Originally published June 23, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
After today’s casting news, Anghus Houvouras is already sick of the new Spider-Man reboot…
There’s been so much pointless controversy over the direction of the new Spider-Man movie. Rallying cries for a different direction with the character. And with the countless directions Sony and Marvel could have gone with Spider-Man, they’ve opted for yet another reboot featuring a younger version of Peter Parker and are hitting the reset button… again.
Color me uninspired.
And it’s not just the color or the race of the character that I have any concern with. The whole racial angle is a lot of hot air causing an insufferable amount of political correctness that we’ve all been choking on.
“Why does Spider-Man have to be white?” they exclaim with clenched fists.
I don’t care what color, race, or creed Spider-Man is. White. Black. Asian. It’s irrelevant.
My rallying cry is “Why does Spider-Man have to be Peter Parker?”
It’s been such an interesting few years for Spider-Man who has gone through a creative renaissance in the comics. We have Silk, a female version of Spider-Man bitten by the same radioactive spider that gave Peter Parker his powers. We have the insanely popular Spider-Gwen, a ‘What If’ version of the character that shown us a world where Gwen Stacy was bitten. Fans and sales figures have shown how much interest there is the character and that it doesn’t always have to be Peter Parker underneath the iconic mask.
And yet, here we are getting ready to see a third Spider-Man origin story. A third. Am I really expected to plumb the depths of my fandom and find the inspiration to sit through a third Spider-Man origin story over the past decade and a half? Sorry Sony, it’s not there. And sorry Marvel who apparently lacks the creative leverage to take the character in another direction.
We need a new Spider-Man, at least for now. Gwen Stacy. Tracey Moon. Any of the characters from Dan Slott’s exceptional Spider-Verse story. In ten years, after this version of the character is inevitably scrapped for yet another relaunch. Actually, I might be giving them too much credit with the expectation that we’ll get a cohesive series of Spider-Man films over the course of a decade. At the rate they’re currently going, Sony and Marvel will have exhausted Tom Holland in a handful of years and the entire exhaustive process of finding the next Peter Parker can begin. An infinite number of Spider-Man relaunches with Peter Parker caught in a sysiphusian loop until they finally get it right.
Peter Parker is yesterday’s news. It was a character we could get behind in the advent of the comic book movie adaptation when Sam Raimi took Tobey Maguire for a web-slinging ride in the early 2000’s. Back before Marvel cracked the code and started delivering bi-annual superhero shenanigans. And we were forgiving of Marc Webb’s terribly plotted, yet earnest attempt to once again give us the story of Peter Parker. There has to be a threshold. I’m sure there are those out there thrilled at the prospect of another Spider-Man movie with Peter Parker. One who will get to play with other characters in the Marvel movie toy-box. I’m not one of them.
I’m burnt out. And I can’t be the only one. I don’t want another Peter Parker movie. Not because it’s politically correct, but because I cannot fathom having to sit through another Peter Parker origin story. The fun of comic book movies has been seeing characters I grew up reading about adapted to film. Seeing the same story adapted, then adapted again… and again…
Frankly, I’m Peter’d out.
Anghus Houvouras is a North Carolina based writer and filmmaker and the co-host of Across the Pondcast. Follow him on Twitter.
https://youtu.be/CkZX95HzVyg?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng
