brayzie

Yup. I stopped reading Amazing Spider-man around the time the Spider-Slayer storyline was going on and only remember the Smythe guy and his arachnid powers because of this thread. I now do remember the spider-slayers were in the 90s cartoon, but again, most people remember the more classic villains.

Agree but it's more of a risk for studios. It's like casting an unknown for the lead in a big movie. Might be a great choice for the role, but a lot of people get interested in a movie when it's their favorite big name actor starring, or they heard good things about that Jennifer Lawrence girl.


I guess they just want to go with classic villains with recognizable names. The Rhino, The Penguin, The Lizard etc.

Yeah but while most kids who read the comics watched the cartoons, not every kid that watched the cartoon read comics. Most of my friends know about DC only from the B:TAS, JLU, and Batman Beyond. Sames goes for the 90s Spider-man series.

I never actually read a comic book featuring The Rhino and yet I know he's a Spider-man villain and remember him, but forgot about Smythe.

By putting in classic villains they target Spider-man fans of all ages: the ones who grew up on the classic stories, ones that grew up watching the cartoons (60s or 90s versions), ones that read modern comics like Ultimate Spider-man, etc.





No, these movies are aimed at everyone. Which is why they try to incorporate elements from different eras of Spider-man. The Raimi film featured classic villains and their origins, but mixed in part of the Ultimate Spider-man story into it as well.



It looks like Spider-man 3 to me as well. Was Norman introduced in the reboot? Maybe Harry will become the Green Goblin and later Norman will don the suit to avenge his son?
Either way JM DeMatteis wrote an excellent saga for Harry Osborn that showed his decent into madness and his issues with his father and how it affected his own family life. I can't see why Raimi never adapted it, or why this new director for that matter (as far as one can tell by a single image on a poster).

taffer

Which Spider-Slayer storyline? There are many. Spencer Smythe is a classic Spider-Man villain as well. He was created by Stan Lee in the 1960s. Spencer died in the late 1970s and then his son, Alistair, was introduced and carried on his father's legacy building more Spider-Slayer robots.


Norman was never actually seen in the first movie, but his name was dropped a few times. Also, OsCorp is all over the movie.

Mike86

Yeah and isn't he also supposedly the guy who is heard off screen in Connor's prison cell at the end of The Amazing Spider-Man? Kind of wondering if the new film is just going to establish that he's already a villain or what. I wouldn't really care to not see his origin if the Spider-Man universe was already established in the reboot series but it seems kind of weird that he was already around during or around the events of the first film. Unless he's a clue to Peter's parents or something.

whotony

They finally using a couple ofmy favorite Spidey villains with Rhino and Electro and then screw them up.
Rhino looks like he is wearing an exo skeleton and Electro is just beyond dopey looking with that hooded jacket.

brayzie

Oh yeah! I forgot. I remember seeing an old 60s issue where there's a robot with a video screen showing J. Jonah Jameson's face attacking Spider-man. Alistair Smythe is the one I remember from the comics and cartoon.

taffer

Its never been confirmed who that guy was supposed to be.

There was a lightning bolt right before the guy suddenly appeared and then another bolt when he disappeared. Many people assumed that meant he was Electro. With Electro being in the next movie, that kind of makes sense. However, Electro is a black guy in the movie and the mystery guy was white.

Someone in the movie said Norman was sick and dying from some disease or something. If Norman is dying, I doubt that was him in the prison cell since that guy seemed perfectly fine. I assumed that the disease would be the lead-in for the Goblin formula as the miracle cure that would then backfire and turn him into the Green Goblin.

So who knows. Sony probably doesn't even know.


Rhino is one of your favorite villains?


Yep. JJJ funded Spencer's building of the robots.

bluetoast

That one above was a good story. I bought a comic that had several reprints of Spider-Slayers and there was one situation where the son unleashed every slayer ever on Spider-Man at once, so you can see the stuff from the 60's like the one above with the more modern stuff all on one page ready to pounce. That was pretty cool.

