State of the Genre – The Amazing Spider-Man Series: Where is it heading?

Last night I read some rather disconcerting news regarding the sequel to The Amazing Spider-Man, which is due to begin production next year for release in 2014. This news has me a little worried about the direction of the series after, what I thought, was a great rebooting of the franchise earlier this year. If you haven’t seen the news, you can read it here.

The Amazing Spider-Man is a film I thoroughly enjoyed. Was it perfect? No, but it was in my opinion very good. Despite its noticeable flaws it had a tonne of heart, and a film will always win me over and gain my respect if it is all about character – which it was. That character was Peter Parker and his feelings of abandonment at the parents who left him to the care of his Aunt and Uncle. The Peter Parker that was an outsider at school and felt alone in the world, who grew and opened up to the world and people around him. I want more of that. What I don’t want, and what this news of Mary Jane being brought in to the story suggests to me, is love-triangle, and more teen drama. People often noted how Amazing was sort of Twlight-y, and I get that (although I’ve never seen those movies and hope never to have them scorned upon my retinas) but I just didn’t see it. Yes, there was a love story, but it didn’t degrade the film in to purely love-dovey teen nonsense. The inclusion of Mary Jane however, to me, suggests the sequel will further go down this Twilight route, and that is not a good thing. I expected the opposite; that whilst Peter and Gwen’s relationship – and no doubt dramas – would continue, it would take a back seat to the larger story of Peter’s development. But I fear a love-triangle will be at the forefront of the The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Adding not only to the worry that a love story will take pride of place in the story, as well as presenting a worry all on its own, was when I got further down the article to read that the villain is as-yet-undecided and that Electro was a possible choice. Hadn’t we already heard that a script had been written? Okay – it was only “a draft”, but surely that draft included a villain? Or are we just going to see a story in which the villain would be completely interchangeable with any other villain from Spidey’s rogues gallery? Peter Parker should be the focus of the story for sure, but the villain shouldn’t be able to be interchanged with any other villiain – the villain should be important to the story in how they affect Peter (see Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy and how the villains were a reflection of Bruce Wayne and played an important part in the story.). Hopefully this is not too much to be worried about, and the draft did include Electro and the script is simply being re-written and touched up so that is spot on before they confirm his inclusion.

It was good however to hear about the inclusion of Harry Osborn, a character who in the Raimi series played an important part and had a wonderful arc, right up until that woeful third film. One of the classic stories I love in fiction is the tale of friends that become enemies; it’s one of the aspects I loved most about Smallville – the friendship between Lex and Clark, doomed to become enemies. Peter and Harry have a great relationship that can be played out over the course of the series, and so this is one piece of news I was happy to hear.

At the moment it’s still early days and I am hoping that my feelings are a little premature, but I remain cautious about where this series might be heading. Time will tell, but let’s hope the good foundation created by The Amazing Spider-Man is built upon in with the sequel, rather than chipped away at by trying to appeal to a crowd it would be best staying away from.