Spidey Scriptment
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STOP RIGHT HERE if you don't want to know what's in the scriptments for Spider-Man!October 26, 2000
This is the most recent review of David Koepp's script. It was posted by Ain't It Cool News at ScreenWritersUtopia.com.
I’ll agree with Koepp that I’ve failed to fill my life with worthwhile activities (and I sure don’t shy away from the self-abuse), but I think the same claim can be made about THE SHADOW (for Koepp) and THE QUICK AND THE DEAD (for director Sam Raimi).
That warning, however, is witty and fun. Too bad the same amount of thought wasn’t put into the script.
As you all know Peter Parker is a dweeb who gets picked on (by a guy named "Flash," for the love of God) and he pines pitifully for a beauty queen named Mary Jane.
Skinny little Peter will someday become Spider-Man and, freeing himself of self-consciousness and geekdom, he will help patrol the city and take crap from bullies no more.
So for all its history, Spider-Man is really nothing more than every beat-up-on kid’s fantasy. It’s about the kid who gets sand kicked in his face, goes away, works out, and exacts holy hell on the kid who dared to humiliate him.
I think this has a lot to do with why making a SPIDER-MAN movie with today’s sensibilities is so hard...
Here’s the plot: Peter is a geek; he dreams of Mary Jane. Harry Osborn, heir to the Osborn fortune and soon to be Peter’s friend, is bullied by his pugnacious father, who wants him to get serious about taking over his company. Mary Jane is dating "Flash," but secretly (or so it seems) wants Harry.
Peter is bitten by a mutant spider (it was created using three different spiders’ DNA). He becomes Spider-Man. Harry’s father fires his main scientist, Dr. Octavius. The doc doesn’t want to go silently and causes a huge explosion in his lab. Harry’s dad becomes the Green Goblin and Dr. Octavius is transformed into Dr. Octopus.
The Green Goblin, which at first is a separate being from Harry’s dad, tells Norman (the father) he must take out the weak link to the OsCorp business: his son.
Get it? Mary Jane likes Spider-Man but not Peter. So Peter, like all good superheroes, must decide if he’ll tell her he’s the mysterious Spider-Man (it’s the age-old question of the artist versus the man). This causes Harry great pain. Harry’s dad, under the influence of the Green Goblin, is out to kill him (which leads, no doubt, to action scenes). Dr. Octopus is pretty ticked off about his new four arms and wants Harry’s dad (a.k.a. Green Goblin) dead. It’s a maelstrom of revenge, you see. And at its center is a truly juvenile love story: Mary Jane wants Spider-Man; Peter wants Mary Jane; Harry wants his girlfriend back and feels betrayed by her wandering loyalty.
I find I’m rapidly losing strength writing all this. The script has major problems, not the least of which is that the characters are never consistent. This I blame on the studio.
When we first meet Mary Jane she sighs wistfully when she sees Harry. But later, when they’re dating (much to Peter’s chagrin), she seems to only date him because he has money.
Harry himself starts out like a jerk -- cursing Peter for admiring his father’s car -- and suddenly turns around and acts like the nicest pal in the world and bizarrely befriends Peter for no apparent reason (there’s no transition from them being strangers to close friends). Peter’s friendship with Harry is so breathtakingly sloppy I’m surprised David Koepp didn’t apologize for it in the script. They obviously need to set up a connection between Harry and Peter so the Green Goblin will be close enough to Spidey to know who lurks behind the mask. A little subtlety -- anything that wasn’t such an insult -- would have been easier to swallow.
(Koepp creates one good character: a fast-talking newspaperman. The question is: where is he? He’s around for five pages and disappears.)
The script is quite disjointed; it jumps around a lot and it reads like Koepp was ordered to throw certain scenes (like an abominable one where Spidey saves Mary Jane from being molested/raped) without thought to the rest of the plot and how these new scenes made the script read like a mismatched patchwork.
