It’s all about Spider-Man this episode, as Ryan and on first discuss the recent Spider-Man movie rights announcements, and what the deal is with all the reboots.
Featuring Jon Legault.
News broke this week that Sony Pictures, who licenses Spider-Man from Marvel Entertainment, will be licensing the character to Marvel Studios. Why? Maybe because, despite mixed audience and critical opinions and a much maligned early reboot, the Spider-Man film franchise is still one of the highest grossing super hero movie franchises (number 2 behind Batman, or number three behind Avengers and Batman, depending on how you categorize the franchises).
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Regarding why Hollywood does so many reboots: Hollywood is stuck in the “character arc as the only valid story type” mindset. It’s easy because you have an end state that is different from the beginning state and the emotional engagement is in bringing the audience along for the “growth”.
Ongoing heroes, however, need to graduate to the Iconic Hero story. An iconic hero doesn’t change dramatically or have obvious emotional growth during the course of a story. The Iconic Hero story isn’t any less valid, however, and audiences certainly enjoy that form as much as the more typical character arc. The iconic hero story faces a challenge, fails, faces despair, then digs deeper to reassert their central dynamic to eventually overcome. Batman is the quintessential iconic hero. Which is why Hollywood has to reboot him over and over again.
If you want a good iconic hero done by Hollywood, look at How to Train Your Dragon 2. Both Hiccup and Toothless are still who they are from beginning to end. Yes, Toothless develops something new, but he does so by reaching deeper and becoming *more* of what he was before. Neither character experiences any dramatic change. They succeed by becoming more of what the audience expected them to be and wanted to see.