Sam Raimi Talks Original Spider-Man Movie’s Controversial Element

Spider-Man still is very much on the minds of many fans due to the success and nostalgia of Spider-Man No Way Home. But, people are also going back and looking at the original Spider-Man trilogy by Sam Raimi, and the Amazing Spider-Man films and giving them another chance in some ways.

Which is good, because as Sam Raimi and screenwriter David Koepp noted in a special piece about the original Spider-Man trilogy, fans weren’t excited when one specific element of the story leaked: Peter Parker’s organic web-shooters.

“I was aware of it, and it wasn’t a good thing for me,” Raimi said of the reaction. “I didn’t have a great experience of the fans.”

“There was an internet culture that was just starting to flex its ability to be ugly,” Koepp echoed. “That was probably my first experience with what we’ve come to deal with all the time now, which is the distraction of people telling you what they think your movie should be before, during and after you’re making it, and doing it very publicly.”

“People had a lot of opinions about what we should and shouldn’t do, who we should hire as the director, who we should hire to play Peter, everything else,” producer Amy Pascal echoed. “But it was nothing in comparison to what it’s like now.”

“I don’t think that the fans thought I was the right person to direct Spider-Man in general,” Raimi added. “And then the organic web-shooters – when the fans found out I was going that way, they tried to have me removed from the picture.”

“I stand by the organic web slingers as a pretty cool idea,” Koepp revealed. “Wasn’t even my idea.”
In fact, the idea was that of James Cameron, who actually wrote the first attempted script for the live-action movie. Still, it was eventually beloved, and became a key element of the story for the trilogy, and the next two versions did have the mechanical web-shooters so it all worked out in the end!

Source: Variety