James Cameron is known for some of the best franchises in Hollywood. The Oscar-winning director has been busy with his Avatar franchise for the past decade. Recently, he claimed that the motion capture tech of The Way of Water is much better than Marvel movies. However, the Titanic director once had his own plans for the Marvel superhero, Spider-Man. During the 1990s Marvel was not as big as it is today, and he was not able to continue with his plans.
In his book Tech Noir: The Art of James Cameron, the Avatar director talked about his struggles to bring his plan into action. The book includes multiple sketches, paintings, concept art, and his vision for Spider-Man, which he was planning to introduce with his film.
James Cameron’s Spider-Man Has a Darker Tone
Tech Noir: The Art of James Cameron, explores the creative evolution of the Aliens director. The art archive includes details about his several projects, along with his vision for Spider-Man. Cameron also talked about the film, he once intended to make, in his interview with Screen Crush during the release of his book.
And the film was once again a topic of discussion after Slash Film’s Chris Evangelista shared a snap of his illustration on Twitter. He tweeted, “James Cameron’s drawings for his never-made SPIDER-MAN movie.”
The tweet includes two pictures side by side. One of the images showed the Wall Crawler in the usual red and blue outfit and the other one seem to be in the symbiote costume. However, both illustrations seem to have a dark tone.
While the first image seems to be covered in shadows and looks straight at the viewer, the second one is covered in darkness. James Cameron considers it the greatest movie that he never made.
In his interview with Screen Crush, he revealed that he did consider consulting Stan Lee before working on the project. He also claimed that it would have been very different.
James Cameron’s Take on Spider-Man
James Cameron was working on a Spider-Man movie. Although he consulted Stan Lee to work on the film, he was unable to bring his vision to the big screen. Marvel sold the rights to the character, shutting the plans for the Ture Lies director’s take on Spider-Man.
He also shared that he tried to convince 20th Century Fox to buy the rights for the character, but by then everything was too complicated, and the studio did not want to get in the middle of that. Sharing the concept of his film, he said, “I wanted to make something that had a kind of gritty reality to it.”
“So you’re in a real world, you’re not in some mythical Gotham City. Or Superman and the Daily Planet and all that sort of thing, where it always felt very kind of metaphorical and fairytale-like.”
He planned to introduce Peter Parker as a socially awkward high-school kid, who would have faced several problems after getting his superpowers. Cameron also suggested switching the technical web shooters.
“Going with the biological web shooters as being part of his biological adaptation to the radioactive spider bite made sense to me,” Cameron explained.
Although James Cameron was not unable to put out his vision, his suggestion about biological web shooters was included in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man franchise, which is available to stream on Disney+.
James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water is playing in theatres.
Source: Tech Noir: The Art of James Cameron
