Heard of that kind of thing. I-Works looks to be up to making that work.
A Hippie in the House of Mouse (Jim Henson at Disney, 1980)
- Thread starter Geekhis Khan
- Start date
- Status
Meh, the first video is pretty bad. Most of the "disadvantages" he lists are either very situational or (in some cases) irrelevant (there's no inherent reason why a monorail system can't serve as many passengers as a comparable conventional rail system, for instance). The main argument against building monorails is simply that they don't really do anything better than conventional rail except in a few specific cases, and so there aren't many monorail systems and not that many vendors or much expertise around them. So you might as well just build conventional rail instead and tap into a larger network of experience around running them, if you need to. And of course if you already have a conventional rail network then it makes very little sense to build an entirely new parallel network that has nothing in common and won't offer any significant advantages over the existing system.
I am more for a conventional rail system. But also Orange County despite being more liberal is still at that time a very Republican County they may go with the cheapest option which is buses. It’s gonna be hard to persuade both Orange and LA counties to go for an expensive option without serious arm twisting.
Do any dolphin pods live around the area? I know some stay in California year round, but this is a major port.
Maybe find a friendly pod and take visitors to them.
Will the Spruce Goose be flown? On one hand it's only had one test flight before, on the other it would be a great opportunity to collect stock footage.
With good measurements from the restorations I wonder if we'll be seeing set designs based on Mary and the Goose.
Maybe find a friendly pod and take visitors to them.
Will the Spruce Goose be flown? On one hand it's only had one test flight before, on the other it would be a great opportunity to collect stock footage.
With good measurements from the restorations I wonder if we'll be seeing set designs based on Mary and the Goose.
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Google says there's plenty of locals off Long Beach, and it's in the middle of most whale migration routes. Should be worth Disney's while to start a yacht tour.
Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man
Spider-Man (1991), a Retrospective
From Swords and Spaceships Magazine, July 2012
So once again Spider-Man is getting rebooted. Go figure. But let’s take a moment to appreciate the very first time that Spidey came to the big screen, 1991’s Spider-Man, produced and released by MGM Studios with groundbreaking special effects courtesy of the Disney/Henson Creatureworks. With a then-unknown Seth Green in the title role and some star power via Liam Neeson as the Lizard, the film was a hit and launched a film empire, and a Marvel-DC film rivalry, that remains with us today.
First off, the plot was nothing that would amaze folks too much today. It’s pretty much a bog standard three-act “Peter Parker is an angry, picked-on nerd, Peter gets bitten by radioactive spider, Peter does what he wants as Spider-Man damn the consequences, Peter loses Uncle Ben due to his own arrogance, Peter learns that with great powers comes great responsibility, Peter battles the villain and saves the day, Peter is a humbler hero, but now has to hide his secret identity to protect the people he loves” plot that we’ve seen in various forms over the years. But what made it stand out at the time is that this was mostly new ground for movie audiences in 1991. Because, believe it or not, no one in 1991 but comics nerds really knew that much about Spidey save what he looked like and the basics of his powers (e.g. “shoots webs and climbs walls”). You see, your average 1991 audience member’s only real experience with their Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man was that maybe they saw the Electric Company shorts or reruns of the old cartoons when they were kids.
UNCLE BEN: You’re a man now, Peter, and being a man means gaining new power.
PETER: You have no idea.
UNCLE BEN: But remember, Peter: with great power comes great responsibility.
PETER sighs and rolls his eyes.
Spider-Man in 1991 was a massive creative risk. Heck, the only reason why MGM head Tom Wilhite even gave Spidey the green light was because of the massive success of the 1989 Warner Brothers Batman, directed by Sam Raimi. Because while superhero films are a dime a dozen today, back in 1991 having your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man on the Big Screen was a Big Deal. And what was an even Bigger Deal were the groundbreaking special effects.
Yea, not nearly this good, but damned good for 1991 (Image source “that-yandere-life.tumbler.com”)
You see, in 1990 computer effects were still in their infancy and modern chromakey (“green screen”) effects still in their awkward adolescence. Disney and Lucasfilm had experimented with a few added in here and there over the years, but for Spider-Man, Disney effects head Brian Henson, son of Muppets creator Jim Henson, decided to skip evolution and go straight to revolution. He and his team engineered all sorts of amazing rigs and lifts for their “Green Box” studio, including a massive thing they called the Christmas Ornament that could rotate an actor or model in three axes and record the accelerations as vector data. They had a “baldo” body rig that could convert physical motions directly into digital vector wireframes in conjunction with motion capture tech and could even be “replayed” back into scale animatronic models to allow for amazingly lifelike model work without resorting to stop motion. They had also developed advances in digital compositing from their years of animation work that managed to minimize the “halo” and “shimmer” effects that tended to affect chromakey effects of the time (such unintended effects can be readily seen in 1988’s Willow or 1989’s The Judgement of Anubis).
