David Fincher is an excellent filmmaker, known for making cult classics like Fight Club and Seven. Known for his mastery of visual storytelling and creating deeply immersive cinematic scenes, Fincher is one meticulous filmmaker who has a knack for exploring dark and complex themes.
And to have him direct a Spider-Man movie seems unnatural. Yet that was exactly what was supposed to happen and Fincher’s plan was such that Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker would have been left heartbroken in the same way as Andrew Garfield.
David Fincher Would Have Left Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker Heartbroken
David Fincher is an excellent filmmaker, and if he were to direct a Spider-Man movie, suffice to say it would have been unlike any typical superhero movie. Known for making complex and psychologically driven masterpieces, Fincher was once very close to directing a superhero movie, that would have changed the very genre.
Before Sam Raimi could create his critically acclaimed and groundbreaking Spider-Man movies, the Fight Club director was also in talks with the studio. Even after Tobey Maguire‘s feat as the web-slinger ended, Fincher was roped in for a reboot.
As per his interview with io9 (via Geek Tyrant), this is the synopsis of the movie that we would have gotten instead of the original Spider-Man trilogy and later, Andrew Garfield’s The Amazing Spider-Man movies.
“My impression what Spider-Man could be is very different from what Sam [Raimi] did or what Sam wanted to do. I think the reason he directed that movie was because he wanted to do the Marvel comic superhero. I was never interested in the genesis story. I couldn’t get past a guy getting bit by a red and blue spider. It was just a problem… It was not something that I felt I could do straight-faced. I wanted to start with Gwen Stacy and the Green Goblin, and I wanted to kill Gwen Stacy.”
Wanting to keep Gwen Stacy as more of a central character, Fincher added how the movie would have tackled the origin story of Peter Parker and eventually played out.
“The title sequence of the movie that I was going to do was going to be a ten minute — basically a music video, an opera, which was going to be the one shot that took you through the entire Peter Parker [backstory]. Bit by a radio active spider, the death of Uncle Ben, the loss of Mary Jane, and [then the movie] was going to begin with Peter meeting Gwen Stacy. It was a very different thing, it wasn’t the teenager story. It was much more of the guy who’s settled into being a freak.”
More of an older-mature take on the mythos, Fincher’s unmade Spider-Man movie would have given Peter Parker a crushing loss and would have left him deeply despaired.
David Fincher’s Take on Spider-Man Was Rejected by The Studio
Back in 1999, David Fincher was all too willing to direct a superhero flick, particularly Spider-Man. So off he went to pitch the movie, skipping the whole bitten by a radioactive spider part event, despite it being the reason why Peter Parker is a web-slinger now.
However, unfortunately for Fincher and his fans, the studio rejected his idea. In an interview with The Guardian last year, he stated,
“They weren’t fucking interested. And I get it. They were like: ‘Why would you want to eviscerate the origin story?’’And I was like: ‘Cos it’s dumb?’ That origin story means a lot of things to a lot of people, but I looked at it and I was like: ‘A red and blue spider?’ There’s a lot of things I can do in my life and that’s just not one of them.”
Unable to understand the cruciality of the scene, Fincher was thus rejected and the gig went to Sam Raimi. After all these years, one cannot help but wonder how such a movie would have turned out and if would it have been as instrumental to the superhero genre as Raimi’s trilogy.
Another what-if that we would never find out, the prospect of Fincher directing a Spider-Man flick seems so exciting that it’s a shame we didn’t get to see it.
Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy can be streamed on Disney+.
