Topic: Amazing Spider-Man 1 - 2: The Untold Story [Original ending!]

So, AMAZING SPIDER-MAN retold the Spider-Man origin but with a new twist -- a conspiracy arc surrounding Peter Parker's parents and the hint that the 'radioactive' spider didn't give Spider-Man his powers but rather unlocked the genetic potential that Peter's deceased father had concealed inside his son. ASM2 had some neat threads on this -- a teaser that showed the apparent deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Parker -- but then, despite a few scenes to tie into that plot, it inexplicably offered no payoff.

In another baffling decision, ASM2 killed off Emma Stone's vibrant Gwen Stacy character for no real reason -- Peter Parker mourns, then the switch is flicked and he goes back to work as Spidey. The movie ends in a miserable, unhappy, downbeat note because of this that leaves zero enthusiasm for a sequel (and may or may not be why ASM2 was a financial disaster). After the film failed, Andrew Garfield (Peter) raged at Sony for their creative interference and altering what he felt had been a solid script into an incoherent mess.

The original ending of the film has been posted online -- and it's really good. It takes the depressing ending of Gwen Stacy's death and spins it in a different direction so that the story is no longer depressing and while Peter loses Gwen, he then gets something else back and it pays off the conspiracy arc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpC0z2P1uaY

(I think the child fighting Rhino comes after this scene.)

It's a dead end now, but it looks like there really was a decent movie in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN II until Sony killed it. The fact that they had this ending and then made last minute decisions after filming to blow it off speaks to Sony's total inability to manage a film or execute a coherent story.

Re: Amazing Spider-Man 1 - 2: The Untold Story [Original ending!]

Yeah, I've seen that before.  There's something wrong about Peter's dad being alive in my opinion.  It'd be like if Thomas Wayne was secretly alive.  It just seems like it undermines a core part of the character (although it'd be much worse if it was Uncle Ben who wasn't really dead since Ben's death is what really makes Peter Parker embrace his destiny).

It's a well-acted scene.  It's pretty beautiful, and you're right, it really does make a lot of the movie work a lot better.  Although ASM and ASM2 are just so tampered with that I don't think either film really got a chance to do much.  We chronicled the tampering the studio did with the first movie that made it almost impossible to follow and understand.  The second movie is so concerned with setting up Sinister Six and a cinematic universe that it fails spectacularly in almost every way.  It's just as confusing and bogged down.

I liked Garfield as Spidey.  I liked Emma as Gwen.  I thought they did a pretty good job of trying to tell the story in a different way from Raimi's Spider-Man.  But I think Sony sabotaged and tampered to the point where both movies are just disasters.

Re: Amazing Spider-Man 1 - 2: The Untold Story [Original ending!]

In the comics, Richard Parker is a non-entity with only a few exceptions. The comics are extremely vague on why Peter lives with his aunt and uncle. A 1968 annual revealed that Peter's parents were spies killed by the Red Skull, a revelation that most writers have found difficult to integrate with Peter Parker being a normal guy. Also, with Aunt May and Uncle Ben, the writers had no real need for any other parental figures.

The general approach was to avoid dealing with the dead parents -- although a clumsy mid-90s story had the parents returning to the fold, having faked their deaths. After several years of the parents behaving in mysterious and sinister ways, they were revealed to be androids created by a (dead at time) vengeful Harry Osborn as a final game of psychological warfare to break Peter's mind. (This would cause all sorts of hilarious continuity problems when it was revealed Harry had been alive the whole time and was also no longer evil.)

So, reviving Richard Parker for ASM2? The movie needed it. Gwen's death in the comics was probably the right choice; the character had fallen into a rut and killing her off took Spider-Man and Peter to some interesting places -- mostly in that his relationship with Mary Jane deepened, became romantic, and unlike Gwen, MJ truly became Peter's ally, comrade and partner. Gwen's death in the movie was a really awful, ill-advised choice because Emma Stone's character was most definitely not in a rut and it makes the entire film depressing and not something anyone would want to revisit for fun. Comics could dig Peter out of this hole due to the serial format. ASM2 was going to be THE Spider-Man story for the next 3 - 4 years. The only way to pull of the Death of Gwen Stacy in a film would be if the story had some route of spinning out of the depression in a convincing, meaningful, believable way -- and Richard Parker returning to console his son and inspire him to keep fighting was precisely what was needed. And they wrote it, filmed it and cut it.

This drove Andrew Garfield crazy. As he explained, he read the script and felt that there was a clear thread throughout the story. That thread, looking at the movie now, was Peter learning of Richard Parker's legacy, which concludes with Richard coming out of hiding to console his despondent son and inspire him to be Spider-Man again. Take that out and ASM2 is an awfully downbeat film where Emma Stone dies. In the final film, there is really no reason for Peter to come out of his depression that wasn't present all along -- the reappearance of his father is a critical step in his journey that Sony ordered cut because they felt the real meat of the story was teasing SINISTER SIX and BLACK CAT and whatever. And I think Andrew Garfield just wanted out after that.