In both Cameron’s scriptment (which I didn’t like) and Koepp’s script they follow the story line of having Spider-Man let a crook escape the cops because he is angry and that guy ends up murdering his Uncle. At the very least in Cameron’s script the incident alters Spider-Man and shocks him into a maturity he was lacking. In Koepp’s script (which, I hate to keep saying it, was studio-sanctioned) it’s just one more scene tossed out like a man peppering a canvas indiscriminately with paint.
The one thing that stands out in my mind about Cameron’s scriptment was that he had a fairly lengthy section where Peter revels in his newfound abilities. He plays up the initial bewilderment, and then has Peter do what any normal kid who’s suddenly a God would do. In the script, to make time for a few forgettable action scenes, Peter wakes up covered in spider silk (no jokes made in the script that this is every young man’s wet-dream nightmare) and says, Wow, cool, I’m Spider-Man, and goes on his merry way, beating up cops abusing suspects and rescuing Mary Jane from attackers.
Koepp has Spidey enter a wrestling contest. If you can last three minutes in the ring with a brute named Bone Saw McGraw you win three thousand dollars.
The idea is totally hokey (a symbol of all that’s wrong with the script), and it also assumes such an asinine thing could take place. First, wrestling is not real and a wrestler is not going to step into the ring with some local whacko who might seriously hurt him. Second, the lawsuits that would arise from this would make Johnny Cochran fall from his chair.
Cameron’s idea, of having Spidey do acrobatic shows on sidewalks (climbing lampposts), seems much more realistic.
When I finally got to the end of this 120-page script, and read such scenes as Spider-Man, after having burned his outfit in disgust (another scene that has no real lead-in) quickly changing into a Spider-Man Halloween costume and an action scene set around a glass elevator on the side of a high-rise (ever seen that before?), the abject silliness of the whole thing weighed down on me.
Everything in this script is so fatuous that it feels like at any moment it’s going to spill over into satire (along the lines of Dan Waters’ BATMAN RETURNS script). That’s probably because Koepp is too smart to be writing about bullied kids and superheroes. He’s coming off some of his best work (as a writer and a director) -- STIR OF ECHOES -- and everything in the script, no matter how stone-cold-dead serious it is, has a smile hiding behind it.
I thought about STIR IF ECHOES, and Koepp’s other work, such as DEATH BECOMES HER (a great comedy no one appreciated) and THE PAPER, and I realized Koepp couldn’t commit to this material.
I had reread Ron Bass’ adaptation of SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS not long before reading this script, and having that astounding, devastatingly smart story, with its true characters and actually reason for existence, made me question if the naysayers aren’t right: maybe superheroes should stay out of the multiplexes. Unless they’re about introverted weirdoes who like to brood inside their mansions and have a fondness for shy secretaries who step out at night in tight, drool-inducing leather, they don’t work too well.
This is a bit of a moot point, since Scott Rosenberg was brought onto the project to liven it up and make it "hipper." Scott’s a fine writer, but I can very easily see him trying too hard on this and the material’s nature will most likely bring out the worst in him (not to mention he did the bullying thing in LEONARD COHEN and GOING TO CALIFORNIA already).
SPIDER-MAN is being made; money has exchanged hands and we’ll be getting it, like it or not, in a year or so. When it comes out, with Raimi at the helm, it will most likely be a fairly successful comic-book movie. But looking at what’s been offered before it -- what does that really mean?
This first scriptment is David Koepp's revision under Sam Raimi. I think we are going to see a better quality Spider-Man with this story line than with James Cameron's, although I still am not wild about the organic webshooters. But read on. I came away with the feeling that Sam Raimi is working on keeping Peter/Spidey true to form, making the fans happy and coming away with a damn fine movie. This revision was posted by Ain't It Cool News on July 31, 2000.
Also, nearly all or any resemblance to James Cameron’s treatment or previous drafts is nearly extinct in this draft. Which means: no Sandman, Electro, Kingpin, or Spider-Man engaging in sexual intercourse with Mary Jane high atop the Brooklyn Bridge.
