From the beginning, Sony Pictures’ hoped-for “fan salve” regarding the rapidly-developing “Spider-Man” reboot has been to tout it’s supposed similarity to Brian Michael Bendis’ “Ultimate Spider-Man” comics, which took a similar “send him back to school and start over” approach to the character with tremendous (financial) success as a result.
Now, apparently, it’s looking like they’re doing more than blowing smoke: Latino Review reports that Bendis has been tweeting about spending some time with the reboot’s producers: http://www.latinoreview.com/news/will-the-spider-man-reboot-be-of-the-ultimate-kind-9246
This is… interesting, if there’s anything at all to it.
I’m in the minority when it comes to “Ultimate Spider-Man” – it just never grabbed me. The whole “Ultimate” line comes with it’s own built-in defense in these cases: Anyone who doesn’t get into it is just “pissy” about tossing out long-term continuity or whatnot. Me, I just never cared for Bendis’ approach to the character – overly drawn-out and tiresomely “hip.” I actually like Bendis better when he’s doing “event” books, possibly because the nature of the format FORCES him to actually have things happen.
In any case, like him or not it makes A LOT of sense that Sony would go to him – even if it’s just to get a “fan favorite” Marvel writer to “bless” the franchise in an attempt to brush-off fan outrage – since Bendis’ Spidey-approach is more or less EXACTLY what Sony is looking for: Light on action, heavy on inter-character-angst and quippy dialogue.
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MOVIEBOB CENTRAL 
“Light on action, heavy on inter-character-angst and quippy dialogue.”
You just described the raimy movies. Well except for quippy dialogue. First one had only a handful of action scenes and most of them were curb stomp fights.
The second had 2 memorable fightscenes. Totalling maybe 6 minutes of screen time altogether, and both having really cloying resolutions.
The 3rd's fightscenes were just redux versions of what we'd already seen.
I'd trade a couple of poorly done fightscenes for a spiderman who actually acts like sppierman anyday.
I know you're a fan of raimy but spidey is not a mopey wimp. He's one of the few superheroes who doesn't get massively mopey and broodingall the time. in all 3 movies Raimy has him make maybe one joke and spend the rest of his time pining for Mary Jane, or stressing about his relationship with harry, or work or whatever. There's supposed to be a love hate relationship between peter and his powers. Raimy kindof forgot the first part.
I hate the ultimate universe. Green Goblin as a hulk type monster? Nick fury as an internet meme? Every character being some combination of obnoxious, incestuous or so horribly deviating from established canon they might as well not be the same character? No thank you.
But stuff based on it CAN be good. I refer you to Spectacular Spider-Man. Same premise as the reboot. Takes Spidey back to high school, high emphasis on supervillains as metaphors for teenage issues, uses the ultimate univerdse for inspiration.
And it is fucking brilliant.
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I'm interested to see how this turns out. I am indeed one of those fans who LOVED “Ultimate Spider-Man”, at least in its first couple volumes (not to say I dislike later ones, only that past the first couple I lost track of it for various reasons), so for me it's good news to know Bendis is involved. Nonetheless, just as I was not ready to rush to judgement negatively back when this shit started in the first place, neither am I ready to rush to judgment positively until we actually SEE something from the actual movie.
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I agree with anonymous (the second one); we can't judge anything until we know more. That said, USM is awesome. Even if the film is crud, if it acts as a two-hour commercial for Bendis' comic, that would be great.
p.s. Dave, is it? Hi. Spider-Man isn't mopey? Spidey doesn't brood? What?
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You're like some kind of opposite person. Pretty much everyone I know – including myself – is not a fan of Bendis' never ending events. Or his New Avengers.
But they still find his work on Ultimate Spidey to be decent to outright good.
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I get this gut feeling that this movie will get the title “The spectacular spider man”. Now, will it be as good as the cartoon series of the same name? Not so sure
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Well it depends on how they handle it. When the Ultimate series were starting out I read threw a couple. The Spiderman one was the only decent one, since all it did was start the whole as a “what if” Spiderman started now. Did a good job, though not my cup of tea. Spiderman as neat as he is, any care for the character ended in November 1998. So I've seen the Ultimate series as this generations Superheroes. I haven't paid attention to any of the Ultimate since because I generally end up screaming at a book for hours.
The Ultimate X-men is the main reason, because of how they changed up Gambit and Rouge's relationship to a lovey dubby relationship. Other then that pissing me off to no ends from a single frame is why I don't care for them.
As long as they bring back the humor in battle and the machinical web string I be happy with them doing this.
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I really hope they don't bring back the mechanical web-shooters. That never EVER made sense to me. Peter gets all the abilities of a spider, except the most basic and obvious one: the ability to make webs. WTF? He gets super strength, endurance, speed, and agility; he can climb walls; he has a Spider Sense (which real spiders don't even possess); and yet he can't manufacture webs without mechanical devices???
And it never seemed plausible to me that those tiny little web-shooters could hold enough ammo to generate all the webbing that Peter constantly shoots. It seems much more plausible to have Peter generate the webs biologically, and I loved that Raimi went down that path.
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Well Vincent keep in mind, from a logic standpoint. If he did, how does it get threw the suit if it comes out of the hand. Just something that has always bugged me in the movie version. If he really did have the ability to spin web, the most logical point would be to come out of his ass then. The only way that would fit is in a porno. So you can see why it seems so odd for some people.
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