3. What Happened To The "Uncle Ben-killer" Subplot?
Okay, so we all knew that this film was going to be a hit with the audiences. Spidey's a cultural icon, and to expect the movie to do poorly at the box-office would be the equivalent of dropping a fish into a body of water with the intention of drowning it. A sequel was inevitable. To keep people interested, it's typical for a film leave certain elements open for continuation in a follow-up, as was the case with Batman Begins, which ended with the revelation of a "joker" calling card. However, in Webb's film, a good deal of story is, seemingly, left unexplained for a sequel (more on that below). One such example can be found in the subplot that focuses on Peter Parker's search for the killer of Uncle Ben. Of course, with the help of his nifty new powers, Parker goes on a quest to find the man responsible for his uncle's murder, and, along the way, he adopts the titular alter-ego...at which point the writers just threw the storyline away, avoiding it like the Bubonic Plague. Again, I realize that, especially after watching the movie, that the production of a sequel was always the filmmakers'/studio's intention, but for the love of god, show some modesty! I can get behind some hints as to what's to come next (shrouding Norman Osborn in darkness was, in my opinion, not just awesome in it's own right for setting up a very foreboding figure, but also an ingenious way to avoid repetition between this series and Raimi's original trilogy), but the fact of the matter is that the entire subplot is just dropped. Literally NOTHING comes of it. By the end of the movie, while Parker still has a poster of the man's police sketch up in his room, there is not a single mention of him following the halfway mark. We're never given the impression that Peter has the intention of finding this chap, or even a sense that he's harbouring any sense of emotion over his uncle's death. It's as though he was never there at all. Oh, and speaking of cheap sequel bait...