Ramble: James Cameron's Spider-man (1993)

I read the incel part as a kind of fable-esque outreach directed at what we now know as proto-incels. Common stuff in coming-of-age stories, and stories from earlier times. This one says, to young boys who have started to contemplate engaging in pervy behavior (e.g. peeping), that a better way to pursue girls is to develop a hobby, build confidence doing it, and then when the women come to them, pounce. As a young boy in that era who was glued to movies and TV, I can say this aspect would have fit right in with a lot of contemporary media. Even the graphic spider stuff would have been normal: Arachnophobia (1990) had been a success. And I find it really noteworthy that Cameron in '93 had tentatively chosen that peg to hang this hat. Those folks really need every off-ramp we can offer, so JC is really doing the Lord's work here. ;)

Tom

a tiny spider going home

Ella Taran

Jenny I was rewatching this and was just struck by how symmetrical your eyes look

Ella M

"YOU ARE NOT A HERO YOU ARE A SPIDER, NEMO!"

Danielle Schatten

When the word "soc" came up, I said "I only heard it from The Outsiders" at the same time as Jenny, just as as incredulously as she did.

Magistrissa

You know how poorly written villains will sometimes tell their soft boy hero that they're Not So Different, You and I, and you, the audience, roll your eyes because they're nothing alike? Well the spider-like men who are also in possession of birdlike eyries are nothing alike. But I was not aware just how terrifying a superhero could be until I heard about incel Peter Parker. Genuinely reads like Hal/Tighten from Megamind.

Magistrissa

This video is a lurker ? But it was posted ? Well. At least it made me become unlike a spider.

delightedMatt

My Little Pony Tales starts with the ponies getting ready in the morning, and I will not stand the slander of this masterpiece.

Ella M

The "white emissions" puberty thing completely falls apart when you consider that in the VAST majority of Spider-Man media the webs don't come from his body, but from a mechanical devices he creates. The webs aren't even actual webs, but a substance he designs himself.

jamezilla

My understanding is that when Spider-Man is talking about his nemesis in the first scene he's introduced, he's not doing it on TV- it's actually just part of the framing-device narration he's been doing.

Patrick Foley

Okay there's like 250 comments already so I'm sure someone already said this better, but it's insane that the bridge sex scene happened and MJ DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS PETER THEN like that scene's whole premise is terrible if we're supposed to accept she believed Spidey was randomly dropping a bunch of dweeby spider facts and then she hooked up with him not knowing he's her classmate ? ??? And I don't know what this says about me, but if it was like, he told her a bunch of spider facts and she realized who he was then, them getting together in that moment would be kinda sweet at least. I thought that's what she, Peter, and the audience were supposed to believe was happening with that scene. But then?????

Alfie P

A classic case of a person who doesn't know how 90's teens talked so they used talk from when they were a teen. This happened so much in the 80's and 90's. I knew about "soc" even though I never read "The Outsiders" but I never actually heard someone say it when I was growing up.

Nopelahoma

Ahh yes, the classic appeal of Spiderman, a bitter angry loner whose powers are like a demonic force of predation consuming his life, plunging his existence into darkness, fighting no crime and exclusively acting for selfish profit.

Nowhere Girl

i bursted out laughing when you said that mj did the matusi

Matt

I think Peter's spider obsession could have worked if it predated him being spiderman. He could have been a weird nerd who loved and kept spiders and knew a ton of spider facts and deliberately gone on a tour to learn more about spiders. And then when he got his spider powers it would be like "oh! I know how to do this like a spider" but then he would wackily mess it up because he's also still a human. I don't think that would be /good/, exactly, but at least Peter with a special interest in spiders is a Peter who had hobbies and interests pre-Spiderman other than generic nerd.

Julianna Backer

Strange that the villain is the guys from office space

Love but WHERE IS ARAGOG!!?? i miss him :'(

Ethan S

I know it’s not like a totally unique experience by ANY stretch but I feel so validated by all the love for Raimi spidermans. I watched that dvd practically on repeat as a kid and I honestly still just think it’s high art.

nina ♡

I keep coming back to thinking about them having sex on the bridge and how Peter would have only lasted like, 30 seconds max. And imagining him tearfully making up a spider metaphor to justify it

Jenna Stoddard

So at the end they were graduating the NEXT WEEK but they hadn't even made college plans yet? Come on James

Jenna Stoddard

I can't believe the villains just did the scheme from Office Space.

