Spiderman 4 According to Nero:
It has been two years since the end of Spiderman 3. Peter is settling into a new phase of his life. Mary Jane moved to Paris shortly after SM3 having accepting a modeling contract and wanting to have some space. Peter has become a more confident hero who is much more comfortable in his own skin and he has learned something… (GASP) Being Spiderman is actually fun and allows him an escape from his troubles, for the most part, and with no one around to worry about him being Spidey every day and vice versa the pressure is off a bit. This new relaxed and confident standing has led him to be quite a motor mouth. His life as Peter is still complicated; money problems, finally getting over MJ, Aunt May is doddering on well (she’s now 167 and Medicare is insisting on euthanasia... I kid.). Pete is now in his last semester of his Master’s Degree program and things are going well. Peter has been working with Doc Connors and Gwen on Connors’ baby; the attempt to induce mutation via gene therapy to reproduce severed or destroyed tissues by splicing reptilian DNA (it’s a comic movie) and it has begun to show promise. Should it succeed Pete will have essentially have made his name in the scientific community and can have his choice of PhD programs and jobs afterward. Top that off with a successful dating life with options including his research partner Gwen Stacy and a one way crush on lovely socialite and classmate Felicia Hardy, basically life is good for once.
We will also see that the idea of the super villain has really begun to catch on. Baddies have begun taking the ideas set forth by Gobby, Doc Ock and the like and using gimmicks and tech to not only pull off crimes, but snatch headlines giving them a Spidey style pseudo celebrity fueled by J Jonah Jameson’s hatred of all things costumed. The opening action can involve a fight between Spidey and a New Baddie who has taken to knocking off armored cars by knocking them over… literally, the Rhino. Imagine high speed chase meets demolition derby through the streets of NY at 60mph. Rhino is dispatched quickly showing just how "good" Peter has become.
As the story progresses we find that Aunt May has a degenerative condition and has only a year or two left to live. This throws Peter into overdrive trying to work to make money to help pay for experimental treatments and pushing Doc Connors to formulate a successful therapy using their own research. Peter pushes to go ahead with human testing far too early. Prompting Doc Connors to do the noble thing and take the treatment himself as it is still his dream to be whole againafter losing his arm. Failure. Peter and Gwen leave Connors in his lab and go to visit May. Connors, dejected remains in the lab to review the data from the failed experiment.
He falls asleep at his desk.
We flip to the next morning, Connors awakens in his office clothes tattered and filthy, a strange taste in his mouth; he pulls a wad of hairs from his mouth. He heads towards his lab and notices there are deep scratch marks on the door frame on the same side as his missing arm. He traces the marks and follows them into the lab, utter destruction. Claw marks on the walls and floor, the door to the outside is nearly ripped off its hinges. He stands wondering seeing strange foot prints leading away from and back to the lab.
The Daily Bugle is abuzz that morning JJJ has an assignment for Parker. Last night an old woman was attacked in Central Park by a six foot lizard that ate her two shitzus; a vendor got a fuzzy shot of the creature with a camera phone in the darkness. JJJ wants a shot of this thing and will pay top dollar for what he calls NYC’s own Bigfoot. Pete takes the assignment. After several nights Aunt May has come home from the hospital and is stable living at Pete’s place. He has combed the city for nearly a week looking for The Lizard and has been all but locked out by Doc Connors after their failed experiment.
The attacks have continued in the meantime and have increased in savagery, the night before a police officer stopped the Lizard only inches from biting a small child. The heroic officer was mauled nearly to death by the beast and is on life support at a local NYC hospital. In response to public fear and anger the Mayor and Police Commissioner have now put out a cry for help to Spidey or anyone who can help them stop the creature before someone is killed. Peter gets his first glimps of the Lizard, but looses it in the sewers.
A famous big game hunter steps forward to take up the challenge, Sergei Kravinoff better known as Kraven the hunter.
Kraven has also made the media savvy move of buttering up to Jameson who has given Parker the unenviable task of going with Kraven in search of the Lizard to get the photo of the its capture, this has prohibited Pete's own search as Spiderman. Peter gets to know the boastful and abrasive Kraven and he also begins to notice that Kraven’s abilities exceed those of normal men, both physically and perceptionally. When pressed by Peter as to how he can do these things Kraven jokingly tells him a witch doctor did it. (We will find out later there was more going on than this).
After several nights, the pair get lucky and catch the beast as he takes down a carriage in the park knocking it down an embankment; driver, passengers, horse and all. The Lizard is tearing into the horse when Kraven arrives and takes his shot missing at first blush. When Kraven finally glances for Parker to see if he’s getting this he realizes the boy is nowhere to be found. Soon Kraven has wounded the beast and is going in for the kill when Spiderman arrives and tries to subdue the creature; seeing no need to kill it, and also being suspicious of why the monster appears to be wearing tattered human clothes.
During the ensuing three way fight, which has raged from Central Park into the NY Sewers, Peter is left battered. He discovers that floating near his face in the muck is the small plastic Empire State University ID badge of Dr. Kurt Connors. He has just enough time to sieze the badge when his Spider Sense tingles. He moves as Kraven’s brass knuckled fist comes crashing down. Kraven then admits that Jameson has done more than offer to match the Mayor’s reward for capturing or killing the Lizard; he has made the same offer in reward money to him if he can deliver Spiderman to him alive. Spidey narrowly escapes in his weakened condition. Kraven returns to the Park to find Parker. Peter is there giving the excuse that he was trampled by the injured horse. Kraven is suspicious.
