Spidey 4: A Webcrawler No More!

That's a little more Stan-like. I was mostly wrong-- a new Spider-Man movie will get made, it just won't be Spider-Man 4. Thanks to script delays who knows what else behind-the-scenes shenanigans, director Sam Raimi and stars Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst are off the Spider-Man franchise, which will now apparently be-- jargon I loathe coming up-- "re-booted." With a new director and a new cast. It's set for release in 2012, by which time the world will no longer exist. That's the bad news.

The good news is, the new screenwriter is Jamie Vanderbilt, who wrote one of my favorite movies of the past 10 years, Zodiac. The new movie will start over, with puny Peter Parker as a high school student and the awesome kick-ass super-jock Flash Thompson throwing his weight around and letting everybody know who's really the Big Man on Campus, or BMOC, as the kids say. Flash Thompson is really cool and all the ladies... OW! You're breaking my arm, Flash! Cut it out, dude!

Okay, he's gone.

I guess "re-booting" is the newest Hollywood paradigm, thanks to the success of the Batman and James Bond franchises and the new Star Trek flick. Got a movie series you've run dry of ideas for? Just start over at the beginning with a new director and cast! Now we can remake... er... "re-imagine" movies that are less than a decade old! It's the best form of double dipping.

Oh, sorry. "Re-imagining" is out, what with the failures of such reimaginings as Planet of the Apes, Rollerball and Death Race 2000. Re-booting. That's what we do. We boot, then run it into the ground, then re-boot and do it all over again but with more flash and even choppier editing and louder music and more CGI so it's bigger and better but still essentially the same thing. Familiarity doesn't breed contempt, it puts asses in the seats!

But I don't know-- a good, solid screenplay and just the right casting in the leads could revitalize Spider-Man after the underwhelming third movie. It's just that I was stoked to see Raimi and Maguire back in webtastic action, hopefully going out on top rather than slinking off like... some... Marvel... villain... person...

I got nothing. I used up all my vitriol on the concept of "re-booting."