After what turned out to be an epic party at the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego during Comic-Con--live music by Gene Simmons and an encounter with Stan Lee and Jim Steranko--I stumbled outside and right into Michael Papajohn, the actor who portrayed perhaps one of the most notorious unnamed killers in the history of fiction: the man who kills Peter Parker's uncle.
Although he's only featured in three pages of
Amazing Fantasy #15, Spider-Man's debut issue, the "Burglar" is crucial to the mythology of the character because Uncle Ben's death is the catalyst for Peter's transformation into the selfless hero we know and love today, the hero whose films have earned over $1.1 billion since 2002.
Uncle Ben taught Peter "With great power comes great responsibility," but Peter decided to use his powers to serve himself, rather than to help people. Because of Peter's selfishness, because of his refusal to use his powers to stop a criminal on the run, the man escapes to kill Peter's Uncle Ben. The grief of the loss and the revelation that his own inaction was partially responsible for his uncle's death, sends Peter down the path of the hero. Peter becomes Spider-Man, and the rest...is history.
Enter: Michael Papajohn.
When director
Sam Raimi was tasked with bringing Spider-Man to life in a major motion picture, Papajohn was the actor chosen to portray the Burglar who changes Peter's life. Michael's background was as an athlete-turned-stuntman-turned-actor, and he thought the job was just another gig...at first. When he started telling people about the role, their enthusiastic reactions made him investigate the character further and his place in the mythology of Peter Parker/Spider-Man. He told
Starlog magazine:
"...I realized the
weight of the history there. Spider-Man
does not have everything. He's not a popular superhero. People mistreat him and he goes through the same troubles we all go through."
Since
Spider-Man, Papajohn has performed stunts in
Enemy of the State, Live Free or Die Hard and
Hancock, just to name a few, and
acted in dozens of films, including two of this year's biggest genre films,
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and
Terminator Salvation. I spoke with Michael about some of his past successes and some of the films on the horizon and then asked him about the rumor that the
Burglar would be returning in Spider-Man 4 .
Michael smiled and asked me how that would be possible. I said, "Maybe you didn't die in the first
Spider-Man. Maybe you appear in a flashback sequence. Or, maybe they just bring you back in another role, the way Raimi does with
Bruce Campbell." Papajohn wouldn't confirm or deny anything, but he was happy to pose for a few quick pictures, including this homage to the Uncle Ben/Burglar confrontation that changed young Peter Parker's life forever.
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