The upcoming Marvel Studios reboot of the Spider-Man movie franchise will arrive on July 28, 2017. But many fans of the wall-crawler have been wondering if a third retelling of Spidey’s origin story is really necessary, after the Sam Raimi version in 2002 and Marc Webb’s Amazing Spider-Man in 2012. Some have even been suggesting that the upcoming Spider-Man movie should eschew the superhero’s origin altogether… and they are going to get their wish.
“In Spider-Man’s very specific case, where there have been two retellings of that origin in the last whatever it’s been – [thirteen] years – for us we are going to take it for granted that people know that, and the specifics,“ Kevin Feige, the President of Marvel Studios, told CraveOnline in a one-on-one interview at today’s junket for Avengers: Age of Ultron.
“It will not be an origin story,“ Feige continued. “But, with great power comes great responsibility. It is inherent to who his character is. But we want to reveal it in different ways and spend much more time focusing on this young high school kid in the MCU dealing with his powers.”
“There is a young kid [already] running around New York City in a homemade version of the Spider-Man costume in the MCU, you just don’t know it yet,“ he said, laughing.
Related: Five Things the Sam Raimi Spider-Man Movies Did Right
So does does this mean Kevin Feige thinks the previous Spider-Man adapted certain aspects of the character correctly?
“Yeah. Sure, I think they did a lot of things really, really right. In particular the look of Spider-Man, and the emotion of Spider-Man, and the women in his life. I think there are a lot of things they haven’t done, which is A) his interactions with other heroes in the universe, because that was not possible, and also exploring more the notion, as the comics did for many, many years, as Ultimate Spider-Man did for ten years, [of] a much younger version of Spider-Man than we’ve seen in the movies. [The previous films] get him in and out of high school really fast.”
“And also the notion that he is very, very funny and very, very witty when he’s in that costume, swinging around,” Kevin Feige added. “Not as a standup comedian, obviously, but as almost his nervous energy, bothering the criminals with banter as much as with his powers. That’s something that I think we’re excited to explore.”
When asked about whether his compliments about “the look of Spider-Man” meant he favored any of the earlier iterations of the superhero’s costume, Kevin Feige responded, “Well, yeah, I mean look, I was more involved in the Raimi ones, and think they did a very good job. But that being said, we’ve already designed the costume, which is different than any of the ones that have come before. And yet ours is classic Spidey, as I think you’ll see.”
Related: Kevin Feige Answers Questions About Marvel’s Phase Three
Kevin Feige was also quick to point out that although the announcement of a Marvel Studios Spider-Man movie came after the official announcement of Marvel’s Phase Three films, it was a part of their plan all along. He just couldn’t officially announce it until the deal was set.
“Spider-Man we knew about when we were doing that announcement in October. It could have gone either way, and Marvel as you well know doesn’t announce announce anything officially until it’s set in stone. So we went forward with that Plan A in October, with the Plan B being, if it were to happen with Sony, how it would all shift,“ Feige told us, adding, “We’ve been thinking about it as long as we’ve been thinking about Phase Three.”
Come back to CraveOnline for our full interview with Kevin Feige – including updates on Captain America: Civil War and the Infinity Stones – later this month!
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
