Badassdigest seems to have gotten an early draft of the Amazing Spider-Man 2 script. They’re reporting ten things that were cut from the movie. They don’t list the frozen head of Norman Osborn, but they’re pretty interesting. What do you think?
1) Mary Jane. As we all know Shailene Woodley was cast as Mary Jane Watson, shot some days and then was cut from the movie. The original script includes all of the MJ scenes, and she’s introduced as the Parker’s new next door neighbor. Her dad is an abusive drunk and she’s a waitress who builds motorcycles in her spare time. She has a Spider-Man tattoo on her wrist, and she’s clearly interested in Peter, who is totally hung up on Gwen. At one point Spider-Man confronts MJ’s dad, telling him to lay off the girl. At the end of the script Gwen comes to Peter’s house before heading to London; he’s gone but she meets the new neighbor. They have a friendly exchange and MJ says that she always attracts dickheads and asks Gwen what her advice is to get a guy like Peter. “Date a nerd,” Gwen says before heading off to die, basically giving MJ the okay to get with Peter.
2) Electro’s mom. In the script Max Dillon lives at home with his wheelchair-bound mom, who doesn’t think much of him. He has to take care of her, and after he ‘dies’ in the accident that gives him powers he comes home to find his mom standing up and getting a big payout from Oscorp. He gets angry and begins using his powers, which is what sets off his confrontation with the police in Times Square, not a weird moment where he just starts sucking on electrical wires for no reason.
3) J Jonah Jameson. JJJ’s in the original script, as is Robbie Robertson. We see Peter, who is a student at Empire State University, bring his first Spider-Man pictures to JJJ, who gives him a tour of the Daily Bugle. JJJ complains that the internet is killing the newspaper business; later, Spidey and Electro’s first fight send them crashing through the Daily Bugle offices and the printing presses.
4) Peter’s blood. In the original script Peter actually gives his blood to Harry Osborn. This is a huge improvement over the finished film, where Harry just injects himself with spider venom. In the original script the Goblin suit is better explained – it isn’t for military use but was specifically built in secret for Norman Osborn. When Richard Parker wouldn’t give his blood to Osborn (the Parker DNA still being the key to it all), the suit went into Norman’s boathouse where Harry finds it.
5) Dr. Kafka and Electro’s escape. In the finished film Dr. Kafka, the scientist torturing Electro at the Ravenscroft Institute, is a man. This is a genderswap, as Dr. Kafka is a woman in the comics – and in the original script. She is absolutely specified as a female character; why Webb chose to change this detail is beyond me. Also, Electro breaks himself out of Ravenscroft, and he approaches Harry Osborn at Norman’s grave in an attempt to kill him. When he sees that Harry is now The Goblin the two team up.
6) One year later. In the original script there’s an entire year gap between the high school graduation and most of the rest of the film. This year gap makes Peter’s forlorn attitude towards Gwen cute instead of creepy, and it establishes that they’re college students. This makes Gwen’s application to Oxford make more sense – in the finished film it’s like she decided to go to college at the last minute.
7) Dr. Ratha. In The Amazing Spider-Man the character of Dr. Ratha seems to have been killed in deleted scenes, but the actual movie leaves him alive at the end. He shows up in the script for The Amazing Spider-Man 2, filling the same role as Donald Mencken, the Colm Feore character. Basically having Ratha appear as the Oscorp stooge who engineers Harry’s dismissal from the company lends a nice continuity to the film, which in many ways feels like a reboot of the reboot in the first place. All of the basic elements of Ratha’s role are in the finished movie, there’s just a different name attached to the character.
8) Little Spider-Man. One of the best sequences in the movie has Spidey helping a nerdy little kid who is getting picked on by bullies. That kid shows up at the end, in a Spider-Man costume, to confront the rampaging Rhino. That kid isn’t in this script! And the Rhino barely is either; he’s just a cameo at the end, with no connection to the truck heist at the beginning of the film.
9) The death of Gwen Stacy. It plays out mostly the same in the original script… but Gwen, back broken, hangs on to life long enough to demand that Peter never give up. Because this is the same character who promptly broke his promise to Captain Stacy in The Amazing Spider-Man, Peter quits being Spider-Man in the next scene.
10) “With great power…” The finished film has a terrible bit at the end where Peter quits Spider-Man for a bunch of months, and this time passes by in a montage. The same thing happens here! But instead of finding a tape of Gwen’s super on-the-nose graduation speech, Peter is approached by… his dad! Yes, Richard Parker shows back up at the end of the script, and he tells Peter he’s been watching him for years. He’s seen him become Spider-Man and everything. It’s Richard who convinces Peter to become Spider-Man again, and in his last scene in the movie he tells Pete “With great power comes great responsibility,” FINALLY working the famous phrase into this new series.