...It’s here, at the Columbia Genetic Research Institute that Midtown High’s student’s, including Peter Parker, are taking a tour of the lab. It’s also here that a tour guide is in the middle of discussing the three sub-orders of Arachnids and how each of the varying three groups possess different strengths.
The guide goes on the explain for instance that the jumping spider “can leap up to forty times it’s body length due to it’s proportionate muscular strength.” The funnel spider has web strands of a “tensile strength” equal to the type of “high-tension wire used in bridge building.” And finally the crab spider is said to have a set of reflexes that “boarders on precognition, an early awareness of danger, a ‘spider sense’”.
Then you have a tank of ten genetically designed “super-spiders” which combines genetic information from all three spiders. And of course one is missing and eventually drops from the ceiling and biting the unfortunate “puny” Parker on the hand. Between his thumb and forefinger.
...Next, and definitely the one most surrounding controversy amongst the fanboys is the debate of ORGANIC/MACHANICAL WEB SHOOTERS. Hopefully we’ll put this little argument to rest right here, right now.
Yes, Parker does has organic shooters on the undersides of his wrists, which in this script are described as: “He examines his wrists. They’re oozing a pearly white fluid from almost invisible slits about a quarter of an inch long. The slits are puffy, great pressure on the skin from inside. He pushes on the skin next to one of the slits, to relieve the pressure. A dark shape, the size and color of a rose thorn, emerges from beneath the skin and shoots a jet of liquid silk into his face.”
As you can see he’s still trying to get the hang of them.
To conceal his organic spinners, Koepp goes on to describe:
“CLOSE ON Peter’s shirtsleeves, which he has pulled down as far as he can to cover his wrists. In fact, he’s clutching them with his fingers to keep them down, not taking any chances as he walks down a crowded high school corridor.”
Now before everyone starts groaning, there is a saving grace here. And it’s a hugely satisfying one. Unable to control the accuracy and distance of his organic spinners Koepp has placed this scene describing Peter in his bedroom:
“Sparks fly. Peter has dismantled several Zippo lighters, watches, and assorted old jewelry and is silver-soldering them back together in a new way. He picks one up, blows on the solder, and puts it around his wrist.
It’s hinged in the middle, right underneath a small delicately mounted nozzle that swivels in all directions. Peter closes the wrist-bracelet around his wrist, right over his biological spinnerets.”
...The organic shooters nicely explain his supply of web fluid, and mounting the mechanical web shooters over the slits keeps in with Parker’s character. This should not change over the course of re-writes! It solidifies Peter’s mutated state all the while keeping with his ingenious intelligence in manufacturing such a device...
And finally, the Spidey suit. Koepp has kept with the classic and describes Peter…
“ON HIS BED, two Danskins spill out of a plastic bag, one midnight blue and the other a deep red. Colors look good together. A RAZOR KNIFE Cuts through the blue, then the red, then through a nearly-opaque white mesh he’s using for the eyes. With a black marker, he draws a big black spider outline in the middle of the red fabric.”
Peter Parker’s rise to Spider-Man and the tragic events that help lead him there are pretty on target with the comic and is pretty well developed.
Now onto the bad guys.
True to the comic, NORMAN OSBORN runs OSCORP, the company he inherited from his father and will ultimately pass down to his lesser son HARRY.
It’s deep inside of OSCORP that Osborn is working on experiments for future sale to the government. DR. OTTO OCTAVIUS heads one such experiment being worked on in which he wears a metal corset of sorts that man four long tentacles which gingerly handles various chemical-filled test tubes behind a glass partition.
It’s down here that we find too what is to become the GOBLIN GLIDER, which is described as: “…an aerodynamically perfected boogie board, with upturned fins on each side, footholds carved into the top on each wing, and a single row of witches down the middle of the center tube, which is a propulsion system of some kind.”
