After all is said and done, when the Spider-Man film was finally produced, there were several elements of the Cameron script that still made it to the final version, including one particular sore spot with old-time Spidey fans. Apparently though the Writer's Guild must have not have thought there was enough to provide him with any screen credit. Unlike the previous version of this article, now that I’ve seen the finished film, I’ll be able to compare it with the scripts. Don’t worry – what we saw on the big screen was better , but it’s still fun to take a look at these old stories and wonder what might have been…

Cameron “Scriptment”
One of the elements of the Cameron scriptment that did survive in the final version is concept of the Peter Parker voice-over narration at the beginning and end of the film. Here, Peter is a 17-year-old high school senior who lives in a Flushing, NY, alow-moderate income neighborhood, but due to the vagaries of zoning, he actually attends an upper-class high school in Forrest Hills, a snotty high-income neighborhood (I know next to nothing about New York City suburbs, but it seems a little different than the comic and movie versions). Naturally, as the result of being both brainy and poor, he doesn't fit in. And of course, he doesn't have a prayer of ever hooking up with that red-haired bombshell Mary Jane Watson, who in this version is actually a rich girl who’s dating the high school football hero Nathan “Flash” McCreery (no – I don’t know why Cameron changed his name, either, but I’ll discuss it later), who picks her up for dates in his Porsche. However, as fate would have it, MJ needs to boost her overall grade average to a “B” if she is to get that new car for graduation, and to do that, she needs to score big on her science project, which necessitates that she select the right partner. Now – who do you think that would be?

Another element introduced by Cameron that also survived into the final film, is the use of genetic manipulation, rather than radiation, as the source of Peter’s spider-powers. The difference is that here, flies are the ones subject to the genetic manipulation, and one of these flies is eaten by a spider, which then bites Peter (interesting note - in this draft - while the scientist is explaining the nature of the research on flies - stating that there are ten flies, Peter tells him that there are "only nine." Peter also asks to take pictures for the school paper.

The night of the spider-bite, Peter's sleep is haunted by various hallucinagenic visions, much like the film. However, unlike the film, he doesn't wake up on a high tension wire in his underwear, or finding that he is clinging to the sheets on his bed because he is covered with a sticky white mass.

Ick.

After some panic and then some experimentation, he realizes that the spider bite has changed his physiology to the point that now he can shoot webs naturally – like a spider.

When I first wrote this article, I actually didn’t mind the idea of the organic webshooters, although I certainly could have done without the allusion to masterbation, which this scene clearly represents. My rationale at the time was much like the thought that went into this idea, that it spares us the unlikely scenario of a poor 17 year old kid having the wherewithal, both scientifically and financially, of having his own well-supplied chemical lab, and of being able to design and develop his own webshooters, complete with chemically synthesized web fluid which even giant corporations can’t develop. It also prevents Peter from appearing “too brilliant” and thus putting him too far beyond the reach of the average moviegoer. The comic book solution developed by writer Roger Stern in the 1980’s suggested that Peter was already experimenting with polymers in high school, and that the web shooters were an extension of that original research, but again we have the problem of Peter almost being too smart. However, unlike the film, in which the organics are more or less glossed over, they become a major plot point in this version, as Peter finds out that he needs much more food in order to feed his higher metabolism, and the biological aspect of the webbing makes Peter question his humanity – and it is this uncertainty that makes him potentially vulnerable to the overtures of the villain, which we’ll learn a little more about later. In this story, Peter uses old watch bands to give the public the idea that the webshooters aren’t real, so that he will not be branded as a freak. In the very early stages of the pre-production under Sam Raimi, the director stated that the organics would make Peter feel awkward, and that he would be tugging at his long sleeves in order to keep the slits hidden. Fortunately, this awkwardness was dropped as a story point. Looking back I feel that the whole idea of the organic webshooters, combined with Peter’s concern that he would be considered a freak, while would probably be realistic, would seem too similar to ground already covered in the X-Men movies, where the idea of human mutation results in a new kind of racial prejudice. At its core, the story of Spider-Man is about an ordinary man who receives an extraordinary power, but still has a normal life when he’s not running around in spandex punching out bad guys. To emphasize his genetic changes tells a different kind of story. Maybe Raimi realized this as well and therefore dropped the story emphasis on the biological webshooters. Still, as I’ve stated in other articles, we accept the idea that a baby from the planet Krypton can land on Earth and a combination of its lower gravity and yellow sun radiation makes him Superman, so the idea of Peter Parker devising web shooters, which has been an accepted part of the canon for 40 years, really shouldn’t be that hard to accept as well. That’s probably all that needs to be said on that point before we exhaust it.