Dory Peacock

That “sosh”/“soc” thing was funny to me because at the college I went to everyone has to take a “social science core” which we abbreviate to “sosc”. I never thought I’d hear that word in any other context

JG

The answer to what Peter should have been collecting in 1993 is beanie babies. XD But I cannot decide if that would have made him nerdy or trendy. Might have been more trendy! But I was a nerd and I have 300 under my bed …so….

Hannah Vaughn

"No Peter, the World Trade Center!...Oh, wait, it's 1993, he's fine." I mean...tbf, terrorists bombed the WTC literally that year, lol.

Damion Damaske

There are vegetarian spiders.....

Now I want a Jenny Nicholson retrospective of the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy. As a fellow MCU skeptic, one of the things I hate about their films is that they claim to venerate Stan Lee (or at least his era of Marvel comics--leaving aside any debate about the dubiousness of his claims of authorship) but are too cowardly to commit to camp or cheese because in order to consistently make a billion dollars worldwide, they need to cultivate an audience that's too "cool" to read comic books. Raimi's films embraced EVERY aspect of the old Spider-Man comics, even at the risk of being laughed at. (I wanted to throw my remote at the TV when they took a cheap swipe at Emo Peter Parker in No Way Home. That's the MCU in a nutshell--constantly apologizing for their source material.)

Eric Houge

I'll never understand the 90s and their obsession with virgins.

Richard R.

9:30 "I'll figure out that Peter Parker is smart when he shows up for school and he doesn't have any friends" ahh if only the real world was like that I would have some braincells to keep me company

Jazz Me to the Moon

The first time I went to NYC was in April of 1993. We decided to go in January. The bombing was in February. So many of my friends thought I was absolutely crazy to still be going. I remember telling one of them, exasperated, "It's not like they're going to do it AGAIN." Heeeehhhhhh....heh...er...well. Technically true? Technically true.

1:08:55 Spiderman atop the World Trade Center Jen: "No Peter! Oh wait it's 1993 we're fine." In 1993 the World Trade Centers were bombed. Six killed and a thousand injured. Never forget.

Who Are These People

PS: Jenny's passive-aggressive pronounciation of "collage" 😂

Derick Gadd

Ok I just finished and it is an utterly deranged script, wow. 1) Who is it for? Batman Returns was hugely controversial in 1992 for violence and Catwoman being sexual, but there wasn't even a sex scene IIRC. It led to a kiddification of the series as seen in Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. A Spider-Man movie with a sex scene in 1993 would have been nuts. 2) Peter being a creepy incel.. Jenny covered this well. It feels like the target audience were angry nerds. I guess when I think back to this era, it was peak "angry nerds are a large enough audience to pander to, but we haven't seen how dark this can get" era. Because he comes off way worse than in the comics or old TV show here, so there seems to be a deliberate edginess added. 3) The point of spider-man is not spiders! Sorry Jenny know you love them ;) But seriously, so much of this script is like, poetic musing about the nature of spiders, and a huge part of the central conflict (aside from the part that is the scam from Office Space??) is like, about the fundamental nature of spiders, and what that means for Peter. As I said in the comment I accidentally deleted, it leaps off the page that JC is deeply divorced at the time he wrote this.

Derick Gadd

It truly disturbs me how prevalent these themes are in media of “good” men stalking women, and sometimes even being rewarded by the narrative for it (i.e. being there to protect them). Him having super powers and wearing a costume doesn’t change the fact that he’s camped outside a girl’s home and watching her through her window. This isn’t a normal behavior, even for a teenager. Only someone with serious mental health problems feels compelled to repeatedly monitor, follow, and invade the privacy of someone like this. I’m glad this movie wasn’t made and there’s one less example of this type of behavior being depicted as anything other than disgusting and universally unacceptable.

Simon Rodriguez

Knowing nothing about JC's personal life, from this script alone, I said "He's divorced... twice... one of them recently". Then I looked it up. THREE divorces at this point, one recently!

Derick Gadd

incel spider-man: neither the hero we need nor the hero we deserve.

Reading Peter from the 60's to 00's people joke about Peter's temper and social skills compared to adaptations, especially Ditko's teen Peter...but I guess he could be worse.

LL

another jenny nicholson classic campy

men will write Spiderman screenplays instead of going to therapy

Talia M

With the way Peter was portrayed, I think it would have been hilarious if right after he and Mary Jane had sex on the bridge we just went straight to the end credits

Kevin

I'm with you, Jenny, about your disappointment with No Way Home. I'm angry at myself for falling into the nostalgia bait, and it wasn't even good!

