The domestic release of Spider-Man 3 is two weeks away but already there’s all sorts of brouhaha surrounding the  future of the lucrative movie franchise. According to Entertainment Weekly, director Sam Raimi is seriously interested in the possibility of helming New Line’s upcoming adaptation of The Hobbit, which supposedly could seriously interfere with a potential Spider-Man 4.

No doubt there are diehard Lord of the Rings fans who’ll hurl arrows and crossbow bolts at any proposed director who isn’t named Peter Jackson, but if he’s not doing it — and given legal wrangles with the powers that be, it doesn’t look like he is — there are far worse choices than Raimi.

But it’s Spider-Man fans who’re up in arms — not so much because Raimi’s involvement with The Hobbit might delay or derail work on another Spidey sequel (we’ll get to that in a minute) but because of comments made by Kirsten Dunst that have been ricocheting around the Internet all week. “It’s disrespectful to the whole team, I think, to do that,” she told EW. “And audiences aren’t stupid. It’d be a big flop without me, Tobey, or Sam. That would really not be the smartest move. But they know that already.”

Apparently lots of perspective-challenged fans are incensed at Dunst’s insistence that any Spider-Man film would be “a big flop without me.” And they have a point, inasmuch as Dunst struck absolutely no one as a perfect fit for Mary Jane Watson when she was originally cast. But the thing is — she’s probably right.

Think about it. The same team has been in place for three movies; now is not the time to switch out your leads. That time would have been three or four years ago, before Spider-Man 2. Remember all the speculation that Jake Gyllenhaal might take over the tights if Maguire’s salary demands couldn’t be met? It’d have been exponentially easier to accept someone new in the role between the first and second movies than between the third and fourth.

I personally don’t care for Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker, but over the course of five years and three films, he’s been established in moviegoers’ minds as that character. Sure, he’s not getting any younger, but he doesn’t have to: Even in his thirties, he’s boyish-looking enough to play a college-age kid for the next two decades, probably. And yes, the James Bond series proves that switching lead actors needn’t be a kiss of death — that it can actually be creatively energizing – but that’s the exception more than the rule. Bond gets a pass because his precedent was set in a different time; we’re conditioned to accept different actors in the role.

That’s not the case with the big-budget, summer-tentpole blockbusters of today. Can you see someone else as Captain Jack Sparrow? Indiana Jones? Die Hard’s John McClane? Danny Ocean? Yeah, there’ve been a handful of Batmans, but c’mon — he’s a guy in a mask. Besides, Batman Begins (and Casino Royale) would seem to prove that these days it’s easier to accept a new face in a familiar role when you’ve “re-imagined” the character and concept.

None of which is to say that a Spider-Man 4 would definitely tank without Maguire, Dunst and Raimi in place. But in today’s climate, with pirated DVDs, illegal downloads and other factors threatening the studios’ bottom line, Hollywood executives aren’t likely to tinker with a winning formula if they can help it. Audiences respond to Maguire as Spider-Man and Dunst as Mary Jane; therefore they’ll do whatever they can to keep that formula intact. It’s more likely they’d go ahead without Raimi, if they could get the stars to sign up, even though that would be a far dicier creative risk; he’s the architect of the franchise, after all. Even with the leads on board, the wrong director could torpedo the whole enterprise beyond repair.

Besides which, there’s no guarantee whatsoever that there’ll even be another sequel, even if Raimi doesn’t take the Hobbit gig. Dunst herself has been quoted in the past as saying that the third installment was her last, and Maguire’s also been ambivalent about donning the tights again. (And it’s not exactly a given that the Hobbit movie precludes a fourth Spider-Man film, anyway.)

Not that any of this is ultimately going to amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world anyway. The very idea of a Spider-Man movie is going to seem so hopelessly 2007 once Marvel’s proposed musical — directed by Julie Taymor and with music and lyrics by Bono and the Edge (yes, seriously) — takes flight. Mark my words.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 19th, 2007 at 6:24 pm and is filed under Movies, What's Shaking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.