This week’s big superhero news is that Sam Raimi’s planned Spider-Man 4 is no more. It left me thinking about the three movies he’s made in the series so far – and also that yeah, it might be a good thing that he’s walking away.
Don’t get me wrong. I love his first Spider-Man (2002). It might still be the best straight superhero film ever made. (Sorry, Dark Knight! Please don’t yell at me in your growly, growly voice!) In retrospect, Sam Raimi’s cartoon tendencies and hyperkinetic camerawork had just been waiting for the right superhero all along.
And some of my favourite movies have come from similarly left-field decisions to fit ‘alternative’ artists with more mainstream stories. Like: putting Brian De Palma on Mission: Impossible? Genius. Paranoid, hysterical genius.
While many prefer Spider-Man 2 (2004) to Raimi’s first, it never quite worked for me. It had some amazing sequences, no doubt – mostly effects-heavy action scenes, but great idiosyncratic moments like Spidey’s awkward elevator conversation, too. The problem was that the film seemed to be missing the connective tissue to fuse these moments together. Without it, it clunked from one set piece to the next, less than the sum of its parts.
The rumours that they’d started shooting without a script suddenly made sense. Shoot first; write screenplay later. No matter what writer they brought on to finish it, they’d be tasked with finding narrative excuses to stitch together already-rendered set pieces.
I saw Spider-Man 3 (2007) on opening night in New York. The whole city was celebrating Spider-Man Week. There were banners everywhere saying A HERO COMES HOME. (Forgive my blurry photography below.) The day of the premiere, one newspaper even ran the headline “See You At Midnight!” on the cover – because where else would anyone be but at the first screenings?
But even the hometown audience was so disappointed that the riotous applause that welcomed the opening credits was completely absent by the film’s end. Slice it into pieces and there was still some beautiful stuff in there – the ‘Birth of Sandman’ scene alone was worth the ticket price – but it was a mess of disjointed scenes, glitchy character motivations, and weird tone shifts.
Sitting in that packed crowd, all of whom were getting more bored with every passing moment, I remember seeing a burst of skewed camera work and thinking “There you are, Sam.” I’d completely forgotten Raimi was the director. I know I was just complaining about the ridiculousness of auteur theory – but that doesn’t mean I want to give up the feeling of a distinct creative force at work. Even if that feeling is an illusion, and the composite result of a dozen hands working together.
As films become bigger and bigger, featuring special effects sequences requiring new technology and terrifying man-hours, I’ve been getting that Spider-Man 3 feeling more and more: disconnected scenes, some amazing, some less so; clunking awkwardly one into the next without a unifying narrative thread or sense of style to hold them together.
Maybe we’re approaching the time when multiple directors need to be credited: action scenes by X, quiet character scenes by Y, romantic moments by Z. Screenwriting already can work that way – “Hey, let’s bring in that funny guy to add some, you know, funny stuff!” – only without knowing exactly who did what.
Years later, Raimi came out and said that he didn’t have the control he wanted on Spider-Man 3 and that he was disappointed with it, too. So I’m not disappointed he’s moving on rather than be pressured into making the movie before he thinks it’s ready. He gave us an amazing Spider-Man story, and now that he’s had Drag Me To Hell to clear his throat, creatively speaking, I hope whatever he does next kicks ass.
Today’s news is that the Spider-Man franchise will be rebooted, not even a decade later. It’ll have a new cast and more of the angsty high school focus of the Ultimate Spider-Man series. It’s not a bad idea. Let’s just hope they finish the script first.