I’m a Spider-Man fan. I’ve always loved the character, played all the video games growing up, still have an action figure with a built in projector in my room, watched the cartoons and have enjoyed the movies. But I’ll be honest, I never got into the comics. That being said, I know of a lot of the characters and still have a fanboy vision of what a Spider-Man film should be like.
Everyone knows that Spider-Man has been rebooted. When I saw the Sam Raimi films I’m not going to lie, I enjoyed them. I was a freshman in college when the third one came out and my only issue with the film was what they did to Venom, the fact that they got some punie punk like Topher Grace to play the built Eddie Brock made me furious and it still gets me angry when I discuss it today. All I want is Venom done right and for him to have his own film (which will be happening thanks to Josh Trank). Enough about my issues, what apparently pissed people off was Peter Parker’s gothic identity crisis and the fact that there were too many villains in the film and not enough character development for each of them.
That being said, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is currently filmming and over the past few months, news had surfaced that Paul Giamatti would be playing Rhino and a rumor began crculating that Dane DeHaan, who is playing Harry Osborn, might become Venom. This is all on top of Jamie Foxx portraying the main villain Electro. The Venom rumor began circulating when Marc Webb posted the below image via Twitter:
via @MarcW — Day 3. #happybirthday pic.twitter.com/dtBAKoDW – 12:34 AM – 07 Feb 13
ComingSoon discovered that the image is straight out of the Ultimate Spider-Man in which Parker discovers the experiment that leads to Venom. The number on the locker even matches up.
The above picture could mean two things. One, it could be a bday reference to the 25th Anniversary of Venom’s comic debut or, as Crave points out, it could be referring to Dane DeHaan who celebrated his birthday on Feb. 6th in which case Marc is saying happy bday, here’s your awesome new Venom suit. This theory would make compelte sense as long as Webb isn’t screwing with us.
But now that you have these theories in mind, here is where my concern begins to take form. According to the Ultimate Spider-Man storyline, Norman Osborn worked with Doctor Octopus to create this experiment. Now, going along with the theory that Harry may become Venom, I suspect that we won’t see this until the end of the film. Either Peter and Harry get angry at each other and Harry wants the symbiote, the symbiote finds Harry and just attaches itself to him, or Harry willingly tries it out in order to help Spider-Man defeat Electro and potentially Rhino if he makes it to the end of the film (though electricity is one of Venom’s weaknesses). In all cases, we won’t see everyone together until the finale which is also the same point in which Spider-Man 3 crumbled.
Where does the disaster take place? Well, if Harry takes the angry route, that would be three potential villains in one film, not to mention Norman Osborn and Doc Ock, both who become villains, if they actually have any sort of significant role (Doc Ock may not even be in the film). Going back to my intro, the more villains in a movie the more difficult it is to provide adequate screen time, the more likely we will end up with a film that’s similar in nature to Spider-Man 3 and, just because we can throw it in there, X-Men: The Last Stand. I think everyone agrees The Amazing Spider-Man wasn’t that special of a movie, we had a goomba looking Lizard and the same storyline as Raimi’s film which means that if this sequel is going to be any good, Webb is going to need to do something special and be very careful with his characters…in other words, take the Matthew Vaughn approach to X-Men: First Class.
It’s this plethora of characters and distractions that leads me to believe that the sequel won’t live up to the expectations. While I think it’ll be more enjoyable than the first due to the cast involved and the chosen villains (depending on their costume and look), I remain skeptical about the flow of the story and the character building. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has a lot going for it, but it also has its detractions and when looking at the film from a distance, it is merely a middle piece in a set-up for expanding Spider-Man’s universe, one that leads to a Venom spin-off that has been a focal point of Sony’s for years.
As you can tell, there’s a lot of pressure on this film and its success is important to the studio, to the fans and to the ever growing Marvel cinematic universe. Will Webb avert the pitfalls that plagued Raimi’s third film, I hope so, but hope means nothing in this industry, only results, so at this point in time all we can do is wait and hope that Andrew Garfield and the rest of the Spider-Man team deliver the goods.
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