I could go on for hours, but, really, check out the behind-the-scenes effects featurettes on the VCD.
(Image source “hipcomic.com”)
So, the effects still hold up fairly well today, even if they are obviously dated. There’s still a slight “shimmer” when Spidey swings through the city and the number of big swinging effects is kept to a minimum for exactly this reason. Well, that and the sheer workload of this methodology (reportedly 3 months of work was required for each minute of screen time on the effects). In the end it was the quality and complexity of the motions and how they framed them that make the effects work more than the raw photorealism, and much was accomplished the old-fashioned way, with camera angles, framing, editing, and dolly work rather than computers.
Seen today, Spider-Man still seems to swing effortlessly though the city, fairly realistically embedded into his environment. For the time it was jaw-dropping.
By comparison, the wall-crawling and ceiling-crawling effects were all managed by simple sets and camera tricks, no computers required. An old-fashioned “rotating room” set of the type that let Fred Astaire dance up the walls in 1951’s The Royal Wedding was employed, proving that some effects never die.
The Lizard, meanwhile, is mostly a combination of prosthetics and animatronics, but by this point the Creatureworks had mastered that art, so he holds up extremely well, arguably better than later CG interpretations, though you wonder what they could have done at the time with the CG skin effects ILM perfected just a year later for Death Becomes Her. As an interesting bit of trivia, the Creature Effects were supervised by Muppets alum Richard Hunt in one of his last roles before his illness left him too sick to work.
THE LIZARD breaks through the wall and shrieks at SPIDER-MAN.
SPIDER-MAN: Yeesh, what’s with the commotion, Komodo?
THE LIZARD charges and SPIDER-MAN leaps straight up out of the way just in time as THE LIZARD shatters the desk he was on. SPIDER-MAN now hangs upside down from the ceiling on a web.
SPIDER-MAN: (points) You look familiar. Have we met?
THE LIZARD shrieks and slashes at SPIDER-MAN, who dodges again and again, somersaulting across the ceiling.
SPIDER-MAN: (holds up finger) Wait, I got it: are you my Aunt’s alligator luggage?
And yet what made Spider-Man a blockbuster hit that codified a new era of superhero films was the Joss Whedon screenplay, brought to life by director Frank Oz, who by this point was gaining a brilliant reputation as an effects movie director who also brought lots of heart and humanity to the pictures. The film was full of that quippy, playful dialog, complex characterization, and clever, twisting narrative that is now associated with Whedon and the borderline self-awareness and sense of “the absurd in the normal” that’s become a hallmark of Oz’s work[1]. To play Peter Parker, the teen-turned-superhero, they found young character actor Seth Green. Now a paragon of Geek Culture, Green at the time was best known for small TV roles and commercials[2]. Spider-Man was his first lead role in a film. Despite his youth and relative inexperience, Green gave the role a very naturalistic feel, moving back and forth between angst-ridden teen and friendly but smartassed webslinger.
Seth Green c1990 (from It) vs Peter Parker (Image sources “IMDB.com” & “quora.com”)
For the villain Dr. Curt Connors/The Lizard, they found Dead Poet’s Society lead Liam Neeson, who gave the role the deep pathos and relatability that makes The Lizard such a tragic villain. Neeson would occasionally don the prosthetics for close-ups of The Lizard, which he hated, but most of the fight scenes with The Lizard would be played by the imposing Brian Thompson, who was finding it hard to break out in Hollywood despite the relative success of He Man and so had started falling back on prosthetics work to pay the bills, a “fallback” that would become a career for him.
DR. CURT CONNORS speaks to PETER and his CLASSMATES. In the background DR. OCTAVIUS uses his artificial arms to mix strange liquids behind a glowing force field. CLOSE UP on a tiny spider, that crawls out of the containment field and slips down on a web to the floor.
CONNORS: As you can see, Dr. Octavius is mixing the radioactive substrate into the isolated reptilian DNA samples. The substrate will induce mutations in the genes, which we can then explore for desirable traits like accelerated cell growth.
PETER: (snaps picture) Um…are you sure that randomly mixing radioactive stuff into the blueprints of life isn’t, I don’t know, asking for terrifying consequences beyond all human comprehension?
ZOOM IN on the spider as it climbs slowly up PETER’S leg.
CONNORS: The agricultural industry uses this technique for genetically modified crops all the time and you don’t see any negative effects in your food, do you?
