Spider-man... WTF?

So I'm a huge Spider-man fan. I always have been. I'm also a huge fan of the movies. I know some people don't like them. They aren't 100% accurate. People complain that Peter wasn't smart enough or that he wasn't enough of a smart arse. These things are in the movie but they're just portrayed in a very subtle way. More valid arguments are some of the changes to characters. The third film was mostly rubbish, though. But I don't see that as being the directors fault. The studios were forcing him to shove stuff in, like Venom and the Black costume, which he didn't even like. Ok, so it shows. Yeah in the movies he has organic webs instead of mechanical webshooters. But it's a change that makes sense.

But something they did get completely 100% right was the costume. I really feel strongly about this. Now that Sony is rebooting the Spider-man franchise with Andrew Garfield and a new director, they've gone with a new costume. And I'm sorry but it looks like utter shit.

This is Spider-man as he first appeared in "Amazing Fantasy." What a classic design. Simple, yet elegant. Eye catching. This Steve Ditko design has been celebrated for so long and with good reason. It's superb.

And there's the costume from the Sam Raimi movies. Looks great, right? Not only a great looking costume, but faithful, too.

So this is what we'll be seeing in the new movie:

Now here's the thing: That entire design smacks to me as change for the sake of change.

Ok, they wanted to make a new costume. Maybe something that looked different to the old movies. I can kinda understand that. The thing is, they didn't need to. Spider-man is the kind of character who can be played by many different actors. They could have used the same costume. Or kept the same basic design from the comics but used different materials for a different look.

One of the thing that annoys me about this is the way the colours look when photographed. The web lines are so thin you can barely even see them from even slightly far away. The changes don't seem to serve any functionality, in the shape of the lines on the costume and so forth. The whole thing just looks clunky.

And there's way too much blue. See how in the promotional shots they've tried to dull the colours and darken parts of the costume? (Like those absurd silver feet.) It's as if they know how off puting the fluro colours look.

They made all these changes that make the costume look just wrong. The biggest reason is that it's too similar to the old costume. All the blue looks weird because if you're gonna have the Spidey costume look so similar to the other one- these changes are gonna stand out in the wrong way. What I'm saying is that if you're going to have a change, then go all the way. They didn't go far enough. Personally I'd have loved to see the Alex Ross design which he came up with ten or so years ago.

It's slick bold and vastly different but retains just enough of the basic elements that people love and recognise on Spider-man. The eyes and mask, the basic red with webs and spider logo. Looks fantastic. I'd have loved to have seen it on screen. It's strength is that it dares to be different.

So they changed the costume just enough to make it look weird and wrong but not enough to give it a bold new look. The result is something that just doesn't look quite right. Regardless of the costume I am still hoping the project will be good. Andrew Garfield seems like a great choice to play Peter.

But I still think the original movie costume was absolutely PERFECT.

Todays song is a bit of Ramones: