User blog:Dorkpool/What Could Have Been: Spider-Man (Part 2)

Welcome back to the analysis of sorts of the draft scripts for the first Spider-Man movie. Previously, we discussed the scripts from the 1980s. Now, we're going to talk about the James Cameron "scriptment." Yes, that James Cameron, of Titanic, Terminator, and Avatar fame. Anyway, his story was basically about virgin (this is addressed in the scriptment) nerdy high schooler Peter Parker who has the hots for Mary Jane Watson, the popular girl in school. He goes to a demonstration involving genetically altered fruit flies, one of which is eaten by a spider that then bites Peter, giving him spider powers, including organic webbing. Also included is a fellow named Strand, who is supposed to be Electro, but veeery different from Electro and Sandman, who is an enforcer for Strand. All in all, it's not a bad read.

Anyway, for the first Spider-Man movie, later drafts followed Cameron's scriptment to an extent, including a draft with Electro attacking Wall Street. Eventually, Electro and Sandman were phased out as villains, in favor of the Green Goblin and Doc Ock.

In one of the scripts with those two villains, we see something closer resembling the first movie. However, there are differences: Doc Ock is pasted in the script as collateral damage from the accident that made Norman Osborn the Green Goblin, and hates Osborn; the "World Unity Festival" is the Thanksgiving Day Parade; and Norman Osborn survives. Also, there's an interesting twist on the organic vs. mechanical webshooters here: Peter can fire webbing, but can't aim it. So, he builds the webshooters to aim. That...that is genius. In fact, in the book that details the making of the first Spider-Man movie, they have a shooting script that has webshooter thing. Why this was changed is beyond me.

Now, about the cliffhanger last time: as it turns out, I am not pregnant. Being male creates a problem when it comes to pregnancy. Oops.