Garfield was fired off ASM3 because he failed to show at a company dinner with the Sony president at which ASM3 would have been announced with Garfield as the star. I think it's pretty clear that Garfield just did not want to do ASM3. ASM1 was messed around with significantly, but it made money and got good reviews and the hope was that Sony would let Marc Webb and Garfield do their thing now that they'd proven themselves. Instead, Sony heightened its interference further and Garfield lost all enthusiasm for them.

Re: Amazing Spider-Man 1 - 2: The Untold Story [Original ending!]

Well, I respect Garfield for sticking to his principles.  Sony ruined what could've been a fresh take on the character....twice.  Hard to rectify that.

Still would've been interesting to see a Sinister Six movie.  That's about it, though.  All the teases that Sony wanted so desperately weren't all that enticing.

Re: Amazing Spider-Man 1 - 2: The Untold Story [Original ending!]

It's interesting to me that so many people consider the Amazing Spider-Man movies to be such bad movies. I don't think they're any worse than the Disney-produced Marvel movies. In fact, I think there is some stronger character work in them (whether they could have been better or not) than there is in most, if not all, of the MCU movies.

I know that Spider-Man is supposed to be a huge deal in Civil War, but is it really that exciting? I think I would have been more psyched to see the movie if Daredevil had shown up in the trailer, rather than Spider-Man.

Please be informed that the political, scientific, sociological, economic and legal views expressed in Informant's posts and social media accounts do not reflect any consensus of Sliders.tv.

Re: Amazing Spider-Man 1 - 2: The Untold Story [Original ending!]

I liked AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. But every problem Slider_Quinn and his fellow detractors raised against the movie (an empty rehash of the Raimi film) is due to Sony re-editing it after approving the script and getting it filmed -- because they suddenly didn't like the focus on Peter investigating his parents' disappearances. For ASM2, they inexplicably approved a script completely focused on these elements they found so unacceptable -- the Parker parents -- then threw in additional elements that distracted and detracted from the main storyline and then removed the conclusion in order to make ASM2 the most depressingly downbeat superhero movie since that BATMAN film where he hates Japanese people.

It's such a stupid attitude in developing a film. I get that sometimes, you need to make a release date. But once a studio approves a script and greenlights filming, it is time to step back. There was no way Sony could possibly make a quality product when trying to change a story about a son searching for his father's legacy into the origin story of the Sinister Six and Venom and the Black Cat when the movie had already started filming. Tweaking an individual scene is fine; trying to turn SPIDER-MAN: THE SEARCH FOR RICHARD PARKER into SINISTER SIX: THE PREQUEL by adding more plot fro the latter and subtracting the former only leads to disaster.

The result was a muddled, convoluted, incoherent film that resulted in Sony cancelling FIVE FOLLOW UP FILMS in the making and sent them crawling back to Marvel Studios. So stupid. But Sony makes waterproof phones, so that's something in their favour.

Re: Amazing Spider-Man 1 - 2: The Untold Story [Original ending!]

Well, here's the thing.  Amazing Spider-Man has two primary villains before the Lizard even really develops - Uncle Ben's killer and Dr. Ratha.  Ratha is really a villain to Connors (who is a good guy until he transforms), and Uncle Ben is clearly a villain to Peter.  Once the Lizard transforms and turns evil, both of these villains are literally forgotten.  Dr. Ratha was dealt with in a scene that was eventually deleted, and I have no idea if Uncle Ben's killer was ever dealt with in any version.  There's a huge point to Spider-Man trying to find his uncle's killer....*the* reason he goes into crime fighting....and it's completely forgotten by the end.  It's never mentioned or followed up on in the sequel.  Uncle Ben gets murdered, and the guy gets away with it.

To release a reboot so soon after the Raimi series, they needed to make it different-enough so that it didn't just look like an excuse to keep the rights.  In my opinion, they didn't do enough different.  And from ireactions' stories, the stuff they *did* get in had to be fought for.  Which is weird because all the posters kept calling it "The Untold Story."  When I finally saw it (I skipped seeing it in theaters), it was just a generic reboot. 

There was some good characterization, and Garfield/Stacy are great together.  But my other problem is that Peter is already cool and fun when he gets bitten.  Becoming Spider-Man made a great life even better for Peter, and that was odd to me.  He's already a fun skateboard kid, pretty popular, when he gets his powers.  I like the idea of a Spider-Man where he chooses to help people to the detriment of his social and personal lives.  It seemed like, in ASM1, that Peter could've gotten Gwen regardless of any confidence he gets from the spider bite.  Something about that was a bit bizarre to me.

Re: Amazing Spider-Man 1 - 2: The Untold Story [Original ending!]

I read the AMAZING SPIDER-MAN script during its filming -- and then I sadly lost the PDF in a computer failure, which is to say I failed to copy all my files to my new computer and sold off the old one. There's probably a netbook floating around this city that has the PDF on its hard drive.

My memory's a little fuzzy, but in the draft I read, Uncle Ben's murderer goes uncaught -- and that was the central arc of the film. Peter becomes Spider-Man for revenge, but he learns more about his father through Curt Connors, Peter realizes his dad buried his research to prevent it from being used to make weapons. To protect people.

Peter stops searching for Uncle Ben's killer, instead searching for people to help. The sketch of the killer, at the end, simply meant that Peter would keep an eye out for this man, but Spider-Man was no longer about settling the score. But Sony cut almost all of Peter's discoveries about his father. In doing so, they cut this arc.

On a side note -- I think the idea of a Spider-Man cinematic universe was really stupid and I follow Spider-Man religiously. Spider-Man has a great supporting cast and a terrific rogues gallery, but I can't imagine them being sufficient to lead their own films without Spidey in the main role.

In the comics, Spider-Man's world is populated by the Avengers (who regarded Spidey as an ineffectual child playing superhero until recent years), the Fantastic Four (who regard Spidey as a child except for the Human Torch, who considers Spidey an equal), the X-Men (who scare the hell out of Spider-Man with their dark futures and soap opera) and the Silver Surfer, Thor and Loki (whom Spider-Man would prefer to avoid because they're out of his league).

Restrict the Spider-Man Cinematic Universe to characters tied into the Spider-Man rights and you have mostly villains. Villains, by their nature, are not designed to be lead characters and Spidey only has one strong anti-hero antagonist (the Black Cat). SINISTER SIX and VENOM are film proposals where you'd be expected to cheer on the bad guys, an unlikely proposition for the superhero genre. The thing about most SPIDER-MAN comics is that the best tend to be comedies and his villains are meant to be a bit silly.

I don't think you can base an entire film on the Shocker and Hammerhead and the Gibbon and the Spot. And heroes from the Spider-Man rights -- I guess you've got the Rocket Racer, Frog Man, Puma and the Slingers? Most of these characters were designed as jokes to reflect some aspect of Spidey himself; they depend on Spidey as the lead.

Sony wanted a cinematic universe because everyone else seemed to be doing one; the fact that Spider-Man tends to be about Peter Parker was something they tried to ignore and I think it cost that regime their jobs. Not that the new regime is any better based on their new Sony Pictures chariman, Tom Rothman, and his track record of X-MEN: THE LAST STAND and X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE.

What should Sony have done? Personally, I would have used the cinematic universe elements that were suited to what was available -- which is cross-platform storytelling. I would have used AMAZING SPIDER-MAN as a big screen pilot for a streaming series.

The series would be computer animated using the pioneering cel-shaded format developed by the MTV series but using motion capture and voice acting from Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone. I would also have a series of video games that used the same visual style.

This way, SPIDER-MAN would continue as a series between films. I think with three or four 13 episode seasons, the characters would have come to mean even more -- and then Gwen's death in ASM2 would have meant something as opposed to being a discordant note. ASM2 could be designed to work for both people who've watched the series and people who didn't and be a big live action season finale to kick off another run of animated episodes. This format would be very focused on spending time with likable characters with movies and between movies.

Sony seemed obsessed with copying Marvel -- I think they should have, instead, drawn inspiration from Lucasfilm and CLONE WARS.

Re: Amazing Spider-Man 1 - 2: The Untold Story [Original ending!]

I do think Spider-Man is better suited for TV.  His story is really deep and unique, and I think it would do better to unfold over 100 episodes of TV instead of 6-10 hours of film.

And my problem with Uncle Ben's killer is that Peter never follows up on it.  There's being obsessive about finding him (and ignoring those who need his help more) and there's letting a killer go free.  If there's more important matters than finding his killer (and, yes, the Lizard is one of those things), that's fine.  If he grows beyond needing revenge, that's fine.  But if that's the case, do a follow-up in ASM2.  If you don't want him to personally take down the killer, have a scene where Peter gives a dossier of all he knows about the killer to the police.  Or, hell, have Peter pick up a newspaper to find that the killer was found by the NYPD without his help.  He smiles, knowing that justice was served.

But the idea that Peter just decides to abandon his search was really off-putting to me.

Re: Amazing Spider-Man 1 - 2: The Untold Story [Original ending!]

Venom can be a good Anti Hero but not when Eddie Brock is it's Host.
Venom shines best as an Anti Hero either when he is up against Carnage or the other Symbiotes and sometimes when he gets all possessive of Peter in the "Only I get to Kill my First Other!" type way.....

Mac Gargant/The Scorpion was interesting during his Redemption Arc period but Spidey was so awful at the time due to Aunt Mays Hospitalisation and Identity Crisis issues due to Ben Reilly being around.....

The Scarlet Spider I actually grew to Prefer over Spiderman/Peter.... I would really love to see a Clone Wars Movie but finding the Right Spidey Actor for all those Spideys would be vital... You can get away with different Cast for Spider Woman Clone, Kain with his huge Build and maybe a Man Spider defective Clone but yeah Cast would be a real issue to do it right.....

Blade might have been ok to cross as could FF4 and X Men but those kind of things should have been done long ago not now.....

"It's only a matter of time. Were I in your shoes, I would spend my last earthly hours enjoying the world. Of course, if you wish, you can spend them fighting for a lost cause.... But you know that you've lost." -Kane-