplyNo, that just means it was doomed from the start, also LOOK HOW MUCH LATER IT IS! I waited a whole year to say this!
Excellent points here, except I noticed one fatal flaw in your logic. The first Fantastic Four movie can in no way be considered awesome by anyone.
ReplyDO NOT! underestimate the ability of die hard geeks to claim that any piece of s**t movie is actually really awesome and rip you with a bunch of generic insults while doing it.
The new Batman films seem to know the winning balance: make one of the villains not count as a villain til the end, and cram another in there that does nothing.
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesIn order of villain...ness, first movie: Scarecrow (as the Big Bad), Rash Al Ghul (you didn't even know it was him til later), Zsasz (who was in one scene and had no lines).
Second film: Joker, Harvey Dent (who isn't even Two Face till the end stretch), and Scarecrow for like two minutes.
They found the only way it's possible to cram that many bad-guys into a film!
Carmine Falcone was also in Batman Begins. And he's pretty much finished an hour and a half in.
How could you possibly count Zsasz (in BB) and Scarecrow (in TDK)? As you said, they only appear for a short while. They are just passing and aren't in any way a major part of story.
Scarecrow was the setup for the main badguy. He wasn't passing, he was a plot point. Not a major one, but definitely needed (especially with the whole "Batman's afraid of bats" thing).
@The_CoolerKing
Who?
I thought the Scarecrow in The Dark Knight was a copycat.
The Vulturess? Why would you bother creating a copy of a lame villain who is already in your movie? (I'm assuming that the Vulture is a lame villain, because I checked out his picture on Wikipedia and he's an old man wearing a tacky-looking chicken costume). I mean, you don't see Batman fighting the Clock King and his daughter, Clockerina. You don't see Superman going up against the Toyman and his sister, Toywoman, in the same movie.
ReplyWhat about the movies that didn't suffer from super-villain inflation but were still rebooted? Off the top of my head I can think of Hulk, Superman Returns, Star Trek.....etc. I think it's just an easy cop out so movie studios don't actually have to come up with new creative ideas and they can just keep constantly rebooting franchises over and over again.
ReplyIt's not a cop out if the movies are good. Although I don't like any of the reboots you mentioned.
Sucks they cancelled the fourth movie. I was really hoping they'd have Carnage instead of the Vulture. The Lizard's just pathetic to begin with and the birdies don't even belong in the series. I loved all three films and I think Venom's the best Spider-Man enemy yet.
ReplyI liked all the spider-man movies. Who cares how many villians they had. It's a movie just sit down and enjoy it, if not walk away.
Replythe more villains the less time you have to sway the audience to pity them (sandman and harry) or hate them (venom) two usually allows enough time to set up the villains in a not so retarded obviously rushed way unless you are VERY good at directing and the script is not retarded
Here's the funny thing: I don't know if the villain inflation syndrome is fatal towards every movie franchise. Let's count up the villains in The Dark Knight. The Joker, Two-Face, the four mob bosses, Scarecrow and the Coleman guy who tried to reveal Batman's identity.
ReplyThat's 8 villains in the Dark Knight and there's a third movie underway.
they mean main villains with a lot of screen time. also the four bosses were just catalysts for the conflict, they hired the joker to kill batman and the coleman guy was just a lackey
Well, according to that chart, Batman needs another reboot, since the Dark Knight had Scarecrow, Joker and Two-face...
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesBatman Begins did too. It had the mob boss, Scarecrow & Ras al Ghul. Four if you count Liam Neeson & Ken Watanabe as individual villians. Iron Man 2 had the whip guy, the business suit guy and the senator. I'm not sure if Scarlet Johansen and the black guys were good or bad. Some times they were helping him and sometimes they were lying to him or fighting him or telling him he couldn't do stuff. The new Superman sucked with only one villain. What it all comes down to is nerds would like to be able to have a formula they can rely on or an in-joke for their community and will ignore things that clash with their simplistic nerd-view of the world. Yes, they have a simplistic view of the world - that's why they like superhero & sci-fi action movies.
Not really sure you can count the Senator in Iron Man 2...he didn't really have enough screen time or that big of an effect on the story...
Batman Begins and Dark Knight were flukes... I'd say they were the exceptions that prove the rule, since it seems appropriate, but I hate that phrase and so try to use as little as possible... f**k THAT PHRASE!
like they said with the exception you can have more villians if the directing and script are good. so batman begins and dark knight are not flukes
I don' think anyone thought the first Fantastic 4 movie was ever awesome...
ReplyThat's not what the chart says, i think..it just says the movie didn't need a reboot... yet...
Also, anyone know where that headshot of Galactus comes from? as far as I know, he didn't appear in that movie except for as a giant smoke cloud...but that looks like it's a live action shot and not animated so...
Meh, I thought it was decent. It wasn't awesome but it was a passable movie.
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Replylol
It should have been "It didn't happen."
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ReplyWho's the 3rd villain in Batman & Robin and the second one in Fantastic Four 2?
ReplyAlso, Elektra in Daredevil wasn't necessarily a villain IIRC.
Bane.
Galactus (I think, it's a weird picture).
"the fact that sm2 oerdid district 9 is proof of how hummanity is retarded"
ReplyThat's the funniest thing I've ever read.