The guys at Super Hero Hype recently spoke with Matt Tolmach and Avi Arad, the producers of The Amazing Spider-Man, and they offered a lot of insight as to why Sony Pictures was willing to re-launch the Spider-Man franchise so soon, with Spider-Man 3 still freshly splitting our memories into three parts and pooping in each one accordingly. You know, aside from that whole “they had to or Marvel would reclaim it” reason.
Beyond a lot of the back-patting and Sam Raimi/Marc Webb mutual praise, the duo admitted that Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man would indeed get at least the same trilogy treatment as the Tobey Maguire version, if not more. So the question, then, would be – who will the other villains be? Well, it seems they may or may not have learned a very important lesson from the aforementioned third installment.
SHH: Do you feel like you need to stay away from some of the villains that have appeared in the Sam Raimi movies? Or can you redefine them within the context of this new Spider-Man?
Arad: Well, not really. There are so many ways to paint these villains, all of them. As you know, one of the great sagas in the Spider-Man universe is of course the Sinister Six. I think Avengers did okay the last time I looked.
Tolmach: It’s going to be okay.
Arad: Yeah, it will survive.
SHH: So are you suggesting you’re going to do five Spider-Man movies introducing each villain and then the sixth movie will have the Sinister Six?
Tolmach: It seems like a good model.
Arad: It all depends on the stories that one wants to tell, because Spider-Man is really more a depth kind of a story, we have to be careful how many villains we can service, because a relationship with a villain has to be such that it’s a story on his own. We attempted to do multiple villains–you’ve been there–you just need screen time to do it. (via Collider)
You think Avengers did okay? Haha, you sly devil.
Obviously, anybody who is producing a comic book film or trilogy right now wants it to perform like The Avengers. But Marvel’s The Avengers was set up meticulously through a series of individual hero character films before culminating in the success that earned hundreds of millions and rave reviews. What they’re implying is that we’ll get 5 more films that each introduce a new villain and presumably end with Spider-Man saying, “Oh no, I have to stop him, too.”
Let’s say that Webb, Arad, and Tolmach decide to go through with this idea of creating individual films for the Sinister Six to set up both Amazing Spider-Man follow-ups. That means they’ll have to choose between Doctor Octopus, Rhino, Electro, Mysterio, Vulture, Hydro, Kraven, and Sandman, and probably others, to decide which villains they’ll use to challenge Spidey. That might even work, except a lot of those characters suck.
Do us a favor, guys. We know that you’re developing a Venom film, so emulate The Avengers all you want by using that film to set up The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and 3. You owe us a good Venom, so forget all that Sinister Six nonsense and focus on this. PLEASE.