It’s almost as if Marc Webb’s Amazing Spider-Man films were made to upset fans of the comics. Both of the films contained images or scenes that are surprisingly good, but both films also heavily rewrote the history of Peter Parker and ruined good villains. So it’s really no surprise to hear Sony was thinking of revisiting a horrible Spider-Man story for what would have been The Amazing Spider-Man 3.
Denis Leary, who played Captain Stacy in the films, was interviewed by IGN at Comic-Con when he was asked about the aborted third Amazing Spider-Man film. “I came back briefly in two and possibly in [The Amazing Spider-Man 3], there was this idea at one point that Spider-Man would be able to take this formula and regenerate the people in his life that had died. So, there was this discussion that Captain Stacy would come back even bigger in episode 3,” he said.
Besides being an unbelievably bad idea for the third film, it also reminds fans of the comics from quite possibly darkest time for the character – the Clone Saga. When you talk to fans of the Spider-Man comics, most write off the Clone Saga as a desperate, editorial-driven storyline that almost did irreparable harm to the character.
To sum it up (and this is going to be difficult), it all started in the ’70s when a villain by the name of Jackal created a clone of Peter Parker (along with the dead Gwen Stacy). The two Spider-Men fought, teamed up, and ultimately, one of the two Peters (the suspected clone) died in an explosion. In the ’90s, writers revisited the idea and the once-dead clone reappears. After DNA tests, the clone that’s been gone for years is found to be the true Peter Parker and the Peter that fans had known was a clone all along. This was a ploy by Marvel to erase years of stories that even included his marriage to Mary Jane Watson. If you didn’t follow along, don’t worry, this makes everyone’s brain hurt. Just know, it’s bad. Really bad!
As much as it’s always a shame when a creator isn’t able to finish his story, fans should be breathing a sigh of relief that Sony decided against pursuing this story. Not only would it continue to alienate the true longtime fans of Spider-Man, it would have probably been yet another disappointing entry in the Amazing Spider-Man series.
The upcoming Marvel Studios-produced reboot isn’t sounding so bad right now, huh?