PETER: I’ll ask the rutabaga next time we talk. Ouch! (slaps arm)
Liam Neeson c1990 vs. Dr. Curt Connors (Image sources “” & “cmro.travis-starnes.com”)
The tragedy of The Lizard is that Dr. Connors is a well-meaning veteran combat medic who lost his arm in battle and is exploring reptile genetics in the hope of developing a way to regrow lost limbs, his own included. He has set up shop in New York with the help of a grant from Oscorp Industries in an Easter Egg. In addition, the film featured Alfred Molina in a cameo as Otto Octavius, who’s working with Connors, using his (as of yet benign) cybernetic arms to mix the radioactive liquid into the reptilian cell samples to induce mutation (in one scene Otto offers to build Connors a prosthetic limb, but Connors insists that only his “true arm” will suffice). Of course, a spider is inadvertently exposed to the radiation and ultimately bites Peter Parker, who is visiting Dr. Connors’ lab on a school trip. Thus, Spider-Man’s powers are ironically bestowed upon him by three of his greatest future enemies.
J. JONAH JAMESON stands behind his desk as phones ring, people run about, and papers are dropped off in big piles, the angry center of a storm of stress. PETER stands by ready to take orders.
JAMESON: Stan, check the police blotter on this…Spider Guy! I’m sure there’s a criminal record! Oswald, find out what The Times is reporting! Parker, get some incriminating pictures of Spider Guy in the act! If the cops won’t take down this criminal, then we will! (hits desk)
PETER: Um, but what if Spider-Man is actually trying to help pe…
JAMESON: Are you still here, Parker? Get the hell out of my office! (grabs a woman by the arm) And Missy, by all that is holy get to Dick’s Men’s Wear and get me that Seersucker Suit! You can take that…other suit back to Sears. (quietly to her face) And (ahem) never make that mistake again, do you hear me?
MISSY starts to walk off when JAMESON grabs her arm again.
JAMESON: (looks left and right; speaks quietly) On second thought leave the old suit, at least through the weekend, ok?
R. Lee Ermey c1990 vs. J. Jonah Jameson (Image sources “imdb.com” & “aminoapps.com”)
In addition to Spidey and the villains, the film recruits Jessica Tandy as Aunt May, George Gaynes as Uncle Ben, and the gorgeous Fay Masterson as Peter’s unrequited love interest Mary Jane. They even bring in character actor R. Lee Ermey as J. Jonah Jameson. Not to mention Stan Lee’s cameo as a reporter. And, indeed, it is Peter’s relationships with these coworkers and loved ones rather than his battles with The Lizard that are the heart of the story. We agonize with Peter when, due to his own arrogance, Uncle Ben dies. We sympathize with Aunt May as she gives so much love to Peter. We feel for Peter as he deals with his abusive boss J. Jonah Jameson, who hates Spiderman. And we long along with Peter and Mary Jane as fate constantly seems to intervene to keep them apart. And the central lesson of “with great power comes great responsibility” feels true and earned.
Fay Masterson c1990 vs. classic Mary Jane (Image sources Irama Gallery & “pinterest.com”)
And all of this was framed by an epic early 1990s soundtrack[3] featuring musical artists from New York, featuring They Might be Giants (including, ironically given the song it’s parodying, “Particle Man”) and the Hip Hop artists of the Queens/Brooklyn Juice Crew. It also included original songs by They Might be Giants (“The Spidey Swing”) and “King of the Beat Box” Biz Markie[4] (“(Ya’ Got me) Crawlin’ tha Walls”).
As stated, Spider-Man was a blockbuster hit, making over $370 million internationally against its $39 million budget (a nearly 10-to-1 return on investment!), and it went on to spawn two highly successful sequels, 1993’s Spider-Man 2, directed by Robert Zemeckis and with Alfred Molina reprising his role as Doctor Octopus and introducing Joe Morton as Norman Osborn in a cameo, and 1995’s Spider-Man 3, directed by Joss Whedon with Joe Morton reprising his role as Norman Osborn a.k.a. The Green Goblin, Henry Simmons playing his son Harry, Peter’s best friend from college and future nemesis, and Rachel Blanchard as new love interest Gwen Stacy[5]. The third film even briefly introduced Ethan Erickson as Eddie Brock, setting up a possible future Venom appearance.
But Spider-Man did more than kick off a series of sequels. Coming back-to-back with Batman, it reinvigorated the comic book superhero film, which had been languishing since Supergirl’s poor performance. Warner Brothers immediately greenlit a Superman film and began exploring other characters in the DC stable, including Wonder Woman. Disney/Marvel, meanwhile, began pursuing another popular Marvel franchise, The Fantastic Four.
And thus, the great Marvel-DC rivalry leaped off of the pages of comics and onto the big screen.
The ultimate winner would be we, the fandom.
[1] In tone it will be similar to the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films from our timeline, moving back and forth between sincerity and semi-self-awareness.
[2] He is discovered based on his role in the ABC miniseries It (1990). And alas, this classic commercial is now butterflied:
[3] Hat tip to @Igeo654, @GrahamB, and @jpj1421
[4] Requiem in pace, Biz!