It also goes on to describe the hovering glider being controlled by an “insect-looking” like helmet that when worn the glider will respond to head movements.
Dr. Octavius is working on a something called “Human Performance Enhancers” for Osborn, which is basically a chemical vapor that enhances strength and intelligence, but shows serious side effects including “propensity towards violence, central nervous system breakdown, domination, obsession, decompensation, insanity, death.”
Soon an altercation between Octavius and Norman over his work erupts, sending Octavius into a fit of rage, tentacles flying wildly about, knocking over various test tubes and beakers and such. And it’s here that Octavius has created an explosion, which sends him flying back and knocking Norman unconscious amidst the chemical catastrophe, where an ominous greenish cloud of vapor hovers towards his limp body. As the cloud passes in front of Norman’s body, he becomes transparent through the cloud to where we can see his skeleton. We can also see his lungs breathing in the fumes as they travel into his bloodstream where it’s soon carried by oxygen to his brain. As the could dissipates, Norman awakes, and eyes that we’re once bright blue have turned a “fluorescent, demonic green!”
Badly scorched, Octavius finds himself trapped under a pile of rubble, the metal corset now permanently seared into his flesh. To which now he truly becomes DOCTOR OCTOPUS!
The origin here stays pretty true to its comic source, and it’s nicely done. The Green Goblin is explored even further as he becomes delusional and his alter-ego, THE GREEN GOBLIN takes over which at times is described as a rather gruesome, painful transformation.
...The Goblin’s arsenal consists of the ever popular “pumpkin bombs”, boomerangs and kick ass “razor bats”.
And to top is off there is a fantastic mid-air battle between Spidey and the Goblin high above the Macy’s Day parade. This will definitely rock!
...DOC OCK is a poorly underwritten character. He’s clearly the secondary villain here, and his primary motive throughout the film is to seek revenge on Norman Osborn/The Green Goblin for destroying and taking his life’s work. Spider-Man to him is more of an interference, and that’s fine and all, he just needs to be developed more.
The character of MARY JANE is plain bad. Aside from the fact that she’s hot looking, she acts like a total spoiled bitch most of the time, so it’s really hard to see what Peter sees in her besides getting horizontal. For Peter to like her, we should too and I just loathed her from start to finish here. Her character does not seem real genuine or sincere. And she needs to be, because she’s not only the object of affection in Peter’s eyes, but also HARRY OSBORN’s, (Norman’s son). She’s at the center of this increasing love triangle that persists throughout the script.
If she wasn’t in the script so much, I’d recommend tossing her aside, putting in GWEN STACY, use her in a tragic way that would help further push and develop Peter’s character, and then why not introduce M.J.’s character at the end. Have her ring Peter’s doorbell. He answers, and have her simply look up to him and reply, “Hey Tiger,” the way the comic introduces her.
And finally, the climatic finale high atop the Brooklyn Bridge is simply lackluster. The build up to this sequence never really feels like it pays off the way it should. It should top the Macy’s parade sequence but falls real short of doing so and shouldn’t.
Hopefully some of those weaker points can be cleared up in future re-writes.
This second scriptment is what James Cameron had written. I really don't have any problems with this one. It was the original story that the movie was supposed to follow, but I felt like I got a better sense of who and what the characters were all about in the revision Koepp has written.
FADE IN
A geometrical pattern fills the screen. Silver threads in moonlight. Part of a spider's intricate web. It moves slightly and we see behind it...the glint of an eye. Pulling back. Two eyes, blinking in the darkness, behind a mesh of fishnet material. Continue pulling back to reveal a face. A face shrouded in darkness, covered by a concentric web-like pattern. Behind the mesh we catch a hint of the features. Not much. It is the eyes which command our attention.
Pulling back...head and shoulders. A black night background. Wider still, revealing a muscular silhouetted figure, sitting cross-legged with zen-like composure. The arms are straight down, between the legs. Behind the figure is some kind of steel structure.
