Sam Raimi may or may not be winding up his involvement with the Spider-Man franchise with Spider-Man 3, an action-packed, villain-filled adventure starring returning Spider-Man cast members Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, and James Franco. If Spider-Man 3 is the final chapter involving Raimi as director, then Spidey fans should be pleased with how Raimi wraps up a couple of the storylines from 1 and 2 in what could be his last Spider-Man film.
The Challenge of Coming Up with a Story for Spider-Man 3: Sam Raimi worked with his brother Ivan and screenwriter Alvin Sargent to get the story right for the third Spider-Man movie. “This time the story was pretty much set up by the first two pictures,” said Raimi. “What wasn’t set up by the first two pictures was really influenced greatly from all the great writers and artists of the Marvel comic books of the first 45 years. It was more about sorting through the material and trying to figure out how best to conclude these story lines, and where next our character Peter Parker had to grow to as a human being.”
Embracing the Dark Side of Peter Parker: Asked to discuss that aspect of the character, writer/director Raimi said, “Well, in this story, Peter Parker falls victim to his own pride. He starts to believe all the press clippings about himself, that he’s really this hero and someone great. He starts to be afraid that he isn’t that person and doesn’t want to act any other way than the person that’s right. That pride manifests itself in a much darker way.
Working on those sequences with Tobey Maguire and the dark Spider-Man, that was a difficult thing for me, actually. It wasn’t fun for me because I didn’t like those sequences. I didn’t like watching Spider-Man go bad. It was unpleasant and I kept worrying, ‘Gee, do I really have to do this to show how rageful and vengeful he is? Do we really have to show how pride can destroy you?’ But my brother kept telling me, ‘Yes, because he’s going to find himself again.’”
Settling on Two New Villains: Raimi said it came about in different ways. “Here’s what we did. We first decided to approach the problem like this. Where’s Peter Parker again in the second picture as a human being? He’s a kid in all these stories. They’re kind of coming of age stories and he learns aspects of growing up. Different life lessons in each of these films and often times, the comic books. So my brother and I spoke for quite some time and we felt that the most important thing Peter right now has to learn is that this whole concept of him as the avenger or him as the hero, he wears this red and blue outfit, with each criminal he brings to justice he’s trying to pay down this debt of guilt he feels about the death of Uncle Ben. He considers himself a hero and a sinless person versus these villains that he nabs. We felt it would be a great thing for him to learn a little less black and white view of life, and that’s he not above these people. He’s not just the hero and they’re not just the villains. They were all human beings and that he himself might have some sin within him. And that other human beings, the ones he calls criminals, have some humanity within them and that the best we can do in this world is to not strive for vengeance, but for forgiveness. So that was what we felt would be the next broadening of his awareness as a human being.
We decided that’s the journey Peter Parker has to go on. As I said, what villain will best represent the conflict that can dramatize his journey? If the hero runs into this conflict, how can he learn forgiveness? We’ll make the villain piece someone that is absolutely unforgivable in Peter’s eyes to really take him to a place where the audience understands his desire for vengeance and they feel it. So the kids will think, ‘Yes bring the Sandman down, Spider-Man.’ By the end of the piece, you want his journey with Spider-Man so they’d say, ‘Actually as my hero the best thing that you could do right now, the thing I’d rather have you do is forgive this man.’
We thought that would be a worthwhile summer picture and a good story for the kids, if we could incorporate that. We said, ‘Okay, we’re going to make it a villain that we can make Peter Parker really feel his desire vengeance against him in a real heavy way so the audience has a sense of relief when spoiler deleted,’ so it means something to them dramatically. We chose a villain that did not have such a detailed back story that I would be in defiance with those comic book fans.”
Raimi continued, “Really, we wanted someone we weren’t in defiance of, because the fans do love the characters. We wanted to add to the history of one that was slightly less detailed. The Sandman I always thought was a great visual character and could be a formidable foe against Spider-Man from all the great Marvel comic books, and yet his background wasn’t so detailed or defined that this would be in conflict. We added to the story that he in fact was the murderer of Uncle Ben.
We also liked the idea of, by adding this, it’s all about the awareness of things. Peter Parker sees things as a proud person in this picture in a very narrow way. He’s right and they’re wrong. It’s all about taking on other points of view. There are so many more truths than the simple truths of good or bad or the name as perceived. For instance, that man didn’t kill his uncle as he had thought. It was another man. This is just an example of why we felt it was right. But, we also wanted something you could look back at the first picture and turn the whole thing on its head, so that by the time you got to the end it was more than some of the parts. We thought that it would be an interesting experience with the audience. And what they had seen in the first part was true, but there was so much more to the story. Like with Peter Parker, they didn’t have the whole truth and they thought they did. …That’s how the Sandman came about. We tried to develop a character that would represent a conflict for our hero."
Page 2: Sam Raimi on Redemption, CGI, and Organic Web Shooters
