As anyone who cares is likely to know by now, Sony has announced that its highly-profitable Spider-Man film series is to be completely rebooted, with a completely new Spider-Man movie unrelated to the previous Sam Raimi-Tobey Maguire trilogy scheduled for release in 2012.  Thus far the film is directed by Marc Webb and stars Andrew Garfield, a British relative newcomer who's currently appearing in theaters in The Social Network about the founding of Facebook, and has been in a few movies like Boy A (for which he was critically-acclaimed), Lions for Lambs, Red Riding, and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus as Peter Parker/Spider-Man.  Joining Garfield is another young face, Emma Stone, as his first girlfriend Gwen Stacy, Rhys Ifans as a villain, reportedly The Lizard, and Martin Sheen and Sally Field as Uncle Ben and Aunt May. 

The road to the reboot was a twisty-turny one.  Originally, Sony intended to forge onward with Raimi, Tobey, and company for Round 4 despite Spider-Man 3 generally being considered a disappointment.  But due to reasons including Raimi's clashes with the studio during making of Spider-Man 3 (he didn't want to include Venom, but producer Avi Arad forced him to), Tobey's salary requests, concerns that this team was running out of steam, and probably other reasons we'll never know about, Sony eventually completely dropped Raimi, Maguire, and the Spider-Man series and decided to start all over again with another Spider-Man movie that, Batman Begins style, has nothing to do with those that came before.

Sony has cast its lot with the belief that a fresh start will rejuvenate the highly-profitable Spider-Man franchise.  Everything old is new again.

But is it really?

My snap reaction, like that of many (not all) nerds who heard this announcement was one of marked skepticism.  It's one thing for Christopher Nolan to come swooping in with Batman Begins and pump new life into the Batman film series that had been left floundering in the wake of Joel Schumacher's middling Batman Forever and his almost universally-despised Batman & Robin.  The Batman film series had well and truly run out of steam, and needed a reboot.  But Spider-Man was 2002's third highest-grossing film, and Spider-Man 2 was the second highest-grossing film of 2004.  Even Spider-Man 3 which was considered by many (including myself) to have gone downhill from its predecessors, was Sony's highest-grossing film to date.  Of course, a lot of Spider-Man 3's winnings at the box-office had to do with anticipation from the popularity of the first two, not the third film itself, but the point is, the Spider-Man series was not as clearly and unambiguously out of gas as Batman was.

Also, the fact that the little official information we have so far indicates that Garfield will be playing Peter as a college student, the inclusion of Uncle Ben, and casting calls for a child Peter Parker all seem to tell us that Sony is going with Spider-Man's origin story.  Well, for the first installment of what I'm sure Sony hopes will be a new series, that's the logical place to begin, but can we get another Spider-Man origin story that doesn't feel redundant considering we just saw Peter become Spider-Man onscreen eight years ago? 

Of course, some things are obviously going to be different.  While the Raimi series had Peter desperately pining for Mary Jane Watson since childhood, this one has cast Gwen Stacy as his initial primary love interest, which is actually more accurate to the comics.  While today MJ is considered the love of Peter Parker's life, she didn't become so until after Gwen Stacy was out of the picture, and in fact this film is leaving MJ out altogether, probably saving her for the sequel(s).  If it goes on to follow the comic storyline of Stacy's tragic accidental death at Spider-Man's hands, opening the door for Mary Jane to step into Peter's life, that alone would be significantly darker than anything we saw in the previous film series.   Also, all sources claim Rhys Ifans is playing The Lizard, which is the right way to go, in my opinion.  Using villains we already saw in the last series, like Green Goblin or Doc Ock, at least right away, would only make the comparing and contrasting more unavoidable and make it seem more redundant.  

Is starting with Gwen Stacy instead of Mary Jane, and throwing in a different villain enough to set this series apart?  I think in the end it will come down to the filmmakers' take on the material.  The Spider-Man comics have been around since the 1960s, and over the decades different eras of comics have had lighter or darker tones.  Just look at Batman.  The Adam West series, Tim Burton's and Joel Schumacher's films, and Christopher Nolan's, were all based on the same basic material, but they're wildly different from each other, partly because they were done by different writers and directors and actors with different styles and different takes on the material, and partly because they were adapting from different eras of the comics.  For example, The Joker originated in 1939 as a largely humorless serial killer who murdered various people in his first outing.  Then in the 1960s he was softened into a prankster who committed goofy crimes and was largely a harmless nuisance.  Then in the 1980s and 1990s came graphic novels like The Killing Joke, where he shoots and paralyzes Barbara Gordon, photographs her nude, and kidnaps her father Commissioner Gordon and forces him to watch in an attempt to drive him insane.  Same character, different takes.  Spider-Man likewise started out fairly lighthearted in the 1960s (which is what Raimi mostly based his films' tone on) and has been substantially darker and more serious in some later inceptions.  