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@21 – I think that was the plan before ASM2 was released, but now that they’ve pushed back the ASM3 release date, we don’t know what’s going on.
@20: Wait, they’re trying to get the Sinister Six movie out before ASM3?
It would have done more to build up Peter and Harry’s “friendship” if Harry had been introduced in this movie and had gotten sick at the end, leaving him to turn into the Goblin in ASM3. This would have given more time for Electro to be the main (and only) villain of this film. Maybe they could have done more with him, made me care about him like Dafoe’s Goblin and Doc Oct.
But that would have gotten in their way of having a Sinister Six movie before ASM3. That seems to the problem. Their primary goal should be making a great Spider-Man movie. Instead, it’s creating a franchise.
I think Gwen’s death was important to to hope theme. Peter could have let Harry win by taking away his hope. By becoming Spider-Man again at the end, Peter chose not to give up hope, thereby depriving Harry of any victory. But again, that’s just my take on things.
@14 – Exactly!
@15 – I think the Goblin and Gwen’s death could have been saved for ASM3. Harry still could have been used in ASM2 as a foil for Peter without getting superpowers.
Wow. Didn’t mean too piss you off. I’m not apologizing for the Kafka scene. That was awful. Easily the worst part of the film. I think Harry needed to turn into the Goblin. The whole arc of the film was about how important hope is for people to live, and how broken and twisted people can be when deprived of hope. Harry was there to show what would eventually happen to Peter if he let go of any hope. Rhino was an incredibly small role and, imo, didn’t crowd the movie at all. I’m glad they got the parents plot outta the way. It was a mistake to invest so much time into that plot in the first place. Now, future films can focus on more interesting stuff, like the Sinister Six or MJ. But, hey, that’s just my opinion. Obviously most of the fan base disagrees with me.
@15 – But there was no reason for Kafka to die. Why change the character from the comics where she was someone who genuinely wanted to help her patients to a stereotypical Nazi torturer who liked to inflict pain on his patients for his own pleasure? They could have just had some no name doctor (with no German accent) and had Electro kill him while escaping. But they thought “hey, the fans will love it if we have a character from the comics in this role, are there any doctors for super villain prisons? There is? She’s a woman? Oh, the fans won’t care if we change it.”
Maybe MJ would have overcrowded the movie, but you know what would have fixed that? Taking out some of the parents plot, or Harry turning into the Goblin, or the Rhino. This is a movie series, you have to introduce plot and character that will pay off in future films. Introducing MJ in this film would have made it much less jarring than how it will be now when she suddenly is introduced in ASM3 when Peter needs a new love interest.
I think the reason for changing Kafka into a mld was to make his/her death feel less sexist. Having a woman get strapped into a gurney, electrocuted, and drowned in a very nonchalant manner may have not gone over well with some people. I think MJ would have overcrowded the movie, so I think cutting her was a smart decision for THIS movie, though maybe not a smart decision for the franchise as a whole. Max’s mother would have likely made Max feel more human, so that may have slightly hurt the movie. Theone year gap between the opening and the rest of the film was pretty obvious to me in the finished product. I recall them mentioning that Peter was attending ESU. I think the DB characters would have also overcrowded the film. I agree with hornacek on 8,9, and 10. I’m actually one of the few who’s really happy with the film we got. I really loved this movie!
@13 – Even if Harry wasn’t sick, I don’t think Peter would have given him his blood. He knows how the spider-bite affected him, he wouldn’t take the chance of it affecting anyone else. At this point he hasn’t watched his father’s YouTube clip about the Parker DNA, and even so, he doesn’t know how it could affect anyone else.
Remember the first movie – he gave Dr. Connors a formula, and it turned him into the Lizard. There’s no way Peter is giving his blood to anyone, let alone his best friend (hmm, Gwen is probably his best friend at this point).
@12 – I agree. Also by this point in the movie Peter has noticed that Harry is quite unstable. If the transfusion could have given Harry spider-powers, he easily could have turned into a threat.
@11 – I don’t know about Peter giving his blood to Harry. He knows that his blood has been affected by the spider and he has no idea how it would affect anyone else. And Harry is already sick, as he says it could make things worse. In the 60s comics Aunt May needed some blood when she was in the hospital and he didn’t want to do it because he didn’t know how it would affect her. And he only did it when there was no other option – she needed a transfusion or she would die. In this movie Harry was sick but he wasn’t dead yet – there was still time left and other options available.
I am glad to see that in the first version Peter gave his blood to Harry. That was my biggest complaint of the movie. “Oh your my best friend about to die soon, but I am not going to lift a finger to help you.”
