With Spider-Man: Far From Home right around the corner, interest in Marvel Comics' most iconic superhero is at an all-time high. Of course, the wall-crawler's big screen adventure began with 2002's Spider-Man courtesy of filmmaker Sam Raimi. An absolute classic, in many ways the movie set the stage for what would become known as the modern superhero blockbuster.
Years before, however, Avatar helmer James Cameron attempted to bring Spidey into theaters. In his new book, Tech Noir: The Art of James Cameron, the filmmaker talks more about his dashed hopes for the project and told Screen Crush how different it would have been to Raimi's take.
"I think it would’ve been very different," Cameron said, noting that he "didn’t make a move without asking [Stan Lee] permission." The director later reveals that he viewed the character's journey as representing "a metaphor for puberty and all the changes to your body, your anxieties about society, about society’s expectations, your relationships with your gender of choice that you’re attracted to."
He added that "going with the biological web-shooters as being part of his biological adaptation to the radioactive spider bite made sense to me," before revealing that his Spider-Man movie would have had a "kind of gritty reality to it" compared to the fictional homes of Batman and Superman.
"I wanted it to be: It’s New York. It’s now. A guy gets bitten by a spider. He turns into this kid with these powers and he has this fantasy of being Spider-Man, and he makes this suit and it’s terrible, and then he has to improve the suit, and his big problem is the damn suit. Things like that. I wanted to ground it in reality and ground it in universal human experience."
Admitting that it "would have been a fun film to make," Cameron explained that rights issues ultimately killed the movie. However, he still walked away with a valuable lesson. "I made a decision after Titanic to just kind of move on and do my own things and not labor in the house of others’ IP. So I think [Spider-Man not coming together] was probably the kick in the ass that I needed to just go make my own stuff." If Avatar's box office success proves anything, it's that he likely made the right choice!
Spider-Man: No Way Home arrives in U.S. on December 17 and in the UK on December 15.