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What If Sony Made a Spider-Man TV Show!
By Sayak Saha Roy ⋅ Posted on January 5th, 2016 at 5:46pm ⋅ Last edit on January 6th, 2016
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We know that we will be getting our first glimpse of the new Spider-Man in the MCU in this summer’s Captain America: Civil War followed by a feature film from Sony in July 2017. Now if James Gunn’s recent words are to be taken into consideration, Holland’s Spidey will be “off the charts” amazing which is a fantastic thing to hear for us Spidey fans. But the only thing that bothers me as well as many others is that according to the Sony-Marvel deal, our favourite wall-crawler is not allowed to appear in the MCU TV Shows such as Daredevil, Jessica Jones or star in his solo TV series in the future which kind of sucks, because Spider-Man is one of the only few superheroes in the MCU who still has his secret identity intact, and leads a fairly normal life when out of his unitard. He is not a God or a genius business tycoon, but just a kid, living with his aunt and dealing with the burdens and responsibilities faced by a normal teenager(well, almost). The stakes are much lower as the focus is more on how he struggles from one day to the next instead of evil-forces which will destroy the world if not stopped in the next 10 mins. Yes, we had got a Spidey TV series in 1978 (The Amazing Spider-Man), but lets face it, its was not a memorable effort, what with the low budget and lack of big names from Spidey’s rogue gallery. So one must wonder how a modern Spider-Man TV show set in the MCU and produced by Sony might turn out. Here’s my idea:
It would be set in High-School:
Yes, I know, that's also the setting for the new Spider-Man movie, but honestly how much time can a 2 hour long movie devote to the every day peril that Peter faces in high-school. Even after gaining his spider powers, Peter was still very much an outcast and bullied pretty hard by one Flash Thompson and co. We want to see that high-school drama which was an integral part of the early comic-lore. In both the movies depicting the early days of Spidey i.e. Spider-Man (2002) and The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), we have seen the high-school part pretty much ignored(or side-tracked) after Peter gets his powers. Show the trouble Peter faces in resisting the temptation in revealing his secret identity to his school-mates and becoming a sensation overnight, show the romantic-interests and how Peter deals with them(Where was Liz Allen in the movies?), show Peter living out school life as a teen rather than using high-school as a plot point for random evil dudes attacking it and spidey saving the day. In short, High-School should play a sizeable if not huge role in the TV series,as that is one of the reasons which humanizes Spidey and separates him from larger-than-life superheroes such as Thor, Iron Man or Captain America.
2) Show Peter’s struggles:
Peter Parker is a 15 year old kid living in Forest Hills with his aunt. After his uncle got murdered, they are pretty much down emotionally and financially. So, despite him having spider like super-powers, he still has to worry about his widowed aunt and the financial burden of unpaid bills, not to mention saving her and his other close ones from the carnage of the crazy evil dudes that want nothing more than to see him suffer. Everything is not OK with him. The TV series should give importance on Peter as a human and his everyday struggles, how a young kid deals with so many personal troubles and yet takes out time to put on the mask and fight crime. Failing to buy eggs for your aunt and listening to a long lecture about responsibilities is not struggle. Its carelessness. One of the many reasons I love Spider-Man 2 was how it devoted a lot of time in humanizing Peter and showing his love and care for his Aunt May. I would love it if the TV series extends this arc a lot further and make it an integral part of it. It would be something to see Peter coming home after a long battle with a super-foe, bruised, tends to his wound, and patches up his suit a bit,only to go downstairs and see his aunt in tears clutching a set of bills and she tries to hides them as soon as she feels Peter’s presence in the room.
3) An over-arching nemesis:
Now this formula has been tried and tested in both the CW TV Series Arrow and The Flash and they have yielded overwhelming reaction from fans and critics alike. While numerous super-baddies may be jumping around in every episode ala Villain-of-the-week style, there should be one bad-guy who should be at the center of the plot. One of the main reasons Netflix’s Daredevil was so good was because of Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin’s constant menacing presence in the storyline,he gave Matt Murdock a purpose, feeling that the only way he could clean Hell’s Kitchen was to strike at the heart of it’s crime world, the fat bald guy who admires art a lot. Similarly the Spidey TV series should have a similar big bad guy and who better to do it than good-ol Norman Osborne. They could follow the plot of the Ultimate Spider-Man comic series and make him the reason Peter got his powers, and wether he rides a glider or becomes a deranged and twisted version of the Hulk, he would ultimately want to take the young superhero under his wing for his own evil needs, and would no doubt be refused by Peter, thus leading to a storyline where he slowly manipulates Parkers’ life for the worst from behind the shadows while showing up now and again and beating the crap out of Spidey. Add Harry and his drug addiction into this mess and sooner rather than later ol-Gobby will be throwing Gwendy from the bridge… again. Hope they do it better this time than TASM 2.
4) Dont kill-off big players:
One of the things I never quite liked about the Spidey movies is that they had the affinity to kill off major super-villains at the end. Sam-Raimi’s Spider-Man and its sequel killed of big players like the Green Goblin and Doc Ock while the 3rd movie barely gave 15 minutes to Venom.In their favor, they had to make every movie grand in scale and unique, so it might not have been a great idea to have every super-baddie popping up for a few minutes in every movie and say “Yohoo! We are here!” Right? Well, technically characters in the MCU never really die these days and this trend can be carried forward in the Spidey TV series as well. Keeping baddies around for a long time gives more time for the writers to flesh out their stories. And talking about fleshing out thier stories, if they have to do Venom this time, give him an entire season, that guy deserves it, dont make him just a villain-of-the week or something like that. And talking about Villain-Of-The-Week………
5) More baddies:
Spidey has a huge rogue gallery, but very few have been given the honor of a live-action adaptation yet. While there are rumors that the New Spidey movie will have Kraven at the helm of the bad guy throne, wouldnt we love to see players like Mysterio, Carnage, Sandman, a less generic Lizard, Chameleon factor into Spidey’s world? A movie doesnt allow many villains to be crammed into its 2 hour runtime(they tried, but the results were Spider-Man 3, TSM2 and Batman & Robin,thus not very encouraging), but in a TV Series, a new baddie can be introduced every week. In this way, not only can the big names show up to the party but there is also more than enough space for lesser foes such as Beetle, the Shocker, Scorpion etc. and who wouldn't like to spice things up a little bit with Morbius the vampire. The possibilities are endless.
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6) Marvel Team-ups:
Imagine this, Spidey’s fighting the huge Green Oz-overdosed Goblin, seemingly unstoppable, rampaging through the streets of NY, when suddenly RDJ’s Iron-man drops by and gives Spidey a hand. Fangasm! Spidey’s not the only hero in NY, so expect other big names to drop by now and then to lend him a hand. Now this is very much a possibility in the new solo Spidey movies as well, but with more overall runtime in the TV series, the Marvel team-ups can be a little more of a common occurrence.
Sayak Saha Roy
Would you like a Spider-Man TV Series?
Yes! That would be great!
Nope.. The movies are just fine!
Maybe...
I want to write my own post about it
TopicsSuperheroesTV MarvelCreators
