8 Movies Where The Worst Version Got Made

5. The Amazing Spider-Man

The Amazing Spider-Man Andrew Garfield
Sony

The winding path that took us to The Amazing Spider-Man's release in 2012 epitomises the worst trends of the comic movie genre, enacted by the studio with by far the most weird, ill-thought out superhero schemes in the business. Yes, give it up for Sony folks - the company that swapped out Sam Raimi's Spider-Man to create a contrived cinematic universe populated entirely by B-tier Spidey villains, led by an incarnation of the wall-crawler whose most memorable trait was being way too cool to actually be Peter Parker.

This might be harsh on Andrew Garfield, who made valiant attempts to uplift the material he was given as the web-slinger in Marc Webb's Amazing Spider-Man movies, but it wasn't enough to stop the weight of Sony's clunky franchise machinations from crumbling down around them.

Adding insult to injury, though, is that we could have had Spider-Man 4 instead of The Amazing Spider-Man - a fourth film from Sam Raimi that was set to include The Lizard, Black Cat, and a bigger role for Bruce Campbell (the main draw of the franchise to begin with, as well all know).

For his part, Raimi has spoken out regarding his dissatisfaction with getting Spider-Man 4 off the ground, and it was him who pulled the plug on the project down to frustrations with the script (via Vulture). Even so, a less than stellar work from Raimi would have still had twice the amount of personality, pathos, and investment than what was seen with The Amazing Spider-Man - or any of the other Spider-Man films that released afterwards, for that matter.

Advertisement
Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.