[5] Alfred Molina is just so damned perfect as Doc Ock that it’s hard to imagine an alternate casting. He looks the part so much it’s uncanny. Joe Morton gets cast as Norman based on his nuanced performance as Miles Dyson in T2 and Henry Simmons gets cast based upon his strong performance in Above the Rim. Both were in part approached based on the fact that the casting director mistakenly thought that Norman and Harry Osborn were Black or biracial based upon some of the comics images that make them appear so due to skin tone and hair. Zemeckis and Whedon decided to “just go with it” since Morton had a great screen test and since the added racial subtext made the role that much more impactful.
From Swords and Spaceships Magazine, July 2012
So once again Spider-Man is getting rebooted. Go figure. But let’s take a moment to appreciate the very first time that Spidey came to the big screen, 1991’s Spider-Man, produced and released by MGM Studios with groundbreaking special effects courtesy of the Disney/Henson Creatureworks. With a then-unknown Seth Green in the title role and some star power via Liam Neeson as the Lizard, the film was a hit and launched a film empire, and a Marvel-DC film rivalry, that remains with us today.
First off, the plot was nothing that would amaze folks too much today. It’s pretty much a bog standard three-act “Peter Parker is an angry, picked-on nerd, Peter gets bitten by radioactive spider, Peter does what he wants as Spider-Man damn the consequences, Peter loses Uncle Ben due to his own arrogance, Peter learns that with great powers comes great responsibility, Peter battles the villain and saves the day, Peter is a humbler hero, but now has to hide his secret identity to protect the people he loves” plot that we’ve seen in various forms over the years. But what made it stand out at the time is that this was mostly new ground for movie audiences in 1991. Because, believe it or not, no one in 1991 but comics nerds really knew that much about Spidey save what he looked like and the basics of his powers (e.g. “shoots webs and climbs walls”). You see, your average 1991 audience member’s only real experience with their Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man was that maybe they saw the Electric Company shorts or reruns of the old cartoons when they were kids.
UNCLE BEN: You’re a man now, Peter, and being a man means gaining new power.
PETER: You have no idea.
UNCLE BEN: But remember, Peter: with great power comes great responsibility.
PETER sighs and rolls his eyes.
Spider-Man in 1991 was a massive creative risk. Heck, the only reason why MGM head Tom Wilhite even gave Spidey the green light was because of the massive success of the 1989 Warner Brothers Batman, directed by Sam Raimi. Because while superhero films are a dime a dozen today, back in 1991 having your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man on the Big Screen was a Big Deal. And what was an even Bigger Deal were the groundbreaking special effects.
Yea, not nearly this good, but damned good for 1991 (Image source “that-yandere-life.tumbler.com”)
You see, in 1990 computer effects were still in their infancy and modern chromakey (“green screen”) effects still in their awkward adolescence. Disney and Lucasfilm had experimented with a few added in here and there over the years, but for Spider-Man, Disney effects head Brian Henson, son of Muppets creator Jim Henson, decided to skip evolution and go straight to revolution. He and his team engineered all sorts of amazing rigs and lifts for their “Green Box” studio, including a massive thing they called the Christmas Ornament that could rotate an actor or model in three axes and record the accelerations as vector data. They had a “baldo” body rig that could convert physical motions directly into digital vector wireframes in conjunction with motion capture tech and could even be “replayed” back into scale animatronic models to allow for amazingly lifelike model work without resorting to stop motion. They had also developed advances in digital compositing from their years of animation work that managed to minimize the “halo” and “shimmer” effects that tended to affect chromakey effects of the time (such unintended effects can be readily seen in 1988’s Willow or 1989’s The Judgement of Anubis).
I could go on for hours, but, really, check out the behind-the-scenes effects featurettes on the VCD.
(Image source “hipcomic.com”)
So, the effects still hold up fairly well today, even if they are obviously dated. There’s still a slight “shimmer” when Spidey swings through the city and the number of big swinging effects is kept to a minimum for exactly this reason. Well, that and the sheer workload of this methodology (reportedly 3 months of work was required for each minute of screen time on the effects). In the end it was the quality and complexity of the motions and how they framed them that make the effects work more than the raw photorealism, and much was accomplished the old-fashioned way, with camera angles, framing, editing, and dolly work rather than computers.
Seen today, Spider-Man still seems to swing effortlessly though the city, fairly realistically embedded into his environment. For the time it was jaw-dropping.
By comparison, the wall-crawling and ceiling-crawling effects were all managed by simple sets and camera tricks, no computers required. An old-fashioned “rotating room” set of the type that let Fred Astaire dance up the walls in 1951’s The Royal Wedding was employed, proving that some effects never die.
The Lizard, meanwhile, is mostly a combination of prosthetics and animatronics, but by this point the Creatureworks had mastered that art, so he holds up extremely well, arguably better than later CG interpretations, though you wonder what they could have done at the time with the CG skin effects ILM perfected just a year later for Death Becomes Her. As an interesting bit of trivia, the Creature Effects were supervised by Muppets alum Richard Hunt in one of his last roles before his illness left him too sick to work.
THE LIZARD breaks through the wall and shrieks at SPIDER-MAN.
SPIDER-MAN: Yeesh, what’s with the commotion, Komodo?
THE LIZARD charges and SPIDER-MAN leaps straight up out of the way just in time as THE LIZARD shatters the desk he was on. SPIDER-MAN now hangs upside down from the ceiling on a web.
SPIDER-MAN: (points) You look familiar. Have we met?
THE LIZARD shrieks and slashes at SPIDER-MAN, who dodges again and again, somersaulting across the ceiling.
SPIDER-MAN: (holds up finger) Wait, I got it: are you my Aunt’s alligator luggage?
And yet what made Spider-Man a blockbuster hit that codified a new era of superhero films was the Joss Whedon screenplay, brought to life by director Frank Oz, who by this point was gaining a brilliant reputation as an effects movie director who also brought lots of heart and humanity to the pictures. The film was full of that quippy, playful dialog, complex characterization, and clever, twisting narrative that is now associated with Whedon and the borderline self-awareness and sense of “the absurd in the normal” that’s become a hallmark of Oz’s work[1]. To play Peter Parker, the teen-turned-superhero, they found young character actor Seth Green. Now a paragon of Geek Culture, Green at the time was best known for small TV roles and commercials[2]. Spider-Man was his first lead role in a film. Despite his youth and relative inexperience, Green gave the role a very naturalistic feel, moving back and forth between angst-ridden teen and friendly but smartassed webslinger.
Seth Green c1990 (from It) vs Peter Parker (Image sources “IMDB.com” & “quora.com”)
For the villain Dr. Curt Connors/The Lizard, they found Dead Poet’s Society lead Liam Neeson, who gave the role the deep pathos and relatability that makes The Lizard such a tragic villain. Neeson would occasionally don the prosthetics for close-ups of The Lizard, which he hated, but most of the fight scenes with The Lizard would be played by the imposing Brian Thompson, who was finding it hard to break out in Hollywood despite the relative success of He Man and so had started falling back on prosthetics work to pay the bills, a “fallback” that would become a career for him.
DR. CURT CONNORS speaks to PETER and his CLASSMATES. In the background DR. OCTAVIUS uses his artificial arms to mix strange liquids behind a glowing force field. CLOSE UP on a tiny spider, that crawls out of the containment field and slips down on a web to the floor.
CONNORS: As you can see, Dr. Octavius is mixing the radioactive substrate into the isolated reptilian DNA samples. The substrate will induce mutations in the genes, which we can then explore for desirable traits like accelerated cell growth.
PETER: (snaps picture) Um…are you sure that randomly mixing radioactive stuff into the blueprints of life isn’t, I don’t know, asking for terrifying consequences beyond all human comprehension?
ZOOM IN on the spider as it climbs slowly up PETER’S leg.
CONNORS: The agricultural industry uses this technique for genetically modified crops all the time and you don’t see any negative effects in your food, do you?
PETER: I’ll ask the rutabaga next time we talk. Ouch! (slaps arm)
Liam Neeson c1990 vs. Dr. Curt Connors (Image sources “” & “cmro.travis-starnes.com”)
The tragedy of The Lizard is that Dr. Connors is a well-meaning veteran combat medic who lost his arm in battle and is exploring reptile genetics in the hope of developing a way to regrow lost limbs, his own included. He has set up shop in New York with the help of a grant from Oscorp Industries in an Easter Egg. In addition, the film featured Alfred Molina in a cameo as Otto Octavius, who’s working with Connors, using his (as of yet benign) cybernetic arms to mix the radioactive liquid into the reptilian cell samples to induce mutation (in one scene Otto offers to build Connors a prosthetic limb, but Connors insists that only his “true arm” will suffice). Of course, a spider is inadvertently exposed to the radiation and ultimately bites Peter Parker, who is visiting Dr. Connors’ lab on a school trip. Thus, Spider-Man’s powers are ironically bestowed upon him by three of his greatest future enemies.
J. JONAH JAMESON stands behind his desk as phones ring, people run about, and papers are dropped off in big piles, the angry center of a storm of stress. PETER stands by ready to take orders.
JAMESON: Stan, check the police blotter on this…Spider Guy! I’m sure there’s a criminal record! Oswald, find out what The Times is reporting! Parker, get some incriminating pictures of Spider Guy in the act! If the cops won’t take down this criminal, then we will! (hits desk)
PETER: Um, but what if Spider-Man is actually trying to help pe…
JAMESON: Are you still here, Parker? Get the hell out of my office! (grabs a woman by the arm) And Missy, by all that is holy get to Dick’s Men’s Wear and get me that Seersucker Suit! You can take that…other suit back to Sears. (quietly to her face) And (ahem) never make that mistake again, do you hear me?
MISSY starts to walk off when JAMESON grabs her arm again.
JAMESON: (looks left and right; speaks quietly) On second thought leave the old suit, at least through the weekend, ok?
R. Lee Ermey c1990 vs. J. Jonah Jameson (Image sources “imdb.com” & “aminoapps.com”)
In addition to Spidey and the villains, the film recruits Jessica Tandy as Aunt May, George Gaynes as Uncle Ben, and the gorgeous Fay Masterson as Peter’s unrequited love interest Mary Jane. They even bring in character actor R. Lee Ermey as J. Jonah Jameson. Not to mention Stan Lee’s cameo as a reporter. And, indeed, it is Peter’s relationships with these coworkers and loved ones rather than his battles with The Lizard that are the heart of the story. We agonize with Peter when, due to his own arrogance, Uncle Ben dies. We sympathize with Aunt May as she gives so much love to Peter. We feel for Peter as he deals with his abusive boss J. Jonah Jameson, who hates Spiderman. And we long along with Peter and Mary Jane as fate constantly seems to intervene to keep them apart. And the central lesson of “with great power comes great responsibility” feels true and earned.
Fay Masterson c1990 vs. classic Mary Jane (Image sources Irama Gallery & “pinterest.com”)
And all of this was framed by an epic early 1990s soundtrack[3] featuring musical artists from New York, featuring They Might be Giants (including, ironically given the song it’s parodying, “Particle Man”) and the Hip Hop artists of the Queens/Brooklyn Juice Crew. It also included original songs by They Might be Giants (“The Spidey Swing”) and “King of the Beat Box” Biz Markie[4] (“(Ya’ Got me) Crawlin’ tha Walls”).
As stated, Spider-Man was a blockbuster hit, making over $370 million internationally against its $39 million budget (a nearly 10-to-1 return on investment!), and it went on to spawn two highly successful sequels, 1993’s Spider-Man 2, directed by Robert Zemeckis and with Alfred Molina reprising his role as Doctor Octopus and introducing Joe Morton as Norman Osborn in a cameo, and 1995’s Spider-Man 3, directed by Joss Whedon with Joe Morton reprising his role as Norman Osborn a.k.a. The Green Goblin, Henry Simmons playing his son Harry, Peter’s best friend from college and future nemesis, and Rachel Blanchard as new love interest Gwen Stacy[5]. The third film even briefly introduced Ethan Erickson as Eddie Brock, setting up a possible future Venom appearance.
But Spider-Man did more than kick off a series of sequels. Coming back-to-back with Batman, it reinvigorated the comic book superhero film, which had been languishing since Supergirl’s poor performance. Warner Brothers immediately greenlit a Superman film and began exploring other characters in the DC stable, including Wonder Woman. Disney/Marvel, meanwhile, began pursuing another popular Marvel franchise, The Fantastic Four.
And thus, the great Marvel-DC rivalry leaped off of the pages of comics and onto the big screen.
The ultimate winner would be we, the fandom.
[1] In tone it will be similar to the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films from our timeline, moving back and forth between sincerity and semi-self-awareness.
[2] He is discovered based on his role in the ABC miniseries It (1990). And alas, this classic commercial is now butterflied:
[3] Hat tip to @Igeo654, @GrahamB, and @jpj1421
[4] Requiem in pace, Biz!
[5] Alfred Molina is just so damned perfect as Doc Ock that it’s hard to imagine an alternate casting. He looks the part so much it’s uncanny. Joe Morton gets cast as Norman based on his nuanced performance as Miles Dyson in T2 and Henry Simmons gets cast based upon his strong performance in Above the Rim. Both were in part approached based on the fact that the casting director mistakenly thought that Norman and Harry Osborn were Black or biracial based upon some of the comics images that make them appear so due to skin tone and hair. Zemeckis and Whedon decided to “just go with it” since Morton had a great screen test and since the added racial subtext made the role that much more impactful.
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This sounds like a great Spider-man movie!
Liam Neeson as the Lizard vs Seth Green as Peter Parker - nice casting there. Keeping Alfred Molina as Otto Octavius is also perfect- I esp like the way you/Whedon have layers the appearances in the trilogy so the B cameos become the ‘villain’ next time round, it’s very comic book plotting.
ITTL me would have seen, and been blown away with these visual and this movie in general and I bet he owns them on disk.
Norman Osborn by Joe Morton? I can actually see that working well, and I get the casting directors mistake some of the art is ambiguous- glad it worked out!
Sounds like a great movie series- what happened to 4 though please @Geekhis Khan?
More please!
Liam Neeson as the Lizard vs Seth Green as Peter Parker - nice casting there. Keeping Alfred Molina as Otto Octavius is also perfect- I esp like the way you/Whedon have layers the appearances in the trilogy so the B cameos become the ‘villain’ next time round, it’s very comic book plotting.
ITTL me would have seen, and been blown away with these visual and this movie in general and I bet he owns them on disk.
Norman Osborn by Joe Morton? I can actually see that working well, and I get the casting directors mistake some of the art is ambiguous- glad it worked out!
Sounds like a great movie series- what happened to 4 though please @Geekhis Khan?
More please!
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@Geekhis Khan Looks great. I did look up Holland Roden, I had never heard of her, and the IOTL actress may be a tad young for the part at 4 years old at time of filming.
Well, screwed that one up. I must have misread it as 1976.
EDIT: Changed to Fay Masterson, born 1974. She'll need to work on a Queens accent, but she could do it.
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Age appropriate actresses
Emily Perkins - Played Bev in the same IT miniseries that Green was in.
Jenny Lewis - From Troop Beverly Hills, and then became a musician IOTL
I was going to say Amy Adams but she didn't really start acting until 1994. And Heather Graham is just a tad too old.
Angelina Jolie was born in 1975 and has been working in Hollywood for ainite
Cameron Diaz was born in 1972, and on 17 magazine in 1990.
Kate Beckinsale was born in 1973, and made her tv debut in 1991
/Edit. I see the update, good choice!
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Hmmm, if Marvel has managed to do well financially at this time, does that mean the Clone Saga does not exist?
Nice version of Spidey! I wasn't expecting Seth Green or Neeson cast, but they're perfect for the roles. Also wasn't expecting the Doc Oc better-than-a-cameo, this version of the franchise is doing overtime to set up the broader universe!
This is totally head-canon based on reading the post just now, but I'd like to think this first glimpse of Octavius' multi-arm rig is a lot cruder than his later octopus arms, not even mounted on his back but pedestal-mounted and operated with a waldo-rig. Enough for fans-in-the-know to point and go 'oooooh', then you get to see the new and improved version in movie 2 before Otto's tragic accident.
That's an interesting point with Spiderman villains, actually: for every super-powered mercenary or rogue, there's usually a tragic figure turned to villainy from circumstance. I collected Spiderman comics in high school and still remember a running theme where Peter would try to convinced whoever he was fighting that they could reform, use their abilities for good.
This is totally head-canon based on reading the post just now, but I'd like to think this first glimpse of Octavius' multi-arm rig is a lot cruder than his later octopus arms, not even mounted on his back but pedestal-mounted and operated with a waldo-rig. Enough for fans-in-the-know to point and go 'oooooh', then you get to see the new and improved version in movie 2 before Otto's tragic accident.
That's an interesting point with Spiderman villains, actually: for every super-powered mercenary or rogue, there's usually a tragic figure turned to villainy from circumstance. I collected Spiderman comics in high school and still remember a running theme where Peter would try to convinced whoever he was fighting that they could reform, use their abilities for good.
Spider-Man sounds great and interesting, even being a DC guy I look forward to... other projects.
Does Seth Green still do It in 1990?
R. Lee as J. Jonah is a casting match made in heaven. But a Black Norman? Wow, that's probs gonna be interpreted by some as low key racist by some here (evil black man that's arrogant gets defeated by good moral white kid); also, if like in the 2002 film Osborn took inspiration from african masks, I wonder if something like it will happen here. Wonder if the comics will adapt this part. Darkman's obviously been butterflied, so makes sense Liam could have it. Molina is apparently impervious to butterflies.
Meanwhile, you have the obscure Meteor-Man, which was made at MGM and got a Marvel comic adaptation, even featuring appearences by (you guessed it) Spider-Man. If the same thing happens here, how about Peter gets a cameo in the movie?
Similarly, I wonder how Mystery Men will fare down the road, especially with changes in attitudes towards superhero media.
Nice to see that T2 is still around.
(maybe like a certain man of an iron alloy?)
Does Seth Green still do It in 1990?
R. Lee as J. Jonah is a casting match made in heaven. But a Black Norman? Wow, that's probs gonna be interpreted by some as low key racist by some here (evil black man that's arrogant gets defeated by good moral white kid); also, if like in the 2002 film Osborn took inspiration from african masks, I wonder if something like it will happen here. Wonder if the comics will adapt this part. Darkman's obviously been butterflied, so makes sense Liam could have it. Molina is apparently impervious to butterflies.
Meanwhile, you have the obscure Meteor-Man, which was made at MGM and got a Marvel comic adaptation, even featuring appearences by (you guessed it) Spider-Man. If the same thing happens here, how about Peter gets a cameo in the movie?
Similarly, I wonder how Mystery Men will fare down the road, especially with changes in attitudes towards superhero media.
Nice to see that T2 is still around.
There was another actress who could have played Mary Jane who was acting at this time: Emily Warfield. She starred in 1991 in the film The Man In The Moon with Sam Waterson (before he was in Law and Order), Tess Harper and, in her debut role, Reese Witherspoon (who also started in commercials), who played her character's sister (who, funnily enough, would have been a perfect Gwen Stacy if Spiderman had been made in the mid-1990s)...
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Shouldn't Spider-Man be two words?
Is this suggesting the possibility of a 'Cinematic Universe'?
Does this mean that CGI will primarily enhance practical effects instead of completely replacing practical effects. A good example of the dichotomy of the two philosophy can be seen between the 2011 The Thing and Harbinger Down.
See above.
I admit that I was surprised to learn that Seth Green was cast as the Wall Crawler, but damn, that image makes him a dead ringer for the Ditko Spidey. All they need is some brown hair dye.
What a coincidence! I also cast Joe Morton in Iron Age's Spider-Man, albeit as Joe Robertson who acted as a surrogate father-figure to Pete after Uncle Ben's death.
I'm more surprised that Spider-Man 3 included Norman Osborn as he was dead in the comics since 1973. That does make me wonder if the comics will resurrect him like they did OTL though I have my doubts that the much-reviled Clone Saga will unfold as badly as it did or at all.
Hm. I wonder when the new Superman film will be released--my instincts say around 1993 or 1994. Anyone have any ideas of who should wear the cape this time? American Magic (Redux) cast Billy Zane in the role and I cast Brendan Fraser in Iron Age. And please, please, please, @Geekhis Khan I implore you to use Brainiac as the primary antagonist as OTL Hollywood only uses Lex Luthor or General Zod.
As for other DC characters, Wonder Woman is a given. Green Lantern and Aquaman may be beyond the technology of the nineties. Flash maybe be doable because the OTL television show was able to execute those special effects. Hell, I can imagine that it may have still aired on CBS to ride on the coattails of Batman's success and may have lasted another season with a better timeslot.
If DC/WB really wanted to throw the gauntlet down to Marvel/Disney, why not put Firestorm: The Nuclear Man into production? The character is the creation of Gerry Conway AKA the man who killed Gwen Stacy, and is similar to Spider-Man in many respect, albeit with a caveat. The character is a composite being made for high school student Ronnie Raymond and nuclear physicist Martin Stein so it could be part buddy comedy in the vein of Lethal Weapon with Raymond as the "driver" of the Firestorm identity and Stein as the advisor. Hell, Conway had transitioned to television. Perhaps WB could convince him to write a draft of the screenplay?
As for Fantastic Four, methinks it would be wise for Marvel/Disney to green light an X-Men film pronto because they were Marvel's top-selling comic in the 90s.
Love the Spider-Man (please remember the hyphen!!!) post. Seth Green is honestly a perfect casting choice for the character, not going to lie.
If there are any personal changes though, I would probably make it so that Gwen (I can actually see a Betty and Veronica type relationship working on-screen between Gwen and Mary Jane) and Harry are introduced in the second film rather than the third. Also if the plan is to kill off Gwen in the third film like in the comics, then perhaps Gwen and Mary Jane’s introductions should be switched (Gwen introduced in first film, Mary Jane in second).
Also, I’m hoping that if the Clone Saga does occur ITTL, it will be closer to the original pitch, as seen in the 2009 Clone Saga miniseries which was based on the original pitch and is much better than the mess that actually occurred in the 90’s due to editorial interference and extensions created by Age of Apocalypse.
If anyone is curious on the history of that:
Also on a side note, I wonder if Mayday Parker (Peter and MJ’s daughter) will be born here in the comics, like she was supposed to in the original Clone Saga pitch.
If there are any personal changes though, I would probably make it so that Gwen (I can actually see a Betty and Veronica type relationship working on-screen between Gwen and Mary Jane) and Harry are introduced in the second film rather than the third. Also if the plan is to kill off Gwen in the third film like in the comics, then perhaps Gwen and Mary Jane’s introductions should be switched (Gwen introduced in first film, Mary Jane in second).
Bringing back Norman in the film though makes some degree of sense, considering his impact as a villain on Spider-Man’s life and his status as the original Green Goblin. Even if he’s been dead for years, the impact he left means he’s still known and recognized.
Also, I’m hoping that if the Clone Saga does occur ITTL, it will be closer to the original pitch, as seen in the 2009 Clone Saga miniseries which was based on the original pitch and is much better than the mess that actually occurred in the 90’s due to editorial interference and extensions created by Age of Apocalypse.
If anyone is curious on the history of that:
Also on a side note, I wonder if Mayday Parker (Peter and MJ’s daughter) will be born here in the comics, like she was supposed to in the original Clone Saga pitch.
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