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Spider-Man 2002 vs. Spider-Man 1992
Surly Robot writes "Do you like your Spider-Man CG or non-CG? Here's an article that I wrote for the Baltimore City Paper about the guy who made his own Spidey flick ten years ago, and what he thinks of the new movie." Another submitter sent in a link to view Green Goblin's Last Stand (Microsoft format unfortunately, but it works with Codeweavers).
Fantastic stories and imagination should not be contrained by mere reality, computers let creative truly push the envelope.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
Tobey Maguire Got the Big Bucks, but Dan Poole Got to Spider-Man First
By Maurice Martin
Unless you've spent the last six months in an al Qaeda cave, you already know that the first blockbuster film of the blockbuster season is Spider-Man, opening May 3. This comic-book adaptation features Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker, the high-school geek who gains superpowers from a radioactive spider bite, and Willem Dafoe as the villainous Green Goblin. The trailers promise an over-the-top super-slugfest, the two foes wielding fantastic weapons thanks to computer-generated special effects. Rumor says Sony Pictures dropped nearly $140 million on the film before marketing, but it's practically money in the bank: Spider-Man has a fanatical, worldwide fan base.
One Baltimore Spider-fan is not impressed, though. "There's no excuse for that stupid raised webbing--it looks like cake frosting," Dan Poole says, referring to a detail of Maguire's costume that departs from the comic-book version. And don't get him started on those "organic web shooters"--another departure made by Spider-Man director Sam Raimi. In the comic, Spidey shoots webs from two mechanical devices of his own invention. In the movie, webs come out of his body. "It makes me want to hang somebody," Poole says.
Poole isn't alone--Spider-Man fans tend to be purists. At www.no-organic-webshooters.com, more than 5,500 fans signed an online petition trying to get Raimi to stick more closely to the comic. But Poole speaks with authority--he's not only a fan, he made his own Spider-Man movie.
In 1992, Poole played Spider-Man in The Green Goblin's Last Stand, a 50-minute video that he also wrote, produced, and directed. He even did his own stunts. For one eye-popping shot, he and his cameraperson trespassed on an abandoned high-rise at the corner of Calvert and Water streets, where Poole swung on a rope four stories off the ground, Spider-style, with no net to catch him if he fell. Poole shot his movie in and around Baltimore, using local performers and tapping friends and relatives for help with costumes, equipment, and camera-work. He estimates his total cash expenditure at less than $400.
Bad dialogue, pre-CGI special effects, and irregular production values clearly mark GGLS as an amateur effort. But the stunts make it a must-see--Poole swings, leaps along high building ledges, rides atop a speeding car, and throws himself into every sort of obstacle. GGLS also benefits from a classic plot borrowed from two 1973 issues of Amazing Spider-Man. These featured the murder of Spidey's girlfriend, Gwen Stacy, at the hands of the Green Goblin--an unusually serious topic for a mainstream comic.
Poole's adventures have earned him the respect of two communities: Spider-Man fans and independent moviemakers. The former made GGLS an underground classic. The latter honored him with two awards at this year's Nodance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, which is dedicated to first-time and digital filmmakers. In addition, Poole has been interviewed for the Independent Film Channel, FilmThreat.com and Inside magazine.
Poole, 33, loves to bust on the new movie, though he's yet to see it (he bases his comments on stills, trailers, and interviews). But GGLS actually owes its existence to it--or, more specifically, to the new film's extraordinarily long development time. Because of legal issues surrounding the film rights to the title character, Spider-Man has been in development for more than 15 years. During the early 1990s, Terminator director James Cameron took on the project. When Poole heard this, he became obsessed with doing something to capture Cameron's attention and land himself a role in the film. GGLS was that something.
To Poole's disappointment, Cameron's production company refused to screen GGLS. (Cameron eventually left the Spider-Man project.) However, others did watch it. Poole made copies and distributed them to friends and to a magazine called Hero Illustrated. People started to make copies of his copies, and GGLS spread dub-by-dub among Spider-lovers throughout the '90s.
Chris Mason, Los Angeles-based co-founder of the fan site www.spidermanhype.com (now a part of www.superherohype.com), says his readers "have nothing but good things to say [about GGLS]. People are impressed by how insane Dan is. I mean, you can see him hanging by a rope from the side of a building. You know he's busting his balls to make a really cool Spider-Man."
In September 2000, in response to fan interest, Poole converted GGLS to streaming video and posted it on the Web at www.localorigination.com. In December 2000, when the number of GGLS downloads reached 100,000, Poole decided to make a documentary called The Real Spider-Man: The Making of The Green Goblin's Last Stand. By the time he finished it around April 2001, 1 million viewers had downloaded GGLS.
Marvel comics owns the characters, so Poole can't legally sell copies of GGLS. But he can sell a documentary about his own moviemaking efforts. Given the volume of questions about GGLS that have come his way, he hopes that the documentary will finally earn him some money. So far, the video version hasn't sold well. But in April, Poole released the DVD version of The Real Spider-Man, which includes GGLS as a free bonus track. He's hoping this will bump up sales.
The Real Spider-Man won the Best Documentary award from the Nodance Festival this January. "It's a real crowd pleaser," says Jim Boyd, Nodance founder and festival director. "It's got a vibe everybody can get behind--small film does good." Poole picked up a second Nodance award for Guerrilla Marketing, which he earned by trudging through the Park City snow in a Spider-Man vest, putting up posters for his movie.
People always remember the stunts in GGLS, and The Real Spider-Man shows just how much pain went into them, literally. Outtakes reveal Poole falling on his back and his head. He drops from the rafters of a warehouse onto a small stack of mats. He launches himself into a stack of barrels again and again and again. Like every moviemaker, Poole obsesses over getting the perfect shot. Unlike most moviemakers, he courts spinal trauma to get it. When a flip or a landing goes bad, you can hear Poole howl and curse--either from pain or artistic frustration. Or both.
The documentary also introduces some of the people who helped Poole make his movie, including friends from his home neighborhood of Hamilton and former classmates from Parkville Senior High. Eric Supensky created the Goblin mask, its hideously exaggerated, malevolent grin a faithful interpretation of the comic. Matt Holder helped with the script and later did some of the Goblin stunts. Poole's cousin Ray Schueler did a little of everything, including MacGyver-like repairs when equipment failed. Poole's mother made one of the Spider-Man costumes (though she doesn't appear in The Real Spider-Man). And he did look outside the 'hood for acting talent, casting local stage regular Jimi Kinstle as the Green Goblin and Allison Adams, at the time a Towson University student, as Gwen Stacy. (Poole says Adams was the first blond he talked to about the part who took it and the film seriously.)
Poole gives credit to his troops but claims the vision as his own. He's got strong opinions about how Spider-Man should look onscreen.
"Four colors drive the reader's eye in comic books," Poole says. In his mind, Raimi's film fails to retain that look. "Everything is just so shadowed," he says. "Spidey's face looks creepy. It's like bizarro-world Spider-Man."
GGLS has its faults, but Poole's battle royal between the red-and-blue hero and the green-and-purple villain is reverential to its source material. Berserk over Gwen's murder, Spidey gives the Goblin a savage beating. For this scene, Poole wore a torn Spidey mask. With one eye exposed, he looks like a flailing, demented cyclops. Behind the Goblin mask, you can see Kinstle's face awash in blood as he goads Spider-Man toward ultimate vengeance. Can Spider-Man kill? If he does, is he still a hero? The comic challenged readers with this question, and so does GGLS.
Ten years after finishing his movie, Poole contemplates some of the props that have been stored in his mother's garage for a decade. He holds up Spidey's shirt, its reds and blues still vibrant. He tries on Spidey's belt. "It still fits," he says. "It's just a little tighter."
Poole now works as a freelance videographer, editor, and producer. He sells The Real Spider-Man through his company's Web site, www.alphadogproductions.net. He's also working on a movie script with all-original characters--something with a superhero theme.
And he's still got the daredevil spirit. With no prompting, he climbs aboard the Goblin's flying machine as though preparing for another stunt. Another friend, Don Koch, built it to Poole's specifications using the comic as reference. It consists of a simple tube, two wings, and, when complete, a bat-shaped face. Even with a decade of grime, it retains its iconic power, like a childhood memory made real.
By contrast, the Goblin flier in the new movie is a complex, multijointed thing bristling with mysterious machinery. It looks so high-tech that Wired highlighted it in the magazine's May 2002 issue. Still, Poole will have none of it. Pointing to his flier, he says, "Don did what nobody in Hollywood will do. They're not capable of just doing this. They've got to put spikes and shit on it."
Could his harsh opinion of the film be a case of sour grapes? "I would get behind them if I thought it was good. Believe me," Poole says. "I would be bitter either way that I wasn't part of it, but I don't want it to suck." But, sight unseen, he contends the Hollywood version lacks the integrity true Spidey fans want to see on the big screen.
"It's all CGI," he laments. "It's got no heart."
Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
"Green Goblin's Last Stand" works just fine with MPlayer, provided you download the .asf file from its actual URL first.
