6 Reasons Why David Fincher's Spider-Man Movie Would Have Been Awesome

He was twice in the running but the auteur behind Se7en and Zodiac never did get his chance to make a Spider-Man movie. Here's six reasons why that's a huge shame...

As everyone already knows, a new Spider-Man film, The Amazing Spider-Man is swinging in to theatres on July 3rd. It's a reboot so Tobey Maguire and director Sam Raimi are out and the fresh new talents of Andrew Garfield and director Marc Webb are in. While superheroes are the stars of their own films, it is usually the director that is most connected with how well the movie turns out. Think of the Batman franchise and how Joel Schumacher's name is associated with the franchise falling in into campiness- or how Christopher Nolan's Batman films conjure images of a stripped down grittiness and stylistic realism. While Webb's namesake makes directing a Spider-Man movie a match made in heaven, and his work on (500) Days of Summer shows he can pull off the romantic and human elements of the character, another director who would have been a bold and exciting choice was David Fincher. Fincher has a history with the Spider-Man franchise- he was offered the chance to direct the original 2002 film but declined. He was supposedly in the running for The Amazing Spider-Man as well. In an interview in December 2011, Fincher describes what his Spider-Man movie would have been like and it sounds really intriguing. This article will focus on several reasons why a David Fincher directed Spider-Man film, with an emphasis on it being the reboot of the series, would have turned out really well.

1. Music Video Opening

In the interview Fincher describes his vision for the opening of the film, which brings to mind his roots as a music video director:
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 . Bit by a radioactive spider, the death of Uncle Ben, the loss of Mary Jane, and was going to begin with Peter meeting Gwen Stacy.
Conceptually, this sounds like an exciting way to open the movie- an efficient and energetic way to tell the origin story without making the entire film an origin story. The idea of the sequence being an opera also means it wouldn't just be for exposition but would get the audiences emotionally involved right off the bat. It also means... (Click "next" below to read part 2)
Contributor
Contributor

I'm Canadian! I'm a recent graduate of the Journalism Program at the University of King's College in Halifax. I'm an aspiring actor and film critic, and lover of all things film and Shakespeare. My favourite movie is "Casablanca" and my favourite play of Shakespeare is "Othello."