Back in the 70's, superhero properties were vastly undervalued as motion picture fodder. Nobody knew anything about how valuable those properties would eventually become. Nowadays you look every month and something superhero related is out in the theaters are debuting on TV. In the 70's, many Hollywood producers believed that superheroes belonged in the comic books and couldn't really be done justice. When Richard Donner's pioneering epic Superman was released in 1978, starring Christopher Reeve alongside established stars Gene Hackman and the late-Marlon Brando, it perfectly represented what a superhero movie should've been like. While some parts of the film were a little cheesy, it showed Hollywood that "yes, comic book supermen have spots on the silver screen." Tim Burton's Batman was another example of how well a comic book hero could be brought to life on the big sceen.
By the late 80's, Cannon Film Group, operated by renowned shit-salesmen Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan, had started licensing undervalued Marvel Comics properties to make low-budget movies out of. One was Captain America which later became the star of his own horrific adaptation in 1990's Captain America, a movie where Captain America does literally nothing but stare, mumble, and get the shit kicked out of him, and Red Skull is nothing more than a Yugoslavian in a latex mask. The other was Spider-Man. Obviously, we're all well aware of the classic Sam Raimi take Spider-Man in 2002, it's kick-ass sequel Spider-Man 2 in 2004, and it's...other sequel Spider-Man 3 in 2007. We're also well aware of Andrew Garfield's two takes The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and the upcoming Tom Holland solo-film Spider-Man: Homecoming as part of the nerdgasm-inducing Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, not too many people are familiar with the strained development the Spider-Man motion picture actually went through. The film went through several different stops with different directors and production companies before finally landing at Sam Raimi's feet...and one of these stops was the doorstep of the legendary James Cameron.
Brief history on James Cameron: he's a Canadian motion-picture phenom that doesn't act like he likes being referred to as such. He made the sci-fi/horror/romance classic The Terminator on a shoestring budget with a soon-to-be famous Austrian bodybuilder who had trouble speaking English dialogue. His sequel to Alien, Aliens, is often considered one of the greatest sequels ever made by a Hollywood filmmaker. His film The Abyss was a revolutionary film that set standards for slow-paced, suspenseful storytelling, and his action-packed sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day set the standard for action movies as a whole and for future generations to follow to a tee. This was the man who was given a shot at bringing Spider-Man to movie screens...
By the early 90's, Carolco Pictures had optioned the rights for Spider-Man from the then-defunct Cannon Group and had selected Cameron to bring the movie to life. Cameron wrote a forty-seven page "scriptment" for the film that was to be the backbone for the finished product. A "scriptment" contains writing elements of both a script and a treatment. We all know what a script is, and a "treatment" is a four-to-five page summary of what's going to happen in the movie, beginning to end. James Cameron's scriptment is well distributed over the interwebs nowadays for all fans of Spider-Man to read. I discovered it early-on in college and just recently sat down to read it, start to finish. All I can say is "what a movie". I mean that both positively and negatively. I don't want to spoil any of it, I only want to give my opinions on it; If you haven't read it and you'd like to see a comic-book style adaptation of James Cameron's scriptment complete with original storyboards, read it here before continuing. It'll make this post a lot better.
I'll wait...
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...okay, great. SO. Starting off positive, James Cameron decided to take a lot of liberties with the character and the mythos. You don't see this a lot nowadays, that is, directors and screenwriters who take an established universe and change stuff around so that it doesn't inhabit the same universe and flows in a storyline completely seperate from what's established canon. I like that; I'm a fan of taking a mythos and making your own thing because I've stated, creating something that's already been done isn't creating anything at all. You might as well create something. James certainly did that. You can definitely tell reading it that this was his Spider-Man. This wasn't Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's Spider-Man anymore. Cameron took the webslinger and made him his own. These next four reasons are most notably why the movie was never made and is now only an internet pipe dream:
#1 - THE SCRIPT CONTAINED TOO MUCH LANGUAGE
The tone is where a lot of people have their woes. The biggest thing about the movie is that it would've appealed to adults far more than children. Let me stop and give another James Cameron history lesson. I'm not sure if you guys have seen his previous movies, but they have some f-bombs in there. Not enough f-bombs to level New York City, but enough to sink a battleship. "Fuck" is to James Cameron as "webs" are to Spider-Man. One cannot exist without the other. Granted with his later films Titanic and Avatar, the cursing died down somewhat, but in the 80's and early 90's, you knew you were watching a Cameron movie when it had some good uses of "fuck" in it. A lot of dumbshit, low-brow comedies nowadays have "fuck" tossed around 200 times, so the word isn't all that shocking. What you knew about Cameron was that his uses of "fuck" were more colorful and energize. "Fuck" is an interesting word when it comes to movies. You want to use it to show that your film is more adult, but you also don't want to run the risk of overusing it and dumbing down the intelligence of your script. Cameron discovered the secret and used only the right amount of "fucks" and almost each and every line of Cameron "fuckery" is quotable and classic. That all being said, his scriptment of Spider-Man was no exception. There's a use of "Motherfucker" by Peter Parker that's pretty notorious. It's interesting to note that Peter, actually, is the source of most of the swears in the available scriptment since a majority of his dialogue was written. Aunt May would not be pleased with his potty mouth.