The next day Parker goes to the ESU Lab of Doc Connors and demands to be let in. Connors finally relents and allows Peter in. Connors is a mess, he has not shaven or attended his classes in more than a week, his wife has told Peter he has not been home either and she is worried. Peter demands to know what’s going on and tells Connors his suspicions dropping the ID on the table. Connors asks where he got it and Peter lies saying he was with Kraven in the sewers, gambling that Connors won’t remember the circumstances of only Kraven and Spiderman being present. The gamble pays off; Connors admits that he must be the Lizard and that he has been trying to reverse the process, but has had no results and that the process leaves him with no memory of the atrocities he commits each night, and his thought process is becoming more incoherent, and what’s more he shows Peter a reptilian skin beginning to permanently form on the nub of his severed arm and the locations of his knife wounds delivered by Kraven. The two begin to combine efforts as the day wears on Connors has Peter attempt to lock him in the university’s old fallout shelter. Peter takes watch, now dressed as Spiderman. His Spider Sense tingles, too late.
Kraven knocks him out with a tranq dart. He awakens bound outside the reinforced bomb shelter heavily chained and bound. Kraven gloats that it was easy enough to follow the Lizard’s trail back to the university and that he had known Connors was the lizard for quite some time. He had been waiting for the appearance of Spiderman, his main target, before springing his trap. He had noticed Spiderman found the ID in the sewers and was just glad he didn’t have to tip his hand and lead Spiderman here himself. Kraven decides it is better to wait out Connors’ transformation, as the Lizard tears helplessly at the door behind them, than to try to deal with the monster and Spiderman together again. He admits that JJJ was not the only person who wanted Spiderman exposed, confessing that his abilities were granted by a mysterious figure he met in Russia that offered him the chance to be more than human and exposed him to a special gas that gave him the powers that made his reputation as the world's greatest hunter and that he now needs more challenge than simply killing tigers and bears with his bare hands. He had hunted all a normal man could, it was time for something more challenging and this mystery man had seen to it he could do just that in exchange for a favor. He has chained Spiderman here for a reason, his benefactor would like to speak with him before he is exposed, humiliated, and turned over to authorities by Jameson. Kraven dials a number on a small cell phone and puts it on speaker and leaves the room. There is silence for a moment and then we hear the voice of… Dafoe!
The general threat is that he (Spiderman) will never be free of the Goblin; Osborne is always watching and none of those close to him will never be safe. The call ends and the angry Spidey breaks his bonds as Kraven returns. He smashes Kraven through the wall into the fallout shelter and he is pounced on by the Lizard.
The fight flows from the shelter through the labs and sciences building finaly spilling onto the campus (we see in an aside that the symbiote sample Connors held onto escapes in the mayhem). Spiderman has a sudden epiphany as to the cure and rushes to the ruined lab to attempt to make the minor adjustment to the compound he and Connors had made earlier. Retrieving Kraven’s tranq rifle he loads the single dose he has able to make and takes aim just before Kraven can deliver the deathblow to Connors. Spidey fires the dart into Lizard and then swings in to incapacitate Kraven in the confusion.
In the end Kraven leaves NYC in defeat, having done nothing truly unlawful and having been fairly beaten he leaves with no reward and no fanfare. He vows to himself that the next time he sees Spiderman he will be the prey and he will have his head on his wall. Connors, having been seen by the college students transforming from Lizard to normal gives a statement to the public as his career and reputation are now ruined and he has surrendered himself to face criminal charges. He gives all the credit for the situation’s resolution to the heroic actions of Spiderman and his brilliant grad student Peter Parker. Peter is taken aback as Connors winks to him; finally acknowledging that he had figured that Peter was Spiderman long ago. Jameson pays well for Pete's amazing photos of the park battle and offers, in private, to set up a fund for Peter with the matching reward money Jameson had put up to be used as needed when needed, and only for, Peter to pay for May’s treatments in an uncharacteristically fatherly gesture, which he makes Peter swear to never reveal.
(The Mayor reneged on the original reward money stating that since Peter had colluded, in a manner of speaking, with Connors and had tried to develop a cure rather than just handing Connors over to authorities in a timely fashion and had struck a deal with Peter that if he made no fuss about the reward then the city would not press charges against him. They refus to give the reward to Spiderman due to his status as a vigilante.)
In the end Peter and Gwen walk across the Brooklyn Bridge; they talk and kiss and Peter’s Spider Sense tingles, he glances around and sees nothing. He and Gwen walk along towards Manhattan, Peter is still uneasy. As the camera pans away we see the view of the couple from the top of the bridge as the camera reveals the right leg, arm, shoulder, and back of the head of a more classically comic looking Green Goblin. He watches the happy couple and laughs maniacally.
Major differences in this film from the Raimiverse:
There is a relationship between Gwen and Peter, but it is not a major focus. As she doesn’t know he is Spiderman there is no pressure there as in the last two Spiderfilms. It is lighter and more casual the way a relationship at that point should be. Gwen is the anti-MJ she is light and accepting of Peter’s quirks and generally very understanding, but not a doormat. A breath of fresh air after the heavy handed presentation of MJ of Spidey 2 and 3.
Kraven is a charming but unsympathetic villain, Connors still follows the sympathetic mold, but there is really no choice with the character as it is cannon that you feel for the guy.
It sets up a direction for a sequel, but doesn’t demand it go there right away. I like the idea of setting Goblin up as a behind the scenes bad guy who can quietly bring together the Sinister Six in place of Doc Ock who I would love to see as part of the final group somehow.
Where would I go next? I’d go with Black Cat and Scorpion which can then transition into the Mac Gargan version of Venom which can eventually lead to Carnage in a few sequels since Eddie Brock was vaporized. (Thanks Sam.)
Spidey Six simply has to revolve around the Sinister Six. I mean come on, you can’t get better marketing than that.
So there you have it Spiderman 4 according to Nero.