But it isn't just the organic webshooters, but Peter's entire transformation into Spider-Man becomes a metaphor for puberty. Cameron's notes specifically state that "Hopefully this will be seen correctly as a metaphor for puberty and its awakening of primal drives." Peter becomes more fascinated with the dark and the night and feels a kinship with spiders. He also uses his ability to move quickly and quietly through the night to become something of a peeping tom, even spying on Mary Jane undressing to her t-shirt and panties. In fact, the Peter Parker in this entire treatment is a lot darker and angrier than any version we as fans are familiar. In reality, it's probably about right for a poor and downtrodden 17 year old, but it would have taken some getting used to and its possible he would not have been as appealing a character. As critical as the casting of Spider-Man is - it would have even be moreso had this version actually been filmed because we would still want to like this troubled young man. In fact, I can almost see a somewhat de-glamorized Leonardo Dicaprio, who alledgedly was Cameron's choice for the role if he had gone directly from Titanic to Spider-Man doing this part.

Like the film and the comic book, Peter decides to make a few bucks as an entertainer and at first begins as a street performer next to a mime, collecting whatever few bucks he can (he discards such names as "Human Spider" and "Man Spider" before deciding on "Spider-Man." At the suggestion of a client who hires him for a private party, he invests some cash and effort into a new red and blue costume and eventually works his way up to entertaining on late night local access and eventually locally produced variety shows.

This exposure invites the interest of the villain of the piece, a rich businessman by the name of Carlton Strand. Of course, Carlton Strand wasn't always Carlton Strand, but a petty thief by the name of "Carl" who by evading a police chase into a field of lightning rods and stainless steel towers, is barbequed during a lightning storm - not dying, but becoming something more.

Eventually, however, because he won't reveal his id to anyone and no one will pay him in cash (a nod to the old Stan Lee story point that no bank will cash a check made out to “Spider-Man”), he crosses paths with a sleazy booking agent who will cash his checks for him. Naturally, you can see what's coming, as Ben drives Peter to the booking agent's offices (under msimilar to Unlimited Spider-Mankolr. owned teafter disgarding such names as Here, he hooks up with a sleazy booking agent because that’s the only one he can get that will keep everything on a strictly cash basis Peter finds out that his agent has stolen all his money, and due to his anger over this, he allows a burglar to rush by him without stopping him. Fate plays its predictable hand, as Peter then finds out that the same burglar he let escape tried to carjack Uncle Ben, who resisted, and was shot dead as a result. Here as well as in the film, it isn’t just Spidey’s success and growing arrogance that results in his tragic mistake (as it is in the original comic book version), but a feeling of victimization (much like the Ultimate Spider-Man comic book version, where the wrestling promoter and other wrestlers, jealous of his success, try to blame him for a robbery as a way of forcing him to unmask and reveal his identity).

During the course of the story, the villain of the piece, a wealthy businessman by the name of Carlton Strand (I know, I never heard of him either) takes note of Spider-Man. As the result of an electrical accident, Strand now possesses the power of electricity and uses these powers to manipulate computers and other electronic devises to increase his personal wealth and power. So, he seems like a cross between Electro and Norman Osborn. Strand is assisted in his various nefarious enterprises by another super-powered human by the name of “Boyd,” who has the power to turn himself into sand. Spidey's short-lived entertainer career gets Strand's attention, and the criminal tries to appeal to the web-slinger's sense of uniqueness and isolation to join Strand on your typical criminal crusade. At the end, Spidey triumphs over the villains and bags Mary Jane in the process.

There is also a scene where Spider-Man rescues Mary Jane from would be rapists, but rather than simply knocking them senseless, after clubbing them he sends them on their way saying "If you worthless chunks of vomit show your faces around here again, I'll decorate my Christmas tree with your intestines.

Strand tells Spider-Man that "the huddled masses exist...to life a few exceptional people onto their shoulders."

There are a lot of good moments that not only capture the essence of Spider-Man, but are scenes that the target audience could relate to completely:

• Peter catches Flash slapping Mary Jane. Later that night, masked (but not as Spider-Man), Peter literally beats the daylights out of Flash, including slamming him into his Porsche until the jock is almost unconscience. He then rips a signpost out of the ground and pounds the car into junk. Although a bit shocking in its brutality (and something the highly moralistic Spider-Man of the comics might object to), it is entirely in character for a frustrated 17 year old boy and no doubt would bring the audience to its feet.

• Spider-Man becomes the hero of the disenfranchised. Naturally, with the cops pursuing him, the neighborhoods in which he is responsible for running out the drug dealers and other scumbags treat him like a hero, and cheer whenever they see their "friendly neighborhood Spider-Man." All of the minority groups believe him to be one of their own.

