11 Terrible Early Drafts That Almost Ruined Iconic Villains

4. Doctor Octopus €“- Spider-Man

When James Cameron was in charge of Spider-Man before Sam Raimi brought him to screen, his potential project was hamstrung by a ludicrous scripting process that took concerns that Cameron was going to over-spend and used them as an excuse for Cameron to repurpose an older script that had already been through a number of rewriters' hands. Cameron was promised his $3million writing fee, if he could keep it all under $60million, and he clearly saw redrafting the completed script, written in parts by Menahem Golan, John Brancato, Ted Newsom, and Barney Cohen among many others, as the best option.

A genius idea, except the script was terrible.

Ignoring the source almost entirely, the script featured a Doctor Octopus who was Peter's college professor and who was also bitten by the same spider as Parker, giving him powers, though not spidery ones, for some reason. He also had a sidekick called Weiner. Real mature.

But those aren't the most confusing things about this Beta-Ock, as in a moment clearly designed as a bizarre homage to Spartacus, he was set to proclaim himself Spider-Man, for reasons that are not quite clear, unless we were all supposed to ignore the fact that he was undeniably Doc Ock and not a brand new Alter-Spider-Man or something.