Spider-kid was cool, glad his dad didn’t show back up though.
Words cannot describe how much I would liked to have seen the Bugle cast in the actual movie, so stupid that they were cut out. Some of the continuity fixing scenes should have been kept too. Most of the other stuff is typical early script garbage and I’m glad it never got filmed.
But at least they didnt do anything really stupid, like, oh, I dunno, a female Thor.
Mary Jane having a Spider-Man tattoo is cringeworthy.
Right now it’s a property without a vision, re-hashing stories people already know.
So after reading this…
Aren’t you glad NOW that Roberto Orci is no longer working on ASM3???
What an absolute pile of garbage that original script must have been. What we got was pretty bad but that… would have been a disaster.
Sony really has no idea what to do with Spider-man, do they?
I think hearing the quote would’ve been epic but not form his alive dad. That’s something Uncle BEN should be saying. There are a few things here which would’ve improved the movie (though I enjoyed it) and a few things which would’ve just been interesting or entertaining to see. No Jonah is criminal and I would’ve liked MJ’s inclusion given how minor it was though based upon this there wasn’t THAT much of the MJ we know from the comics injected into her
Ooops I mean other than 8, 9 and 10. 🙂
OK, other than 8,8 and 10 this all sounds like a big improvement.
Number 10 can especially go F itself though! That would have been AWFUL!!!!
1) This would have been much better in the movie. That way MJ would have already been an established character for the 3rd movie. But as it is, for the public it will be like “here’s a new Spider-Man movie, here’s a new love interest since the last one died in the previous movie”. Very James Bond. Also, “’Date a nerd,’ Gwen says before heading off to die” made me laugh.
2) I’m ambivalent to this being added or left in the movie. The only thing that interests me is that if his mother is wheelchair-bound, and then after Max’s accident she is “standing up”. Did Oscorp heal her as part of her payout? I think it’s funnier if she could always walk and she was faking it to get Max to feel guilty and take care of her. Makes Max look more put-upon by life.
3) One of my biggest disappointments in the movie was that Peter got hired at the Bugle between ASM1 and ASM2, and we never got to see anyone at the Bugle. I would have been all for this being in the movie.
4) I don’t like the idea of Peter giving his blood to Harry. He knows that Harry is sick, but his blood could make it worse. So giving him his blood seems reckless. The Goblin suit could have used better explanation. As George said, why doesn’t Norman just stay in the suit all the time if it heals the disease?
5) I don’t know if Dr. Kafka is a German torturer in the original script, but having her be a woman (you know, like her comic-book counterpart) would be an improvement. I can’t see any reason to change her to a German man who likes to torture his patients unless the movie-makers thought that would be funny.
6) I felt like the timeline of the film after graduation was a bit off. Are Peter and Gwen already in college? We never see Peter going to college, do he even mention ESU? Is this whole movie supposed to take place in the summer between graduation and the start of college? So after Gwen dies does Peter go to college during the winter months while he’s mourning Gwen? According to the film he spends most of his time at her grave.
7) I wasn’t clamoring for Dr. Ratha to return (I couldn’t even remember his name) but he does just disappear from the first movie after the bridge attack. If they removed the deleted scenes where he’s killed then they should have had him return here. Once Connors is imprisoned there’s no reason for him not to return to Oscorp.
8) Spider-Kid rules. And I like Giamatti appearing at the beginning so he’s introduced before becoming the Rhino. Like Sandman and Shocker in the Spec Spidey cartoon.
9) Glad that Gwen was dead before Peter got to her, it works better if he doesn’t get to say good-bye to her. It worked in ASM#121
10) As much as people have complained about the current films’ obsession with Peter’s parents, we can see that it could have been much much worse. Having Peter’s father return (alive) and give him the WGPCGR line would have been TERRIBLE! You thought Uncle Ben got the shaft in this movie? This would have been even worse. “Hey Peter, I’m back to tell you the mantra you should live your life by. My brother held the reins for me while I was gone and he couldn’t be bothered to tell you about responsibility so I’ve returned to do that. Always think of me as your father figure, not the guy who raised you!” I also like that Peter gets over Gwen’s death and becomes Spidey again on his own, I don’t like that he needs a father ex machina to appear and convince him. And I don’t care if the actual quote is not said by Uncle Ben (or anyone) in the film. It’s a retcon that Ben said it, no one actually says it in AF#15 except narrator Stan.
#10-what the what???? Do we find out Richard is a clone in the next movie, just like in the Ultimate Spider-Man comic? Some of these changes would’ve been cool, others not so much. I’m glad they made Gwen die abruptly, not hang on long enough for a speech.