The way Hollywood film studios licence material from non-film sources (as well as from each other), can make Einstein's Theory of Relativity seem like something you'd find in a Ladybird book. So when Arena set out to tell the story of Spider-Man's journey from comic book to big screen and from Sony's 2002 Spider-Man title, to Marvel Studios' 2017 Spider-Man: Homecoming, they certainly weren't making life easy for themselves. Kay Sheehy – sitting in for Seán Rocks – put the questions to Chris Wasser: What took Spider-Man so long to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Why are we getting another reboot? And how did the character come about in the first place?
"It's almost like a comic book soap opera; there are so many different characters in there, so many different love interests."
Spider-Man was created in 1962 by writer Stan Lee, who wanted to create a hero for the teenagers who loved comics, but had no superhero they could relate to, and artist Steve Ditko. As many people will know, Spider-Man is Peter Parker, a high school student, who goes on a school trip to a science exhibit and gets bitten by a radioactive spider. The next day, he discovers he has amazing powers: he's super-strong, he can stick to walls and ceilings and he has his spider sense, which warns him of danger. Or, as Chris puts it:
"A guy with just the weirdest case of puberty ever."
The Spider-Man comic book became very popular very quickly. It didn't take long for Hollywood to start sniffing around. But making a credible Spider-Man movie was never going to be easy in the era before computer-generated graphics, as anyone who's seen the late-1970s live-action television series with Nicholas Hammond, will be able to attest.
"How do you bring Spider-Man to the screen and make it look realistic?"
Studios tried their best throughout the 1990s. At one stage Tom Cruise was attached to a proposed Spidey movie. Then hugely successful Terminator and Aliens director, James Cameron got involved, writing what Chris Wasser calls a scriptment – half script, half treatment, apparently – but, largely due to legal disputes over which studio owned the rights, never got off the ground. Finally, Sony roped in Evil Dead director Sam Raimi to make Spider-Man, with Tobey Maguire playing the web-slinger, in 2002. The film was very successful and well-received. Its sequel, (imaginatively-titled Spider-Man 2) was even more ecstatically received, by both critics and audiences. Then:
"Unfortunately the third one was rubbish, really all over the place, just rubbish."
This led Sony to scrap plans for Spider-Man 4 and give us The Amazing Spider-Man (with Andrew Garfield pulling on the famous red and blue tights) instead. He lasted for two outings, both of which were reasonably successful, but, as Chris told Kay, a little too dark and derivative. According to Chris, both Sam Raimi and Amazing Spider-Man director Marc Webb were in a big hurry to get Peter Parker out of high school, which might seems to go against Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's original intentions.
Meanwhile, Marvel Studios, following the success of 2008's Iron Man, with Robert Downey Jr, were releasing hit after hit, with Captain America, Thor, The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy. It seemed odd that Spider-Man was nowhere to be seen in this universe. Sony needed a second reboot of the franchise they held the rights to, to be a success and Marvel were eager to have Spider-Man join their MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). The two studios came together and the result is Spider-Man: Homecoming, with Tom Holland playing a 15-year old high school student named Peter Parker. You know, they might be on to something…
Spider-Man: Homecoming is in cinemas this Friday.
You can hear the full discussion of Spider-Man and listen back to the rest of Arena here
Photo credit: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images