#2 - THE SCRIPT CONTAINED TOO MUCH SEX
On top of that, the script was also very sexual. Like...really sexual. Almost uncomfortably sexual for a superhero movie. There's a pivotal scene the internet likes to laugh about where after Peter Parker gets his powers, he uses them to swing next door and spy on Mary Jane getting dressed, possibly with nudity. Which, you know, is normal in a Spider-Man story. There's also the sex scene. Yep. The sex scene. Peter, as Spider-Man, takes Mary Jane to the Brooklyn Bridge and, after imitating quasi-rapey spider mating ritual dances, has sex with her. It's all off screen, and the only thing that's explicitly stated is that he "pushes up her skirt". Yeah, try being a parent taking your kid to the big Spider-Man movie and then having to watch that. There's even a scene where Electro has Mary-Jane held hostage and he forces kiss after kiss of increasing electricity upon her like a deranged creep.
So the script was entirely too edgy, and this reason above all others is probably why Cameron never got the film made. With how demanding he's known to be (hell Kate Winslet said she wouldn't work for him again without "a hell of a lot of money"), you can easily tell that people saying to him "tone it down", would probably result on him bailing on the movie entirely. Cameron's known for making his movies his way or not at all. Spider-Man was not at all.
#3 - CAMERON CHANGES THE LORE
Aside from the above two, the next thing people probably wouldn't have liked is the fact that James Cameron took liberties with the established lore. You don't see that in the superhero movies that are out and about today. Most, if not all, stick solely to the source material and leave little chance of fucking things up by trying to be hip and creative. Well, Marvel keeps to the source material mostly. DC likes to change stuff. The only DC material that changed stuff and got away with it was Christopher Nolan's Bat-trilogy. Man of Steel changed a lot about Superman, but it didn't save that snooze fest.
Cameron took liberties with everything, but mostly the enemies. The two enemies for Cameron's Spider-Man were originally going to be Electro and Sandman, but not the way you remember them. Electro was going to be a Donald Trump-esque megalomaniac businessman named Carlton Strand, and Sandman was going to be his henchman, a soft-spoken buff dude named Boyd. They were no longer electrician Max Dillon and escaped convict Flint Marko, respectively.
Two things that did change but stuck and made it into Sam Raimi's eventual film, were the organic webbing and the idea of the villain telling Spidey that in spite of everything he's done for the public, they're going to end up hating him for it.
#4 - THE ACTING CHOICES
When Cameron went with his second version of the script (that unfortunately doesn't have a scriptment), his choice for Peter Parker was rumored heavily in favor of the young, then-unknown Leonardo DiCaprio. Remember, this was just around the time Cameron was also gearing up for Titanic, so it would make sense that DiCaprio's audition for that movie also gave him good vibes to cast him in this one too. On top of that, Cameron's second take on the movie was going to have Doc Ock as the villain, heavily rumored to be played by Cameron's Austrian buddy himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Just before the film left Cameron's hands, the final rumored cast was as follows:
Edward Furlong as Peter Parker / Spider-Man
Lance Henrikson as Norman Osborn / The Green Goblin
Drew Barrymore as Gwen Stacey
Leonardo DiCaprio as Harry Osborn
Nikki Cox as Mary Jane Watson
R. Lee Ermey as J. Jonah Jameson
Overall, I'm pleased with the film we got. Sam Raimi's Spider-Man came at just the right time. America was still healing from the effects of 9/11 and the film was very heroic to show New Yorkers uniting in such a way they did. "You mess with one of us, you mess with all of us" as the cabbie said. The end shot with the American flag sums it all up just as well. Would Cameron's Spidey flick have been so memorable and loved? Would it have fallen to the same depths of obscurity as other superhero movies in the 90's did? We'll never know. All we can do is sit back, read the man's treatment and wonder "What if?"
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