At the heart of the alleged kerfuffle between Sam Raimi and Sony Pictures, the one that resulted yesterday in Raimi and the cast of the film being chucked in favor of a hard Spider-reboot in 2012, is a disagreement over the film’s villain. Raimi was pulling for The Vulture, a classic Spidey baddie. John Malkovich – yes, John Malkovich – was attached to the role; of course, that should be taken with a grain of salt, just like 99% of casting rumors. Hell, I could probably say right here that Anna Kendrick is being considered to play Paper Doll and at least one person is going to run off and tell their friends that Anna Kendrick is going to be Paper Doll in the new Spider-Man film – you know, that one where Michael Cera is Peter Parker and has to fight that girl’s Sinister Six boyfriends or whatever (Scott Pilgrim:Spider-Man IV :: Blue Harvest:Star Wars, right?). Anyway, the Sony suits – allegedly – were all, “Sam, an old guy that flies? Lame,” and then likely demanded a storyline they call ‘Venom Wars’ in which Venom comes back only there are like five of him and so there’s a Mary Jane Venom and a JJJ Venom and a T-Rex Venom, because kids love dinosaurs, and maybe also Venom Uncle Ben (“Uncle Benom?”) could show up and say something like “With great power comes a righteous ass-kicking, Petey!”* Oh, and a romantic subplot involving the Black Cat, who is not a Venom but maybe she is revealed to be at the end in a shocking twist? And Carnage. And Anna Kendrick as Paper Doll.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But is the Vulture really that lame of a villain? He certainly could fit the ‘genius guy who turns evil under the influence of his own creation’ theme that Raimi cultivated in his first two Spidey films. But he’s far from the worst choice in the Rolodex of horrible Spider-Man villains.\u00c2\u00a0 In fact, here are five that are totally worse than the freaking Vulture.<\/p>\n
1. The Shocker – I fully anticipate someone coming into the comments and defending the propriety of the Shocker, since he is in fact an OG member of the Sinister Six and a pretty long-standing Spidey-foe, but let’s face facts:<\/p>\n
1. His name is The Shocker<\/p>\n
2. He makes things vibrate.<\/p>\n
2. The Black Fox – You think the Vulture is bad? What about an old guy who doesn’t <\/em>fly?<\/p>\n 3. The Foreigner – Truly the breakout character of 1986, The Foreigner is a professional assassin and head of the 1400 Club (which is, according to the Foreigner’s Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe – Update ’89 entry, twice as deadly as its nearest competitor) who spends the majority of his face time in in comics hiring other people to kill or otherwise inconvenience Spider-Man, none of whom are successful. Oh, and he made out with Black Cat a couple of times, so he’d be perfect<\/em> to mix into the new Spidey flick!<\/p>\n 4. Big Wheel – A man trapped inside a giant metal wheel that bristles with guns. His name, dear readers, is Jackson Weele.<\/p>\n 5. Kangaroo – As you might expect, the Kangaroo is really good at jumping. He has air jets in his boots that make him jump super-well.\u00c2\u00a0 As nature shows and Looney Tunes have taught me, kangaroos are dangerous animals and should not be messed with. And the Kangaroo doesn’t have to worry about running out of webbing, does he?\u00c2\u00a0 Well, heck, I could just say that for all five of these guys.<\/p>\n And that’s the list.\u00c2\u00a0 All five of those are so much worse than the Vulture, don’t you think?\u00c2\u00a0 Honorable Mention goes to a Kraven the Hunter played by Bruce Campbell who isn’t actually a threat and is just there to be funny.<\/p>\n With a fresh reboot on the horizon, who do you <\/em>think we should see as the villain in a new Spider-Man movie? Let us know in the comments!<\/p>\n *I have made all of this up**<\/p>\n ** Marvel, call me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At the heart of the alleged kerfuffle between Sam Raimi and Sony Pictures, the one that resulted yesterday in Raimi and the cast of the film being chucked in favor of a hard Spider-reboot in 2012, is a disagreement over the film’s villain. Raimi was pulling for The Vulture, a classic Spidey baddie. John Malkovich […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,27],"tags":[239,240,37,416,193,38],"class_list":["post-2904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comics","category-movies","tag-big-wheel","tag-foreigner","tag-marvel","tag-movies","tag-sam-raimi","tag-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2904\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}