There was one name that dominated the Cineplex
during the 1990s--
James Cameron.
He had Terminator 2, True Lies, and Titanic,
all raking in cash and critical acclaim.
However, there was almost a very different film
in Cameron's '90s output, one that featured a very familiar
face--
your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
Spider-Man was always my main man growing up,
and I actually I actually rescued that project
from the ash heap.
Currently Spider-Man's adventures
have been ruling the big screen for close to 20 years.
But it wasn't always this way.
Spidey has been adapted multiple times to the small screen,
but the feature film side of Spidey's career
had been mired in false starts and missed opportunities.
[CRASHING SOUNDS]
Prior to Cameron coming on board,
Spider-Man was being marshaled at Cannon films
under the watchful and usually inept
eye of schlocky super producer Menahem Golan.
However, Cannon films was undergoing financial problems,
and before anyone knew it Cannon was out,
and the rights to Spider-Man were auctioned off in.
1990 Carolco purchased the rights
to make a Spidey feature film from Menahem
Golan for $5 million.
They were planning on mounting a big budget feature film
version of the character that would have
been able to go head to head with Tim Burton's Batman
franchise.
They hired James Cameron to come on board to write, direct,
and produce the film.
The rough budget was set at a high price tag of $50 million.
As Cameron neared completion on True Lies,
he started gearing up for Spidey.
James Cameron's Spider-Man would be
presented to Carol Coe as a 47 page scriptment.
What's a scriptment you might ask?
Well, it's a very detailed outline
that's half script and half overview of the story.
Cameron's story had a much darker and angsty tone to it
than the final Sam Raimi film.
It features swearing, hyper violence,
and even Peter Parker pseudo-stalking
Mary Jane with his newfound super abilities.
The story centers on a surprisingly traditional origin
story that then evolves into Spidey
going head-to-head with garbled versions of Electro
and Sandman.
Cameron's scriptment seems to do a pretty good job
of updating the classic Lee and Ditko Spider-Man
origin for the 1990s.
Peter is a nerd.
He's into photography and science.
Eventually, he gets paired up with Mary Jane Watson
on a homework assignment causing all the teen romantic comedy
and unrequited love that you'd want in a Spidey story.
Just like in the comics, he goes to a science exhibit,
gets bit by a spider, and then gains spider powers.
Cameron even takes the teen hijinks
and amps it up to 11 by depicting Peter waking up
the next morning covered in white, organically
produced, web fluid.
That's right.
He's all about organic web shooters.
Throughout the scriptment, Cameron
seems determined to mind the intensity and rawness
of being a teenager.
He pushes the anger and sexuality
in directions that might not always
look like they would have worked at face value.
This flies in the face of the Spider-Man we all know and love
from the comics.
Peter's constant struggle in life is balancing a home life,
paying rent, and being the superhero
New York needs him to be.
While the scriptment has some hints at that,
it also has a bizarrely try-hard air about it.
It wants to be edgy, more than it wants
to be a good Spider-Man story.
Similarly to the source material,
Peter is being raised by Aunt May and Uncle
Ben, who are kindly, but slightly
out of touch older people.
After Ben is laid off from his job,
Peter starts attempting to make money
as a street performer and local TV show personality.
Just like in the classic origin with the wrestling promoter,
Peter gets an entertainment agent
to handle the money he's making from his appearances.
However, he gets screwed over.
Then Uncle Ben dies in a carjacking
and Spider-Man tracks down the criminal,
finding out that it's all his fault.
With great power does, in fact, come great responsibility.
This is where the Cameron scriptment
starts to diverge significantly from the comics.
Peter becomes embroiled in a plot where a rich businessman
named Carlton Strand attempts to sway Peter
into working for him, ostensibly as a full time criminal.
Strand has the ability to channel electricity.
If this sounds familiar, it's because he's essentially
just a very boring hybrid of Kroger's brand Kingpin and flea
market Electro, but with all the potentially interesting
elements of those two characters sanded away.
