James Cameron's Spider-man

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James Cameron's Spider-Man

With the advent of Avatar, David Scarborough looks at James Cameron's most ambitious project that never quite made it to the big screen.

LWLies | 25.11.09

James Cameron's career has passed technological, critical and commercial milestones over the years – from pioneering CG technology to titanic revenue return. His relentless pursuit for cinematic utopia may culminate in the upcoming 'blue tinged' technological marvel that is the long awaited Avatar. Yet a little story involving a radioactive spider may have proven to have been his best.

Somewhere lurking in the depths of forgotten development hell lays the dormant Spider-Man treatment by Cameron. After various scripts – which would have seen Arnie donning a tentacle or two as Doc Ock – the project stalled, leading Cameron some years later to write his own spin on the character. What Cameron delivered was a 70-page scriptment that would have launched Spider-Man onto the screen, bringing together some familiar Cameron screenplay traits: indestructible villain, romantic entanglement and cutting edge visual effects.



James Cameron's treatment for Spider-Man


Parker had his trademark quips, delivered through spliced inner-monologue. Perhaps a more faithful embodiment of the classic hero than the eventual adaptation by Sam Raimi, but one that isn't too dissimilar to start with. Much of the opening act revolves around establishing the superpowers – something which Raimi condenses into a few short scenes. Here, they serve a more thorough purpose to mirror young Parker's struggle with puberty.

In fact, much of the script revolves around symmetry – although story elements of the eventual adaptations are present: Uncle Ben's death, costume design, being bitten by the Mary-Jane love bug – but it is dealt with in a darker, more constructed story, arced around Peter's moral ambiguity and identity crisis reflected in sparky antagonist Electro.

Straight away Cameron dismisses the proverbial villain prerequisite of science experiment gone wrong, instead having the two nemeses of Spidey being literal forces of nature and victims of circumstance. Electro takes lead villain – a character who may be one of the few interesting villains left from the rogues gallery – and Sandman as his henchman.

If it had been made in the nineties, this could have been an awesome display of technological magnitude. Much of the description of the action around Sandman not only sounds tantalisingly glorious, but seems more impressive than the action involving the villain in Spiderman 3. It it strikingly reminiscent of the T-1000 from T-2; Spiderman knocking the features from Sandman's face, only to see it reform while the villain produces destructive shapes with his body. It could have been another astonishing cinematic creation.

The script is brimming with moral ambiguity, primal urges and sexual frustration. Both villain and hero face what seem like overbearing transformations, leading to both criminal and sexual temptations and restrictions. Whether it would have stuck to its guns and included the scripted bad language is unlikely, but from the bookends involving the World Trade Center, Spidey's sex scene and dealing with criminal urges it is a more grown up adaptation of your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man. Would it have sunk a ship with a huge draw like Titanic? Unlikely. But as the production got tangled up in legal woes as intricate as one of Spider-Man's webs, we'll never know.

David Scarborough
http://www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/blog/james-camerons-spider-man/