There was also one from around the time of the first Slayer where Spidey and JJJ were handcuffed together and had to cooperate, but I don't remember if it was a Slayer story. Spider-Man impressed JJJ with his scientific knowledge.

whotony

Yep, the Rhino.

My first intro to most Spidey stuff was the cartoon fron 1967.
That show had all of the villains at one point and it was fun includiing Rhino.
My favorite might be the Hobgoblin because it was such a great background story until they retconned it 2 or 3 times.

taffer

That was Amazing Spider-Man #192 with Spidey and JJJ handcuffed together with a bomb. It was the issue in which Spencer Smythe died. He had radiation poisoning from building all his Spider-Slayer robots, and since JJJ funded it all, Spencer blamed JJJ as much as Spidey and so tried to kill them both.




The problem with Hobgoblin is that they dragged the mystery of his identity out way too long. The original writer intended for him to be Roderick Kingsley and all the clues were leading in that direction. That writer left before the mystery was ultimately revealed however, and the next writer ended up changing it and revealed Ned Leeds to be Hobgoblin, which made no sense whatsoever. Then they retconned Ned Leeds much later and changed it back to Roderick Kingsley all along. It was a freaking mess.

RocShemp

You see a silhouette of Norman in the Oscorp building when Peter first enters. The character never appears, however. Norman will appear in this movie portrayed by Chris Cooper but apparently

As for the "Man In The Shadows" (as he was listed in the end credits), he was portrayed by Michael Massey (Funboy from The Crow and the actor who accidentally shot Brandon Lee) and Marc Webb said in an interview that the clue to his identity is the hat he has in his hands. The hat seems to be the same hat that Peter knocks down when he thinks he found his father during their game of hide and seek. So I can only assume is that the intention is that Peter's dad is still alive in this continuity and very much insane. Which is possible since the idea they had for the first movie (which was only alluded to in the final cut) was that Peter was in fact a lab experiment of Richard Parker (as were the spiders in the Oscorp lab) and that's part of why Peter was able to become Spider-Man.

That or there was a hat wearing villain from the comics that I simply don't remember.

fumanstan

That explanation just makes me dislike the first movie even more!

RocShemp

For some reason it doesn't bother me at all.

Supermallet

Three villains? Well, it probably won't be as bad as Batman and Robin, I guess.

Unless this gets through the roof reviews, I'm not bothering.

taffer

Frederick Foswell... the "Big Man" of crime before Kingpin was introduced.

I doubt the mystery man in the movie is Foswell, but you never know.

Draven

So again, you = everyone?

Citation needed.

Solid Snake

I pretty much love all the villains they've chosen for the franchise. Unfortunately whether I liked them in the films themselves is another thing. Alfred Molina was awesome as Doc Ock, didn't like certain aspects of him but when he was bad it rocked.

robin2099

Bingo. When I first saw that poster I thought that Electro was Hydro, I figured that was GG but GG mixed with the Joker, and a spider slayer. The designs for all these villains look so terrible I honestly can't think of worse looking villains in any superhero movie ever.

Wow. If that was true, that should have got Webb fired right off the bat. That makes the clone saga sound genius.

taffer

Doc Ock was BY FAR the only villain any of these Spider-Man movies have gotten anywhere close to being right.

I do wish we could have gotten some Doc Ock/Aunt May romance though. Aunt May loves the tentacle sex. (Seriously, they were romantically involved in the comics at one point in time.)


Schumacher's Bane
Galactus as a cloud
Power Ranger Goblin

Mike86

To be fair while that portrayal was overall awful the character design was fairly accurate to the comics (other than having an overly veiny look to his skin).

Draven

IIRC, The "Peter as experiment" was heavily hinted in the initial trailers but was then dropped for the final cut.

Obi-Wanma

Lab experiment of Ben Parker? Do you mean Richard Parker?

Groucho

Dragon Tattoo

Yes.

Supermallet

I think it's safe to say that Dragon Tattoo speaks for 6 year olds everywhere.

Dragon Tattoo

I think it's safe to say you speak for a------s everywhere.