Speaking of sand, the heavy in the film
is a character named Boyd, who's got the ability
to turn himself into Sandman.
He's just Sandman, but again, with none of the back story
or character of Cain Marco.
He's just a dude with sand powers.
In the finale of the scriptment, Spider-Man
defeats Carlton strand and dumps a massive bag of money
over Manhattan.
Believe it or not, there's even a sequence
in the script that features Spidey and MJ having
intimate relations on the Brooklyn Bridge.
The aspect that doesn't quite communicate
in a summary of the script meant is just how weirdly filled
with cursing it is.
Like, Peter and the other characters a
curse words throughout the whole thing.
There's also some drug use, a significant quotient
of over-the-top violence, and a subplot
that revolves all around Mary Jane being caught
in an abusive relationship.
Would the final film have still featured these elements?
That's anyone's guess.
Treatments and outlines often feature aspects that
are discarded before filming.
It's clear that Cameron is trying
to make a sexier, more Melrose Place
version of a Spider-Man mythology,
but it doesn't feel right.
Spider-Man should be a morality play, not an edgy, teen soap
opera.
James Cameron's Spider-Man film never made it further
than this scriptmeant.
Despite rumors of both Leo DiCaprio and Arnold
Schwarzenegger's involvement, the project
died due to extended litigation.
Golan and Cameron were both contractually granted producer
credits and Carolco couldn't get anyone to budge.
Thus lawsuits, battles over financials, and at one
point a Carolco exec literally just
phoning up Menahem Golan and point blank
asking him to just not take a credit so they could just
move forward with the picture played out
throughout the seedy, back alleys of Hollywood.
Obviously, this didn't happen, and so lawsuits
were filed in 1993.
Golan sued Carolco.
Carolco sued Viacom and Columbia because it turned out
that the contract that they bought from Golan
only allowed for the feature film rights,
and of course, the other two studios countersued.
To make things even weirder, Fox wanting
to stay in the James Cameron business,
contested Cameron's involvement in Spider-Man
saying that he was under contract to them exclusively.
Long story short, it was a mess.
And it obviously sank any hopes of a Cameron written
and produced Spider-Man film.
Even through all the lawsuit chatter,
the fan press and Hollywood were convinced that Leo
was going to play Peter Parker.
So the question is how close did we
get to actually having Leo on the big screen twhipping
around?
According to him, not very.
In an Empire Magazine interview, DiCaprio said,
he was not very close, but there was a screenplay.
But according to Cameron when talking to Screencrush,
he was very serious about making the film.
Superheroes in general always came off as kind of fanciful
to me, and believe it or not the film came closer to existence
than anyone probably thinks.
Cameron went so far as to lobby Fox to purchase them
the rights in the late 90s.
"I tried to get Fox to buy it, but apparently the rights
were a little bit clouded.
Former Fox president Peter Chernin just
wouldn't go to bat for it."
If that doesn't show you James Cameron's artistic and business
vision, nothing will.
However, this version of the Spider-Man mythology
seems to be better as a link in the chain that eventually
resulted in the finished Raimi film then as its own project.
The tone of the scriptment is very angry and aggressive
in a way that doesn't work for Spider-Man.
And the fact that it's not referential to anything
in the Spider-Man world other than his origin,
doesn't sit well.
However, the most important element of this script
meant that eventually made its way into David Koepp's
Spider-Man screenplay that no one talks about, organic web
shooters.
Whoa.
That came out of you.
Yeah, that's right.
The organic webs that Peter discovers himself
covered in waking up?
They manifest throughout the movie as organic web shooters.
Their inclusion in the Raimi film
can be traced directly back to James Cameron.
Well, that's all we have for this episode.
What do you guys think?
Would this James Cameron Spider-Man
have been better than the Raimi version?
Let us down in the comments below.
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