Greatest Movie Cameron Never Made Would've Erase MCU As We Know It
In the 90s, James Cameron, having collaborated with Stan Lee, tried and failed to make a Spider-Man movie.
Just let that sink in for a moment.
One of the greatest filmmakers of all time was unable to get backing to make a popular superhero movie that could have taken the entire genre in another direction.
This was before Marvel had anything of note to speak of in terms of movies. His efforts to get the film off the ground were prevented because the rights to Marvel were, he said, "clouded".
In his book, Tech Noir: The Art of James Cameron , he described how he tried to convince the then Fox President, Peter Chernin to go and buy the rights, which were available following the collapse of Carolco (who worked with him on Terminator ).
But it wasn't to be. And the world never got to see James Cameron's Spider-Man. But we do have a glimpse of what it might have looked like from the man himself. And it's no surprise that he says it would have been "very different".
While the MCU we all know and love is quite light-hearted and fanciful, Cameron says his vision was one of a superhero "grounded in…reality".
He saw it as a coming-of-age film that would serve as "a great metaphor" for the "untapped potential" of youth and for the bodily changes associated with puberty – because Peter Parker was just a kid. His take on the film would have been one of "gritty reality", set in a believable world.
And while that may seem like something of a pipe dream, it's fair to say he got the balance just right in both Alien and The Terminator. So, if anyone could do it, James Cameron would have been the man.
Cameron's vision included the idea of Peter Parker gaining the physical power to make webs rather than having to create web shooters.
It also focused on the real challenges someone might face when, for example, making their superhero suit. These little changes would have delivered something far from what we now see as the Spider-Man franchise.
And they may have completely changed the MCU as we know it. It was, he said, "the greatest movie I never made".
Had the movie come to fruition, everything about Marvel movies may well have tended towards the gritty Snyder-style superheroes as opposed to the more light-hearted ones we've come to recognise as iconic.