Along Went a Spider

FADE IN:

CHEZ SPARKLEGS APT. DAWN

Spakros: Wake up, dude. Seriously, wake the fuck up.

Eoin: Hnghh?

Spakros: The Internet is aflame with the news that Sam Raimi and Toby Maguire are off Spider-Man 4, that Sony plans to reboot the franchise and put Peter Parker back in high school.

Eoin: What do you want me to do about it? Lemme sleep!

Sparkles: Don't you realize what this portends? If you thought Raimi's Petey was emo, wait until the new Spider-Man film takes a leaf from Twilight's book.

Eoin: Where the hell did you come from, and can I have my pillow back?

Devil Dinosaur: I shit bigger'n Twilight.

Eoin: Alright, I'm up, you fuckers. This better be worthwhile, although at this hour I can't muster the indignation y'all seem to share. I need to take a shit and smoke a Dunhill. Then I gotta go to work. Can't this wait?

Devil Dinosaur: I shit bigger'n Eoin.

Sparkles: Listen greymeat, if you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything. The Spider-Man films grossed more dollars than all the tea in China, all the corn kernels in Iowa, all the child sweatshop labor in Southeast Asia...combined! Sony could buy Canada if it wanted to, yet they dropped their visionary director and the franchise's star in favor of rebooting a series of films not ten years removed from its theatrical debut! This is insane!

Eoin: I'm not sure how "visionary" Sam Raimi is. After all, he wanted the Vulture to be the villain of Spidey 4, and that shit screams of suck. He also directed Drag Me to Hell, aka Bore Me to Shit. Really, it ain't hard to tell (word to Nasty Nas) that a basic plot consisting of Kraven the Hunter, um, hunting Spidey and the Lizard as game would've worked like macaroni and cheese, a storyline right up Raimi's alley. Kraven hunts Spidey, the Lizard is born, Kraven hunts the Lizard, and Spidey must stop Kraven. It writes itself for god's sake. Am I missing something? Didn't Raimi set up the Lizard for three features? And the jagoff wants to have the Vulture (the fucking Vulture!) as his villain? This must be some elaborate prank.

Spakros: You have a good point. Maybe Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Kraven?

Eoin: The Vulture? That's a New Coke-level bad idea. Like I want to see Spider-Man chase an octogenarian around the New York cityscape, or vice versa. I'm not Criswell, but it doesn't take a clairvoyant to realize that the guy wanted nothing to do with the series anymore. I mean, the Vulture? That reeks of bridge-burning subterfuge. Raimi: and in the fifth film we can introduce Black Fox, a geriatric burglar. I'm convinced that Sam Raimi had his Looks like University of Illinois! moment with Sony. And then Sony had its You made Drag Me to Hell, and now here we are.

Spakros: I'm listening. You've certainly got my ear.

Sparkles: Enough! My point is, if Sony won't work with a director who made them richer than a billion cheesecakes, who will they work with? A yes-man, that's who.

Devil Dinosaur: I shit bigger'n Sam Raimi.

Eoin: This movie will come out when, in four or five years? By then, everbody's going to be too hyped about Avengers 2 to care. I'm all for fan input, but you freaks have raised your self-entitled voice so loud and for so long that it's not surprising a day would come when the door was closed on your fanboy fantasies.

Sparkles: Sir, where is your outrage?

Eoin: My sole outrage stems from the news that Sony might do another Spider-Man origin film; because, like talking to a corpse, origin films are boring. That and the realization that by the time Spidey 2.2 rolls around I'll be forty-four or so. This never would have happened were Marvel in charge. They would never sell out or sacrifice canon to appeal to a younger generation. Never.

Spakros: Zhang Ziyi as Mari Xien Waozien! I don't have many sublime ideas in my creative well, but that casting is as inspired as the time I created the universe, after that the Internet. If 2012 (the movie, not the year all Mexicans die) taught us anything, it's that the Chinese moviegoing market is massive. 1.3 billion-level massive. Cha-ching-chong-wing-wong!

(PS: Jackie Chan -- or maybe Chow Yun-Fat -- as Jae Xiona Xamizen.)

Devil Dinosaur: I shit bigger'n China.

Sparkles: This is doomed from the get-go.

Eoin: It can't be worse than the Clone Saga.

Spakros: Jake Gyllenhaal as Ben Reilly!

Sparkles: What happened to your imagination, your passion? This is the death of your youth, dude! Nothing will ever be the same afterward, not even pizza.

Eoin: I'll talk to you in 2012, or whatever year this Birth of a Nationesque controversial film is released. Maybe then I'll finally be able to grow a moustach.

Sparkles: Look at you, so smug. You sacrificed your principals for plastic lawn chairs! I'll see you around on the Internet, and you'll rue the day you played devil's dinosaur advocate on this one, mark my words. Ты умрешь в горящей машине.

Devil Dinosaur: I shit bigger'n the Internet.