At the bottom line, I have doubts about this reboot, but I will go see it when it hits theaters in 2012 and write my review then.  Considering the Spider-Man comics have been around for 40 years, there's no reason two separate film series shouldn't be able to be adapted from it without being compared and contrasted to each other, but a certain level of that is inevitable.  I only hope Sony has gambled on as fresh a start as possible instead of trying to take advantage of audience affection for the previous films by being too reminiscient of them.  That would please neither those dissatisfied with Raimi and hoping for a fresh take, nor those who loved Raimi and would see it as doubly insulting to essentially remake his movies with different cast and crew.

In any case, our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is going to swing again in 2012.  We'll have to wait until then to see if he's offering more of the same, or something different. 

In the likely forlorn hope that someone out there somewhere in the swirling vortex known as the World Wide Web will journey to my humble website and read my fledgling attempt at a collection of movie reviews, and my even more fledgling attempt at a blog, I decided to make my first blog entry with a little explanation of my movie grading scale.

 The Rating Scale: * to ****

I rate the films I review on a scale of one to four stars, one obviously being the lowest, a film so abysmal I can find virtually no worthwhile aspect of (and I try- I gave the dull-as-dishwater The Good German two stars because filming it using only the cameras and equipment used in the 1940s to give it an authentic 1940s feel was a neat filmmaking experiment), two being mediocre, with nothing distinguishing it one way or the other, three being good, and four being an excellent, exceptional film.  I also sometimes grant a half star where I think a film lands in between two ratings.  The Lookout is not a distinguished or memorable enough film to earn three stars, but Joseph Gordon-Levitt's performance and some early interesting scenes depicting his character's struggle with brain damage lend it just enough distinction to earn it slightly more than two.  Likewise, Batman Begins is, in my opinion, one of the best superhero films ever made, earning it a notch above the solid three stars given to Spider-Man 1 & 2 and X-Men, but little flaws like Katie Holmes, blurry fight scenes, and some third act goofiness keep it imperfect enough from ascending to four star status.   

 It's All About the Context

You may be wondering- or you may wonder, if I ever get around to reviewing enough movies, and/or actually figure out how to attract viewers to my site to read my self-important ramblings- why I may give a serious, effective drama three or three and a half stars, and something campy and "entertaining" like Sin City or Raiders of the Lost Ark three and a half or four.  It's all about the context.  Films must be judged not only on their individual merits, but within the genres to which they belong.  It's not fair to use the same grading scale and criteria for Sin City, Indiana Jones, and Schindler's List.  I wouldn't call Sin City a "great film", but I gave it three and a half stars because it succeeds with flying colors at what it is- a wildly fun, visually arresting, unique and original slice of gleefully over-the-top pulp entertainment.  Likewise, between Raiders of the Lost Ark and Schindler's List, I don't think anyone, including Spielberg himself, would dispute for a second which is the more meaningful film, but I give both four stars because both are virtually perfect examples of what they are: Raiders as near-flawless action-adventure, and Schindler as an indelible film testament, one of the most impactful and important films about the Holocaust (or any subject) ever brought to the screen.

 The Criteria

I try to give a balanced overview of a film's aspects, although as someone who dabbles in and has always had an interest in acting, I admit I tend to focus more on the acting than anything else.  I have a great and true respect for actors who play a wide variety of roles- Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, Richard Nixon, and Zorro, Gary Oldman as Dracula, Sid Vicious, Beethoven, The Scarlet Letter's Reverend Dimmesdale, and Harry Potter's godfather Sirius Black, veering from someone as wildly over-the-top as The Professional's Norman Stansfield or The Fifth Element's Mr. Zorg to someone as low-key, thoroughly non-flashy, and downright thuddingly "normal" as Batman's stalwart Jim Gordon.  Daniel Day-Lewis as Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans and Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York, two roles so thoroughly different that they are almost unrecognizable as the same actor.  And although I have thus far only seen brief clips, in nearly every scrap of footage I have seen of The Joker in the upcoming The Dark Knight, it is difficult to associate the strange creation onscreen with the late Heath Ledger.  I won't add to the praise showered on Ledger's Joker without having seen the movie, but he had already proved his character actor chops by burying himself in the role of agonizingly repressed Ennis del Mar in Brokeback Mountain.  All of the above- transforming yourself almost unrecognizably from one film to the next and immersing yourself in your character- is what real acting is, not going through every movie acting the same and seeing how many magazines you can get your face on, like some of those who have never done anything half as worthy as the best of Hopkins, Oldman, Day-Lewis, or Ledger but inexplicably receiving vastly more attention. 

Most of my reviews follow the same basic structure.  A couple tidbits about the production, giving a little background, or some opening thoughts, then a summary I try to keep concise, then a paragraph covering the acting, a paragraph covering whatever other aspects I found noteworthy- the direction, script, action, humor, cinematography, etc.- and then a little closing summary with the kind of brief sum-up lines you see on DVD covers: "a solid action thriller!", etc., and my rating.