Kim P.

The lizard is created when the garter snake that escaped from the tuperware container I was transporting him in bites him.

Hedrigal

As someone who has worked in a Drosophila research lab before, I can tell you that flies get out all. the. time.

AnKo .

Peter would be a POG collector!

Joel Eblin

watching this on 9/11 was WILD

Peter can also be into gymnastics, like Flash. So we can have the classic "nerd shows up jock bully" moment, but with choreography set 80's hype music

Pterranodon

no playing hat? how dare

Captain Langosta AKA The Yellow Dart AKA Kyle

The way I literally choked on my tea at "He's had a moped this whole time? He's living like a king!"

Emily Boyd

What did you think of Sam Raimi's Spiderman 2? I thought it was even better than the first one (though I also thought some things about it were kinda weird lol)

Gnome Choomsky

Have you read any of Cameron's other scripts? They're pretty detailed lol

Gnome Choomsky

This may be my new favorite ramble. I was cackling at some of the commentary 😂

Chelsea Clark

Interestingly, Spider-Man: The Animated Series was created as a tie-in to this movie even though this movie never got made, which is why Electro and Sandman don’t appear until late into the show’s run (they were replaced by Shocker and Hydro Man).

Chad

my name is napastak and i enjoy this video

Jenny I hate to break it to you but we definitely were not fine in the World Trade Center in 1993

An interesting Peter hobby would be if he trained some flies to be circus performers. Which would lend his character an anti-predation aspect. Strand could be a wealthy tycoon who made his fortune running an international flea circus empire. Strand would want to eliminate Peter to get rid of the competition. Thus the theme would be established as predator versus anti-predator.

Mr. Creosote

Me too!! Its my favorite although I love watching Jenny talk about anything

meadowstream

I am always on board for more theme park content from you. Bring it on! 😃

Sara-ara

I love all of your theme park content

Jen B

So I was super confused watching this because years ago I watched a cracked video about a James Cameron Spider-Man script and in the video they said that the finale took place in space, and I just looked it up, and there is another version!! In the other one, doctor octopus has an assistant called Weiner, wants to destroy the universe and the finale takes place in SPACCCEE!

Ella Wharton

Would genuinely love Peter’s hobby to be model trains, and to have this expand as he gets his spider powers to include models of building from around NY that’s he’s been able to visit and climb as Spider Man. Would be a fun visual in the early days of him testing his powers to see him adding new buildings to his little model town as he swings around and tests the limits of where he can go/what he can do. Like miles tagging the tops of buildings with his art in Into the Spiderverse.

Lenore

1993 funkos is probably Pogs

she said exactly what needed to be said about no way home .. it just “doesn’t ring true.” i still enjoyed the film but she summarized everything that felt off about it to me

Brian Cox

Alternate universe where this movie came out and set Superhero movies back a decade, this is such a strange script that feels like a more verbose and less intelligent version of Raimi. It’s like they completely forgot the great power and responsibility part, the core of his entire struggle, then came back to it at the very end.

Vergil Angelo

What if instead of committing to watching every Barbie movie, you just pick one that we watch together in a ramble? I can’t remember if you talked about swan lake or nutcracker in the preview, but those would be good candidates imo. I’m not at voting tier but if somebody wants to add that as a Barbie compromise…I’d rather have some Barbie content than none at all.

Alex Andra

Just staggering that James could put this whole theme in about Peter's fear of becoming a "spider", yet never have any reflection on this aspect of Peter's personality where he spies on people and is especially creepy and resentful towards women. Like why was the revelation of Peter's natural webs supposedly scarier to MJ than something like "This guy was following you around watching you without your knowing, like a real spider." I mean I get that if you have the weird bridge sex scene already, I guess she might not be that creeped out by this news, but I think we can all agree that bridge scene was misguided and MJ kind of deserved to be creeped out by all of it. It's growing increasingly strange to me to see properties dismiss teenage boys' voyeuristic tendencies as harmless, like "Oh well, he's just a young man infatuated, what can you do?" But it's like, young men infatuated enough to justify this kind of questionable behavior are honestly some of the scariest people I can think of. Also, MJ's turn around to liking Peter at the end felt very "Bimbo Picks Up A Book" somehow. Like in Raimi's Spiderman, MJ is just a nice girl who happens to be popular, she doesn't have to become "not like other girls" in order to gain interest in Peter.

Stranger Kate

The optimism of the past tense in "you think Trump was big"

Ishaan Sahai

I had no idea The Outsiders was written by a 14 year old, even though it was required reading. I always just assumed it was a classic?

Towers of Hanoi

Too much theme park content in a row? No such thing!

SoSo_Tsundere

by watching a woman alone in a room, we are all spiders in a way... very immersive, jenny!

O Bow

yeah i felt the same way about no way home...i put off watching it for so long because i didn't want to see characters i loved potentially get butchered but i eventually gave in because i loved doc ock and tobey's spider-man as a kid and i came out of the movie going wow, they were the only redeeming part of that movie for me and they weren't even well done! should've just rewatched spider-man 2. raimi's movies are very campy and hammy and comic book-y but in i think a good way and a very earnest way that really captures the spirit of a lot of the source material for many superheroes out there, tbh. it's feel-good stuff. wish fulfillment. you want to read about someone finding the goodness and power within to beat the bad guys a lot of the time and there's a lot uh...less. of that. in superhero media these days.

zanna zannolin

I was just thinking "That's the 90s for you, you wouldn't have a superhero movie nowadays where the hero just spies on a woman stripping down to her underwear" when I remembered the exact same thing happened in the last Batman movie, and he wasn't even a teenager, so...yeah.

Richard Lyth

She mentions in the very end of this video she's temporarily putting off because they keep realeasing new movies and it's become a slog. :'(

Does anyone know if Jenny is still planning on doing a ranking of all the barbie movies? I can't remember the schedule

Rebekah Wilson

I would be so down for a Spiderman movie where he teams up with the villains to make superhero-Leverage. (Or would that just be normal Leverage?)

Cate C

Jenny: “So I hated it. Did you hate it too, Spidey?” Spidey does a seductive dance in an attempt to entice Jenny. Jenny: “Spidey says yes.”

Dash

Sorry for the wall of text. I’m not so great at being concise.

polywogy

This scriptment makes slightly more sense if it was consciously using Spider-Man as a way to talk about adolescent boys. Around puberty, stereotypes of boys are annoying, pretend they don’t care what other people think, treat girls like aliens, are mini-incels, think getting famous on talk shows would be cool, and think they are terminally unique and any adult who tries to give them advice doesn’t really know what it’s like for them. They can also be full of confused anger, and going through a transition from powerlessness to being physically powerful. Then there’s looking around to find adult male role models, wanting to identify with rich handsome men who treat women like shit, and a kind of disillusionment when you realize that adults aren’t necessarily heroes or villains, they have just accepted banal forms of evil because it makes their lives easier. Anyway, I think this script doesn’t make a lot of sense as a Spider-Man story, but it could make slightly more sense as an attempt to use SM to make a story about young men. I’d say the ending also supports this idea — specifically mentioning that MJ gets better grades than him but that’s okay seems like it’s hammering home his growth in terms of seeing her as a real person and giving up the idea he started with — that nobody liked him because he was just too smart.

polywogy

OK I think, I found a better article about the BTS of why this project failed: https://screencrush.com/james-cameron-spider-man-movie/ Also, I kid you not- Cameron actually calls it "The greatest movie he never made" lmao

Yoav Fine

More theme park stuff! More theme park stuff!

Birthe_bird

As soon as she mentioned her one giant eye it was all I could see.

Gary

The way she says 'buzzy' at 13:03 makes me think there's some repressed rage about a certain animatronic under the surface.

Trystan

I think the number one thing that kept this movie being was legal/rights issues (sadly not common sense), but it could not have helped that in the 90s, studios looked at the success of Batman and thought "Who's next? Why, the biggest heroes of MY childhood! Dick Tracy and the Phantom and the Shadow!" X-Men was becoming the top-selling comic ever and they're cranking out movies on newspaper comic and radio serial characters. And I guess if you're going to just make up a nemesis, making him Electro makes sense, whose favourite Spider-Man villain is Electro. Also I get the urge to break it up but I very much want to see all the theme park content.

Dan Gibbins

in the Raimi movie, he was endearing because of his photography hobby and that should have been the same thing in this, he should have been really into photography!

Cristina Anderson

I had entirely forgotten about The Outsiders until you brought it up, what a blast from the past

Ian Means

This video is like a spider because it scampers around and builds a web. It's also like a bird.

Bryan Sutton