But wait. As we pull back, city lights have come into view, and now skyscrapers...but they are above us. Sticking down into frame like the mothership in Close Encounters. CAMERA ROTATES now, 180 degrees...
Putting the city where it belongs...below us. And revealing that the figure is hanging by his hands, by a thread like wire cross-legged and chilled out. Upside down. He is wearing a form-hugging body-suit. Hard to make out the details in the moonlight. Who is this whacko?
Keep pulling back. The figure is hanging, like a spider, from a radio mast high above...Manhattan. There are the familiar landmarks...Pan Am and Chrysler Buildings. Empire State.
FIGURE (V.0)
Welcome to one of my favorite night spots. The service is slow, but the thing I like about it...it's not usually too crowded.
The Empire State Building is lower than us so there's only one place we could be... 1400 feet above the street, on the radio mast of the north tower of the World Trade Center. A quarter of a mile below us the traffic moves liked like corpuscles of light through the circulatory system of the city.
We pull back further, orbiting now in a dizzying panorama of the greatest city on this planet until the silhouetted figure is as tiny as...well...a bug.
It all looks so...(note)civilized...from up here, doesn't it? Like there's some kind of logic to it all. It's all so clear. But you get down there on the street and nothing's clear.
THE STREET. Cabs and cops.
People on the move. Humanity in all its variegated glory... from stockbrokers to hookers, priests to junkies.
A CORNER NEWSTAND. Pushing in on a stack of Newsweeks. Close on the top one. The cover is a grainy, long lens black and white shot, like a UFO photo, of a guy in tights apparently crawling up the side of a building. The headline reads: THE SPIDER MAN-HERO OR VIGILANTE?
An arm, wearing red spandex and a red glove, drops down from the roof of the newstand. The news-guy whirls as the hand slaps two bucks on the counter and grabs a Newsweek. The owner rushes out the door...looks on top of his kiosk. There's nothing there. He looks up, all around...nothing. Grins and holds his fist in the air.
CUT TO THE FIGURE, atop the WTC. Still hanging. He pulls the Newsweek out of his belt and stares at the cover in the moonlight.
How can I expect them to get it? I don't even get it. I (note) do wish they'd at least get my name right. It's Spider- Man...not (note)The Spider Man. Jeez. Boneheads. I need a better publicist.
He rips the magazine easily in half, then in quarters, then in eighths...somehere in here we realize that this takes more strength in the hands than you or I have. He releases the stamp-sized shreds. Camera drifts with them as they flutter down over the city like confetti.
Wouldn't they have kittens if they knew Spider-man wasn't even a (note) man. Just a kid named...
CLOSE UP on an elderly lady yelling, "Peter...you're going to be late!" It's morning and she's calling up the stairs to...
PETER PARKER. Age 17. Peter is in the bathroom, popping a zit in the mirror. He puts on his glasses and checks his look in the mirror. Still the same. Nerdy. He doesn't care. Screw them.
He grabs a big stack of books and heads downstairs. Over breakfast we meet his aunt MAY and Uncle BENJAMIN. Nice people but way too old to be the kind of role-model parents a kid needs. Still, he loves them even if he forgets to actually mention it 99% of the time like any kid.
Aunt May is thin and fusses over Peter too much, He indulges her when he has time, which he doesn't this morning.
Peter's parents were killed in a plane crash when he was six. He woke up one day without a family. Somehow he always felt guilty that they went away. As if he had done something wrong. His 17 yar old mind tells him it was just fate, just a random accident...but deep in his subconscious that scared 6 year old still cries, begging for them to come home...he won't cause trouble anymore...he'll go to bed when they tell him.
Uprooted, moved from the only home he knew, in Maryland, to Ben and May's modest bungalow in suburban Flushing, NY. It is a low to middle income boredom-zone of tract homes pushed too close together. Peter actually goes to high school in nearby Forest Hills, a snotty high-income neighborhood. This makes him a poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks in the eyes of his status conscious schoolmates.
