Sam Raimi Finally Saw ‘The Amazing Spider-Man,’ Found It ‘Freeing’
Original Spider-Man director Sam Raimi finally got around to seeing The Amazing Spider-Man. So what did Raimi think of the reboot that came so quickly after his own Spider-Man 3 failed to translate into Spider-Man 4?
Though The Amazing Spider-Man was, by all measures, at least an equal success to Raimi’s original Spider-Man film released in 2002, the fact that the Marvel superhero’s story was rebooted so quickly after Raimi wrapped Spider-Man 3 has caused some division among fans.
After all, Raimi had Spider-Man 4 and Spider-Man 5 in the works before the plug was mysteriously pulled by the powers that be, so a quick reboot of an established franchise could be interpreted as a big “eff you” to Raimi from the studio that had the biggest effect on how awful Spider-Man 3 was.
And you could tell from his interview with The Huffington Post that Raimi felt pretty raw emotionally about The Amazing Spider-Man.
“I haven’t had the guts to go see the movie yet. Because I don’t want to go to my girlfriend’s wedding. I just can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t have the guts,” he said, though he mentioned that his wife thought it was a good reboot.
Perhaps spurred on by media interest in his reaction to the new film, Raimi finally swallowed his fears and popped The Amazing Spider-Man into his Blu-ray player. The result? Freeing.
“It was very hard for me to see the new Spider-Man movie, I felt so attached to it, I couldn’t see Spider-Man with another director; it’s like my love, and I didn’t want to walk in on my love with someone else,” Raimi explained of his initial resistance to seeing the film. “It was just like that. Then I got over myself last week and said, ‘just see the damn thing’. And I did, and I loved it. I actually felt free.”
Strangely enough, seeing The Amazing Spider-Man didn’t re-open old wounds or cause any sort of ugly jealousy or negative animus toward Marc Webb’s take on the iconic character.
“I thought, ‘why am I carrying around this baggage?’ Of course the next Spider-Man story should be told, and [Marc Webb] did a wonderful job telling that,” Raimi reasoned. “I loved the movie, and I’m looking forward like a fan to the next installment. I love the comic book, and now I don’t feel bound, and I’m really glad somebody’s remaking it again.”
So there you go, Sam Raimi loved The Amazing Spider-Man. To any of the Raimi fan hold-outs reading this article right now, it is finally okay to see Amazing and even *gulp* like it.