• When Spider-Man seduces Mary Jane (an old comic book convention - the heroine loving the hero but having little to do with the man beneath the mask), it is actually quite...interesting. Having studied spiders for his class project (in order to learn more about himself), he initiates a mating ritual I don't want to get into here.

• The more Peter becomes Spider-Man, the more he has a crisis of faith as he begins to realize that the line between good and evil is blurred, and there are many situations a well-intentioned crime fighter can't simply jump into and solve. This is driven home when he learns that many of the thieves he runs into are kids, just like himself.

However, the choice of villains is definitely a weak point in this story. Of all of Spidey's rogues gallery, Sandman and Electro do not even come close to ranking near the top of his most popular foes, and as such are unworthy of consideration for the first movie. Not only that, but "Carlton Strand" seems to more closely resemble Norman Osborn than the comic book version of Electro.

Having two super-powered villains in a single film is a mistake that the Batman movies never seemed to figure out. Two super-villains takes away screen time from the hero, the story, and the one good villain, because of the necessity of having to explain where each of these villains came from, their origins, and then creating the circumstances upon which they come to work together.

At first the name changes of the villains bothered me because I hate it when a screenwriter inserts different names for characters that have gone by their own names for decades. But, in this case, it's probably excusable. Electro's real name, Max Dillon, is too close to Gunsmoke's Matt Dillon and Flint Marko (Sandman's name) is definitely comic booky. However, in Electro's case, if you're not going to use his name or his costume, then why use him, particularly with much better villains at your disposal? Speaking of name changes, changing Flash's real name from Eugene Thompson to Nathan McCreery does nothing for the character and is a useless change. A name like Eugene sounds pretty hoity toity to me - no wonder he goes by Flash.

Another problem is that while J. Jonah Jameson is in this movie, he is merely the manager of a TV station owned by Strand and as such he is used by Strand to perpetuate an anti-spidey campaign. Jonah is too good of a character and too important to the Spider-Man mythology merely to be someone else's lackey. Not only that, but Jonah has consistently provided humor to Spidey's stories.

I do agree though, that Spidey's use of the word "motherfucker" when confronting Strand after he has brought MJ to death's door is completely out of character. However, that's a change easily effected with the stroke of a pen.

Although not flawless, this treatment did have possibilities and with some additional nurturing could have made a fine Spider-Man movie. At the current time, it is uncertain whether or not this script will be the basis for the film currently in production

However, even with its flaws, it is a masterpiece compared with the older script.

1993 Full Script
The first version was written by Cameron, Barry Cohen and Ted Newson. The second revision, dated July 29, 1993, was written by Cameron, Joseph Goldmari, and John Brancato. As mentioned before, it is so different in tone from the later “scriptment,” that it’s hard to belief that Cameron had much of a hand in either version. This script has a much lighter tone, bordering on campy, and the names of the characters have only been borrowed, because there is little resemblance to their comic book counterparts. In fact, it’s unlikely that several of the names on this script even read the comic books.

Professor Otto Octavious is one whacky dude, conducting experiments that blow out lights and fuses all over Empire State University. He is often accompanied by his assistant “Weiner,” (that’s right – Weiner) a small time hood whom Octavious uses to “procure” equipment when those buffoons at the university see fit to deny him the funds and the equipments he needs. Octavious has become obsessed with breaching the barrier between dimensions using something called the “Anti-Force.” Of course, the fact that a dimensional breach of sufficient magnitude would destroy the known universe doesn’t dissuade Octavious (it’s his destiny – whatever that means). Anyway, he needs a power source sufficient to create this breach, and he believes that an upcoming alignment of the planets will do the trick. However, he doesn’t have the means of calculating the combined gravitational effect of the conjunction (look – I don’t understand it either, but it’s there in the script so it must have been well researched and reasonably thought out – right?). However, there is a certain brilliant college senior who has prepared a paper that comes up with those calculations – and guess who would that be?

Peter Parker, the aforementioned brilliant college senior has a serious crush on the lovely Liz Allen, but she just happens to be involved with that brainless jock Flash Thompson. Peter’s best friend is “Harry,” the school nerd. Peter apparently is not the school nerd in this version because he is “pleasant faced” (whatever the hell that means – no acne?) “Harry” is also the comic relief because he approaches Kim Nickson, who according to the script is “a ripe one and hot-hot-hot,” with a foot long pet salamander in her locker, and asks for a date calling her “ShooShoo.” Harry must not be an Osborn because he apparently can’t afford a last name, because we never see it.