Peter is a bright kid. He doesn't have many friends. He is ostracized for his interest in science. Our MTV culture frowns on people who think too much. Intellectual curiosity is decidedly un-hip. Who cares about where the universe came from or how the Greeks hammered Troy? Did you hear the new Pearl Jam album?
Peter is defiant. He thinks they are the real losers. They'll be flipping burgers while he's discovering the cure for cancer. We'll see who wins in the long run.
He wears his isolation like a badge...with an air of superiority. In fact, he is awesomely shy and desperately lonely and unhappy. But whenever this occurs to him, he loses himself in his studies, and finds a kind of peace.
He has the 17 year-old's senses that he knows everything about the world, and can see so clearly all the things that are wrong with it. In fact his is very insulated and knows almost nothing about human nature in all its complexity. He doesn't even understant himself very well. Because his life of the mind is his badge of superiority, he frowns on the pursuits of the body.
Sports? Forget it. Bunch of boneheads crashing into each other. Girls? Good in theory, but how do you talk to them? Dancing? No way. He tried it once. Not a pretty sight.
Peter is a virgin. And apt to remain that way for a while. He's your basic sexually pent-up adolescent.
One other thing about Peter. He is a plucky kid. He's got true grit. He's never had an opportunity to prove this, to himself or anyone else. But he will soon...
That day at school, we see Peter with his friends, who are mostly straight-A misfit types like himself. In his last class of the day...his favorite, BIOLOGY...Peter daydreams about the girl across the room. Mary Jane Watson. Peter is captivated by her, thogh she doesn't seem to know he exists. The teacher tells them to pair up for the term science projects and to Peter's surprise Mary Jane comes all the way over to him and asks to be his partner.
Mary Jame needs at least and A in the class, or she won't graduate with a B average, and then her parents won't buy her a car like they promised. So she teams herself with Peter the Nerd. Mary Jane's girl-friends in the class exchange looks and smirks.
Peter flushes with the sudden proximity of the girl he has watched from across the room all year. She even smells good. He feels giddy.
Peter of course knows he has no hope. Mary Jane is going out with one of the school's top studs...Nathan McCreery, AKA "Flash". Nathan is a top athlete, playing on the senior football team and head of the gymnastics team. He is also a tennis snob and drives a Porche. Peter hates him utterly, on general principles. Peter takes the bus. His aunt and uncle don't have much money.
Mary Jane is a popular girl, in a "sosh" clique, way out of Peter's league. She has it all...looks, money, handsome boyfriend. Peter oscillates between despising her and fantasizing about saving her from a burning building so she will be eternally grateful to him and maybe even kiss him.
Peter is thrilled to be her partner for the term project. School lets out. Peter walks Mary Jane out to the parking lot. Flash comes zipping up in his Porche to pick her up. In an awkward moment of condescending generosity, Mary Jane invites Peter to go with them, to Flash's house, to play tennis and swim in the pool. Peter declines...he has an honors-student science seminar he's going to at a nearby university. Anyway...he doesn't want her to see his pale skinny body next to Flash the stud.
McCreery make some offhand but cutting remark about Peter, then some of Flash's jock friends get into it...mocking him as well. Peter walks away, humiliated.
LATER, at the seminar...Peter is touring the genetics lab of the university he hopes to attend if he can get a scholarship. The lab has one of the nation's leading research programs on recombinant DNA and gene therapy.
As the tour moves though the lab complex they are able to get a glimpse of the restricted area where some of the more advanced research is done, through sealed glass doors. The professor shows them video monitors which show the images of bio-isolation flasks where genetic experiments are done on fruit flies.
He says they are 'using synthesized transfer-RNA to recode the genome of the fruitfly...transferring genetic information from one species of fly to another.'
