Hey folks, Harry here... and ya know what? We've got some damn fine little tidbits about the state of Sam Raimi's mind when thinking about the practicality of bringing Spider-Man to life. Also, after having talked with Sam Raimi... one of the greatest comic book artists to ever work with SPIDER-MAN comments upon his thoughts and confidence in Raimi after talking with him about the film. On another note, this one... not so positive... it has been said to me by people in the know that the animatics as they currently exist right now for the effects dynamic moments don't quite have the punch they need in terms of filmic excitement. SONY... Show these folks CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON.... that'll shape em up. Don't worry though folks... the whole reason animatics are done is to cheaply experiment with the motion of very expensive effects work. I trust Raimi's eye.
Hey Harry... George Berryman from Hero Realm here.
Week before last I spoke with current Spider-Man comic artist John Romita Jr. ( I know you know who he is ;) )about the Spider-Man movie, and he told me about what Raimi had asked him when he met with him. I'll highlight the specific references to Romita and Raimi's conversation in bold. Here's what was said:
GB: Along those lines, speaking of the Internet, a furor has erupted recently over the movie and the fact that Sam Raimi wants to set up Peter Parker with organic webshooters instead of mechanical. What are your thoughts on the webshooters in the film?
JRjr: I didn’t like the idea when I first heard it and it came from Cameron. Didn’t like the way it was used. I talked to them about Spider-Man—but they didn’t want to pay me so I didn’t get to work on it. I don’t think Raimi can be second-guessed at this stage, because he’s a pro and an experienced guy so let’s see what he does. I don’t have a problem with it. It adds an eerie sort of Tim Burton thing to it, that if it’s controversial and if it pisses off a lot of fans it’s unfortunate because there’s nothing you can do about it. A lot of what was in the Batman films pissed fans off, but they became popular movies. Well—the first one was great.
GB: See, I’m different—I liked Batman Returns way more than the first Batman movie.
JRjr: Well I actually didn’t like the second one. The first one… I liked Keaton but not Nicholson, though everyone thinks he was brilliant. But I’m talking about commercial assessment. I think Spider-Man will have a lot of commercial appeal, but I don’t know if it will be as big as the X-Men. But Raimi is a good man and he knows what he’s doing. But he needs somebody to be where he asked me to be—he was telling me, “I need to know the logistics of when the webbing hits a wall, what happens to it, and when it comes out of his wrist what does it look like, and does he grab a hold of it as soon as it comes out, and when he swings the middle of canyon of buildings how does he how can he swing down the middle when he’s stuck to one building when he should be slamming into one building?” Good questions, and he needs someone to explain that stuff. I gave him a couple of hours of advice that I didn’t get paid for, but they need someone to really spell the whole thing out to him. But you can’t second guess a guy like Raimi. I don’t have a problem with the organic webshooters—I did at first, because I’d like to see Peter Parker be the genius he is, a wiz…
There ya go. This interview was done the week before last, before the news about Alex Ross not being aboard came out on your site.
Romita Jr. also has a short film coming ( he produced it) out called "I Just Draw," which is a semi-biographical story of Paul Powers, a Hollywood storyboard artist. Romita has a cameo in the film, and it also has SCTV's Dave Thomas in it.
Here is the link to our site that contain the second part of the Romita interview.
Thanks! Have a great day!
--George Berryman,