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
I'm sure many will disagree, but I don't mind when movie directors change small things about a character like Spiderman if it adds to the story. In the article written by the submitter, the guy who made the original movie complains that Spiderman2002 will shoot webs from his own mutated body rather than contraptions made by Parker's own engineering. Personally, I prefer that as it makes him able to sling webs anytime(not just when he's suited up) and it doesn't require as much an explanation. If they made this movie with him inventing a web-slinging device, we'd all be arguing about the feasability this weekend!
Just my opinion.
42
Sure, you can always tell what is CG and what is not, but this movie has been what I have been dreaming of since I was a kid, I'll take a little "fakeness" to the CGI if it remains true to the comic . . . Spiderman doing crazy ass stuff swinging all around the city. You just can't do Spiderman without some insane special effects without being true to the comic, it will just come off looking like the mess that was the TV show.
I haven't seen the movie yet, but from the previews it looks like they have done an amazing job with the portrayal of Spiderman. This movie is going to be HUGE.
Dan Poole comes across as having a bad case of sour grapes. Sure, it's great to see some guy hanging it all out there one the edge, risking his life, etc., but it doesn't necessarily make for a better movie. There are other factors involved such as story, acting, etc.
Since Poole makes his comments without having seen the newest version, I tend to disqualify his commentary as having any validity.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
But hey, I was a fifth grader. I caught every episode.
Miko O'Sullivan
You know, we have to put this stuff in perspective. They're doing movies based upon comic books. The way I see it, there are two options: make something that doesn't make much sense which won't sell as well (like Dick Tracy), or completely alter the mood and how everything works (like TMNT, Incredible Hulk, Batman) to suit the time and place.
Comic books are rather like books: they can be timeless. Movies have a much harder time with that because your imagination can't fill in details that make the characters seem to fit in your present time - things like how they walk, what their clothing would look like if they where real, how they sound, etc.
Have you seen any spidey movies from the seventies? They are...VERY 70's. You almost expect Shaft to bust in and help Spidey out with the bad guys.
One final note: Organic web shooters? Raimi's on crack. Spiderman was Marvel's answer to Batman: a character who used his mind to figure out how to defeat his enemies. Nowhere is there a better reminder of that than in the fact that the webshooters where an invention.
Plus, I could totally see that going awry: Peter gets all hot 'n bothered by MJ, and, completely distracted, he shoots webbing all over the place, random-like. Of course, I've always thought that Wolverine would have similar problems with his lovers, except instead of accidentally getting everything sticky, he'd probably destroy everything. Comics creators and movie directors just don't think much about those kinds of things...
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Mr Poole is evidently a die-hard fan of the spiderman comic books. But he must realize that if a commercial movie was made to be 100% faithful to the comic books it would probably fail and only appeal to those few die-hards. Marvel comic books written in the 50's,60's and 70's are all tainted with issues and a view of the world of those years. It was just after the discovery of atomic powers, so half of the super-heroes just needed to have some contact with radiation to get super powers. Now most people know that if they did get in contact with radiation they'd get super-burns or super-cancer, not super-powers.
Today's world preoccupations have changed, and if you want those old stories to have an effect on people you need to adapt them to the present. This is something that Mr Raimi understands but Mr Poole seems oblivious to. X-men would have been a huge flop if they had spandex costumes and just took a plot line straight from the comic books with no adaptation.
So in the end you should just respect the artistical and technical choice of the film makers and try to enjoy the movie. It's not like they re-wrote the holy bible...
This being a geek site, we should know better. Spider silk comes out through spinneret spigots, not through the anus.
I think you guys are going to be pleasantly surprised. The CGI is about the only fault I could find with the movie. It explores morals in a much more interesting way than any comic book movie I can remember, except perhaps Batman.
I really liked it. I may not be a die-hard Spidey fan, but I thought the film was intelligent and well done.
My $.02.
Ok guys, I'm gonna go out on a limb here. But first, I need you to set aside your preconceptions.
Work with me here, because I'm suggesting that maybe Peter Parker doesn't have to caucasian. I myself am, and the comic book (and all the movies) have portrayed him as such. But the truth is, there is only one man capable of doing what Spiderman is capable of.
Jackie Chan.
Yes, that's right, Jackie Chan. So his accent is a little strong. Certainly they could afford some decent voice coaching. But other than that, what is wrong with him? That's right, nothing.
What's right with him? A man who can run up walls, without CG effects. His reaction speed is simply incredible. Gymnastics. And he's not even a bad actor, he has that whole comedic side to him. Hell, I wouldn't be shocked, if during the credits they'd show him swinging from 100 story buildings and having bloopers.
You could practically do away with the whole special effects budget.
So tell me, what, other than prejudice and Hollywood's predisposition to heap stinky garbage on us, kept this from happening?