He points to the monitors, saying, 'You can see the ten mutagenically activated flies on the left, the ten control. Flies on the right
Peter mentions that he only sees nine flies on the left. While the scientist is counting, the camera moves to a high corner of the room. Caught in a spider's web, near an air duct, is the tenth fly. The spider approaches the struggling fly and begins to dine. Back focus back to the professor...as he continues the lecture. They move on. Peter asks if he can take some photographs for his school paper. The group moves on, leaving him behind.
The tiny spider drops down from above on a nearly invisible thread. Peter, below, is oblivious, as the arachnid descends. Lands on his hand as he is taking his last shot. He feels a stinging pain and sees the spider. He smashes it. Stands rubbing his hand. He hurries after the group.
Peter on the subway on the way home. He is rubbing his hand which is red and swollen. He is perspiring and feels faint. His lips are dry.
By the time Peter gets home, his vision is blurry. He goes straight to bed...avoiding Aunt May. He pulls off his clothes and staggers toward the bed, but collapses on the floor.
He is wracked by a convulsive tremor, like a seizure. He is plunged into a psycotrepic state...an abyss of dark visions which yawns beneath him. He falls into the maelstrom, barraged by hallucinatory manifestations. Disturbing images of webs...from a POV as if crawling over them. Glistening eyes in the dark. Sudden predatory lunges. Prey struggling hopelessly to escape. A David Lynch bio-horror montage of spiderworld. Shadowy images of rooftops...crawling over buildings and fences. Leaping through the dark air...
Peter awakens in the sunlight. He opens his eyes, relieved to be out of the nightmare. That it was just a dream. He blinks, looking around and screams. He is about 80 feet up a high-tension tower...wearing only his underwear. Below him, morning traffic moves along the street. Nobody looks up.
CUT TO PETER sneaking along a fence, trying not to be seen. He hides in the bushes as two girls from his class go by. Deeply embarassed and confused, Peter makes it back to his house.
He slips inside and gets ready for school. He is pale and shakey. He rushes past Aunt May and Uncle Benjamin, saying he is late. He goes outside, around the house, and climbs into a basement window. He goes to a dark corner and huddles there, shaking. His teeth are chattering. He hugs his knees to his chest and drifts into semi-consciousness.
His eyes fall on something moving in a ray of sunlight coming in the window. It is a spider, descending on a single silken strand.
To Peter it is like a heavenly vision, the tiny figure filling his entire consciousness in some sort of hallucinatory magnification. The morning sun backlights it and it seems ti glow with a golden radience. It is like some kind of divine messenger, waving its legs slowly as if trying to tell him something. He is rivoted by it, hypnotized by its otherworldly beauty and grace
Peter comes in the front door of the house after dark. He passes the living room, telling his Aunt and Uncle that he has to study. They ask him if he is okay. He says sure, fine.
Peter looks in the bathroom mirror. He looks normal. He looks at his hands. They have stopped shaking. It appears to be over, whatever it was. He rubs his wrists, unconsciously. Rubbing his thumbs over the insides of his wrists. They hurt but who knows why.
He notices suddenly that he can see perfectly. But that he is not wearing his glasses. He rushes into the bedroom and puts them on...the world goes fuzzy. He throws them across the room. Rubs his eyes. Wow! The poison cured his myopia. Cool.
Peter goes to bed, exhausted by his ordeal. He sleeps soundly. The spider dream comes again. This time rather that a dark, roaring horror of confusing, disjointed images...it is more refined. An aerial ballet of eerie grace...the weaving of an orb-web from the spider's point of view. Shimmering geometry in cold black space.
THE NEXT DAY. Tight on Peter as he wakes up. He opens his eyes cautiously. Not knowing what to expect. PULL BACK to reveal that he is still in bed. All is normal. He breaths a sigh of relief. In fact...he feels pretty good. Lots of energy. He pulls back the covers and...