Octavious, who always punctuates the final stages of his experiment with an “okey….dokey!” (It really resonates when you emphasize the pause in the middle), tries to browbeat Peter into giving him those planetary conjunction calculations, but Peter, having given them to another professor for safekeeping, declines to provide them to Octavious, who later tells Weiner to get that boy’s data!

Other people who populate Peter Parker’s problematic paradigm include Daily Bugle Chief Editor J. Jonah Jameson, who gives wannabe shutterbug Parker such valuable advice as “your photos suck,” his kindly Aunt May, who’s worries about him because he can’t get laid (I’m not exaggerating that much), and that scalawag Uncle Ben a cantankerous, beer drinking, loud-mouthed old who complains about how the "goddamn rock and roll's screwed up TV," when he has to skip over rock videos to find the Mets game. Peter doesn’t live with his Aunt and Uncle in this story (wonder why?), but in a crappy off-campus apartment, alone, with not even Harry No-Last-Name to keep him company.

Well, gosh darn it – wouldn’t you know that Ock tries one of his Anti-Force experiments and it blows up in his face – causing matter to melt and re-fuse all around him, including his mechanical arms, which are now part of his body (if you’ve ever seen The Philadephia Experiment or that episode of the “X-Files” when Mulder switches bodies with Lenny of “Lenny and Squiggy” fame, you get the idea). As Ock is carted away to the hospital, Peter Parker slips in to try to take some pictures of the chaos, but is soon bitten by a spider that was blasted with the radiation that was expelled during the experiment. I’ll give the script writers credit, they actually pre-dated John Byrne’s lame attempt at merging Spidey’s and Doc Ock’s origins by a good six years (in the critically lamblasted miniseries Chapter One)!

While hopping about the neighborhood testing the limits of his powers by crawling walls and leaping from building to building, Peter is spotted by a “man in a loud sportcoat” (the epitome of true evil), who offers his services as a promoter who can get Peter on MTV (something about a computer animated series).

Peter tries to tell Aunt May about being bitten by a spider, but that dear old lady, she interprets it to mean that Peter went on a date with Liz and she bit him in the bathroom (you gotta love that May! Folks, it’s in the script – I’m not making any of this up).

Well, gee, guess what, the explosion drove Ock even more bonkers than he already was, and he breaks out of the hospital (with an “okey dokey” for good measure after he kills the ESU administrator who visits him to tell him that he’s fired. Talk about really bad timing.) At the same time, Peter is in a wrestling match on MTV, with a Spider-Man costume provided to him by his promoter – and he becomes an overnight sensation, particularly to the young-ins’ Liz and Flash back at ESU who happen to be watching the whole thing. You know that Flash is particularly impressed because he says “holy jumping jelly beans!” He doesn’t say that about every wrestler, you know. After defeating “Crusher Cole,” Crusher asks the costumed youngster his name – which he freely gives as Peter Parker, only to have the promoter inject that his client is “the Amazing Spider-Man.”

Ock still wants Peter’s Planetary Conjunction data (you thought I forgot about that, didn’t you) and he tells Weiner to go get it. Well, Weiner, being well, a weiner, breaks into Aunt May and Uncle Ben’s house thinking Peter is hiding the data there, and during a struggle, shoots Ben, who dies at the hospital. May collapses upon hearing of Ben’s death, but fortunately Peter is made of a lot sterner stuff, as when he corners Weiner to take him in, he dispenses such witty one liners as “Say your prayers, Weiner,” and “well, look what we’ve caught in our web.” After that, there’s none of this pansy-ass, wimpy grieving bullshit about Ben’s death or May’s collapse – as neither is mentioned again in the script! Even when Liz visits Peter the next day, it’s only to get back her computer that he borrowed. Ah – old people are such a waste of resources anyway, you know? Maybe these guys wrote some of the episodes of the MTV animated series, since those episodes didn’t waste time with those geriatric pains in the ass either.

Spidey catches Weiner, and then goes on to foil Ock's scheme (with the help of his computer friends) and save the universe in a long protracted climax that I didn't understand and would cost a fortune to film.

And if that didn't thoroughly disillusion you, how about these plot points:

• The whole core of Spidey's existence is gone. The lapse in judgment that led to Uncle Ben's death, the guilt, and everything that grew out of it is completely ignored. In fact, after Ben dies and Spidey catches Weiner, Ben's death is never mentioned again, nor are we updated on May's condition. Even Liz, who drops in on Peter the next night, never expresses her condolences, but merely wants her computer back from Peter.

• . We're talking the last few seasons of Adventures of Superman criminal buffoonery here.

Needless to say, the script is worthless and were it filmed, that would probably have been the first AND LAST Spider-Man movie, because it would have been a financial disaster.

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