Something is causing the sheet to stick to him. He lifts it, revealing a stick, white mass completely covering him, gluing him to his bedding. It is some silky substance webbing him into the covers. He cries out in dismay...struggling to free himself from the gluey strands. where did it come form? He notices his wrists...
They are oozing a pearlescent white fluid from almost invisible slits about a quarter of an inch long. He pushes on the skin next to one of the slits and...a dark shape, the size and color of a rose-thorn...emerges from beneath the skin. It shoots a jet of liquid silk into his face.
Peter screams at the top of his lungs.
Aunt May comes to the door. "Peter, are you alright?"
"Yes," he answers, nervously. "I'm...fine, Aunt May. I was just...uh...practicing for a school play."
Aunt May says she's so happy that he's getting into other activates.
He gets out of bed and pulls the silky webbing off himself, realizing how strong the stuff is. He looks again at the horrifying "spinnerets" on his wrists. He is hyperventilating, freaking out. Like the guy in Kafka's Metamorphosis, he has woken up to find out he is a bug.
Peter bangs out the back door of his house. He starts to run. Anywhere. Trying to get away from himself. Away from what is happening to him. He runs and runs in a blind frenzy, not realizing how fast he is going.
Peter shoots through the trees. He bursts out into a street. Right in front of a speeding delivery truck. Peter leaps. The truck roars on...horn honking. Peter realizes he is twenty feet above the ground. He yells in terror. He is sticking to the side of a perfectly smooth building, by his palms, two stories up. Like a cat, stuck in a tree, he doesn't know how to get down.
A kid rides by on a bike..."Hey!" Peter yells. "Kid! Call 911!"
The kid looks at him and rides off fast. Peter gingerly pulls one palm loose...then loses traction and falls-Landing with perfect catlike grace on his feet and hands. He stands unsteadily.
What is going on? His body is changing. Where will it stop? He tests his arms and legs, feeling the strange energy pulsing through his muscles.
SEVERAL SCENES FOLLOW, of Peter realizing his new physical powers...strength and agility. His horror begins to turn to exhilaration as he finds himself capable of things he never dreamed of. He finds his skinny body suddenly more muscular, man-like. But beyond that he has inhuman power in his muscles...he picks up the back end of a small car by its bumper. Is he dreaming?
He finds a position of his hand which seems to trip the spinneret in his wrist. Hand bent back 90 degrees, index and pinky finger extended. The fluid jets out under pressure like a sot from a squirt gun, instantly hardening into a strand tougher than nylon. He tests it...can't break it. He even finds that it will support his weight. He realizes it is spider silk. Peter shoots some up to a tree limb and hangs from it. Starts swinging back and forth...yelling with the thrill of it.
CUT TO Peter at school, with his sleeves pulled down...nervously looking around. Nobody notices him. He realizes that even though the most profound change imaginable has happened to him, no one else knows...or needs to know. Which is good...because he's already enough of a misfit. No point letting them know he's a complete freak.
In biology class he tells the teacher he wants to do the term project on spiders. Mary Jane is aghast. She thinks they're revolting. Peter just wants to know more about them. Because he wants to know more about himself. But he can't exactly tell her that.
Peter, in a junkyard after school. After making sure no-one is around, he practices shooting silk. MONTAGE of him learning to control the flow, the diameter, the dispersion, etc. like a real spider does. We see him practicing web-making. Screwing up. Getting more accurate. Then gunslinger moves, shooting the stuff around. Nailing a pop can in mid-air. Cut to long-shot...the area completely covered in webs. A total mess.
Cut to him drinking half a gallon of milk. Eating voraciously. Replacing the protein he has used up. He aunt is pleased with his appetite.
And now it's my turn...
I enjoyed James Cameron's scriptmemt quite a bit. I can't really say anything about the proposed villian(s) for the movie, because I haven't heard anything about them yet. However, visit my cast picks page and I'll tell you who I would like to see as the baddies.
My only two problems with the scriptment are these: