Face it, there needed to be a new Spider-Man. Tobey Maguire is in his mid-thirties now, so what could producers do?

Cover him in creepy make-up? Write a new age-appropriate Spider-Man film where Spider-Man spends two hours in Ikea than has an awkward conversation with a stranger about the traffic? Don’t be silly. There needed to be a new Spider-Man. And today, following months of speculation about Robert Pattinson and Aaron Johnson and Jamie Bell, the new Spider-Man has finally been revealed. Ladies and gentlemen, your new Spider-Man is…

Andrew Garfield! Or Alan Garfunkel! Or Alvin Guffpants! Or something! Basically it’s someone who you’ve never heard of. Get over it.

When Sam Raimi left Spider-Man earlier this year, taking Tobey Maguire and Kristen Dunst with him, it was announced that Spider-Man 4 would be a gritty teenage drama. So, needless to say, everybody assumed that the new Spider-Man would end up being a teenager like Taylor Lautner or, God help us, Justin Bieber. Shows what you know.

The new Spider-Man is actually 26 years old. Which means that, by our estimates, he’s about three films away from being slathered in creepy make-up and ordered to march around Ikea in full Spidey get-up murmuring about the contraflow on the A36.

Which is all well and good, but who is the new Spider-Man? Who actually is he? What’s his name and all that stuff? Glad you asked – The Washington Post reports:

Columbia ended the frenzied speculation, announcing that a virtually unknown actor – Andrew Garfield – has been cast as Peter Parker. On selecting the 26-year-old Garfield, [director Marc] Webb said: “Though his name may be new to many, those who know this young actor’s work understand his extraordinary talents… Mark my words, you will love Andrew Garfield.”

So who is Andrew Garfield? If you saw the annoying, barely-watched Channel 4 show Sugar Rush, you might recognise him. And if you saw the Caravaggio episode of Simon Scharma‘s 2006 series The Power Of Art, you might recognise him as Boy. And if you saw The Other Boleyn Girl… well, actually you won’t recognise him because his part was cut out of that film. But he’s been in Red Riding and Doctor Who and he’s in that new Facebook movie, and he’s apparently on a lot of ‘one to watch’ lists. So maybe Andrew Garfield is a good choice for Spider-Man after all.

Personally, though, we’re going to withhold judgement until we see him demonstrate his dark side by getting a slightly different haircut. That’s the essence of Spider-Man, after all.

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This much we know - Spider-Man 4 will be a reboot, a brooding emotional drama aimed squarely at teenagers.

Hang on a minute. Brooding? Emotional? Teenagers? Are you thinking what the berserk, oestrogen-ravaged fringes of the internet are thinking? Are you thinking that Robert Pattinson would make a brilliant new Spider-Man?

Well, stop it. Contrary to some online reports, Robert Pattinson definitely isn’t going to play the lead in Spider-Man 4. But let’s not rule him out of the movie entirely – if the new producers decide to write a part for a wan, monotonous super villain with silly hair, a face like a sockful of conkers and the power to make teenage girls fail to spell simple words correctly on the internet, we’re sure he’ll be first to get the call.

Since Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire left Spider-Man 4 this week, we’ve seen a lot of unrest. For instance, there have been those concerned that, without Raimi onboard, the new Spider-Man won’t communicate his feelings exclusively through his haircut, or that an offensively large part of the film wouldn’t be given over to scenes about Mary Jane dancing around with a sodding egg.

But the main concern seems to be over the casting of Spider-Man, stemming from the news that Spider-Man 4 would start afresh from Peter Parker‘s teenage years. That’s not too much of a surprise – Spider-Man has always been a teenage character rather than the paunchy, tired-looking thirtysomething that Tobey Maguire eventually turned him into – but it nevertheless set off warning bells thanks to the success of the Twilight films.

Would Sony really try to ape Twilight with Spider-Man 4? Would it really turn Spider-Man 4 into a stupid, wooden, tedious tale about Mary Jane endlessly chewing on her lip and gawping out into space while fantasising about a transparently dull, moronically self-interested superhero with crappy hair and a transvestite’s face? Would Spider-Man 4 become another ham-fisted allegory for pre-marital chastity, possibly by utilising his web-shooter as a metaphor for jizz or something?

In all honesty, it’s too early to say – although, God, we hope not. But that hasn’t stopped one corner of the internet – the squealing, acne-ridden, urine-soaked corner that keeps a saliva-drenched New Moon poster on its wall for kissing practise – from deciding that Robert Pattinson will play the lead in Spider-Man 4.

It’s a ridiculous idea for all kinds of reasons, and one that the LA Times has decided to shoot down while it’s still in its infancy. It lists several reasons why Robert Pattinson won’t be the new Spider-Man, including the fact that the film doesn’t even have a director yet. Here’s what else it says:

The second problem is age — Pattinson is now 23, and this clearly is going to be a high-school movie. And finally, it would be a terrible idea. There’s already a question mark on the movie — why bring in an actor with questionable skills?

We have to agree on all counts. And let’s not forget that Robert Pattinson would probably try to shoehorn in a contractual clause whereby one of his songs would have to be inserted into the Spider-Man 4 soundtrack. Because, really, you don’t want to see an iconic superhero majestically sweep across the New York skyline to what sounds like a tramp strumming listlessly at a tatty three-string acoustic guitar while mumbling incomprehensibly to himself, do you?

Anyway, all this talk is redundant. It’s perfectly clear that Robert Pattinson isn’t going to be the next Spider-Man. After all, everyone knows that it’s going to be one of the Jonas Brothers, right?

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Watching the evolution between Spider-Man and Spider-Man 3, it was pretty clear what Spider-Man 4 would include.

There’d be about 400 baddies, for starters. And it’d be up to 17 hours long. And it’d be a musical. And all of Spider-Man’s emotions would be signposted by a change of haircut. And Kirsten Dunst would have completed her transformation from busty pin-up to Otzi The Iceman in a ginger wig. And, needless to say, it’d be worse than terrible. Yes, Spider-Man 4 was more or less a done deal.

But not any more. Sony has just decided to bin Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst and start Spider-Man 4 from scratch as a gritty teenage drama in a move rumoured to have the codename ‘Project Let’s Try And Make Something Even Worse Than Spider-Man 3‘.

You don’t need to be a professor of cinema to realise that Spider-Man 3 wasn’t very good. But, that said, we were still looking forward to seeing Spider-Man 4 next year.

Mostly, we were interested in seeing how Sam Raimi would solve all the seemingly insurmountable problems – like the bloat of the last film, the way that he’d have to balance the artistic integrity of the story with the commercial pressures of a $2.5 million studio franchise, the fact that Spider-Man is now close to 40 years old and Mary Jane is starting to look a little bit like Sam The World’s Ugliest Dog and the way that, since The Dark Knight, nobody likes their superheroes to have any fun any more.

But now we won’t get that chance. After a few weeks of frantic rumour-milling about budget and script problems, it’s been announced that Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst have all been ditched from Spider-Man 4. That’s the bad news. The good news is that Spider-Man 4 will be rebooted to be more about teenagers and emotions and… hang on, that’s bad news too. Oh, this is no good at all. The LA Times reports:

Sony on Monday pulled the plug on the project as it was being conceived with director Sam Raimi after he told the studio he wasn’t comfortable moving forward with the sequel… The studio said it would hire a new star and director and re-boot the movie as a story about Parker’s early life as a “teenager grappling with contemporary human problems and amazing super-human crises.”

It isn’t all bad news, of course – Drag Me To Hell showed that Sam Raimi is much better when he’s allowed to muck about on his own, for instance, and if Tobey Maguire had carried on as Spider-Man for much longer then it would have meant eventually sitting through a tacked-on subplot about the creeping onset of osteoporosis. Plus, if the new Spider-Man 4 is going to be aimed at teenagers then it’ll be all about ringtones and impenetrable slang and Dappy out of N-Dubz and it’ll pass us by anyway.

So that’s something. Plus, don’t forget that if the new teenage Spider-Man 4 is going to be a reboot, then we’ll get to watch the series develop all over again. That means that Spider-Man 6 is going to be just as uniformly dreadful as Spider-Man 3 was. Oh, now you’re excited.

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Things are about to get awkward down at the Hall of Justice.

Not only does everyone have to pretend not to notice the strange sexual tension between the Wonder Twins, but Apache Chief has taco farts and the rec room’s been cleared out.

And on top of that - somehow Spider-Man‘s started to date Catwoman and now Batman spends his waking hours crying into a couch cushion. Heroes have feelings too, you know.

Now before any super-nerds start balking about colliding universes, let us state we know Spider-Man and Catwoman could never be together.

Sam Raimi on the other hand…

The first three Spider-Man movies were so phenomenally popular that it’s be really hard to make a follow up that didn’t cause ardent fans to run onto railroad tracks, lay down and patiently wait for the end to come. A big part of all this inevitable insurrection is nailing an accurate portrayal of a much-loved villain – well that sounds pretty hard. Spidey’s readers are intimately familiar with the whole lot of ‘em, and if they’re brought to the screen incorrectly, like say if the Vulture’s feathers are more of a gay emerald than a common suburban lawn green, people are gonna scream fowl.

Pun very intended.

In the first movie Peter Parker had to fight his inner demons come-to-life in the form of the Green Goblin. In the second picture he had to do the exact same thing except with an aquatic feel.

The third movie, of course, is infamously the one where Parker had to defeat Topher Grace with a gigantic wind chime.

Seriously – how do you follow up something like that?

With Catwoman. According to Mania.com, anyway:

“We can exclusively reveal that actress Rachel McAdams has met with the producers of the film for a major role. McAdams (of ‘Wedding Crashers’ and ‘Sherlock Holmes’ fame) is said to be a top contender for the role of Felicia Hardy, known to comic fans as The Black Cat. Our sources tell us that the Black Cat’s story fits well with Raimi’s Spider-Man formula, which always finds the villains troubling not only the costumed hero, but also becoming entangled in Peter Parker’s personal life as well.”

That all sounds like a pretty sexy time – and at least it seems like they’re gonna give CW a more urban feel. We strongly…

Oh what’s that now? Black Cat is miles away from Catwoman you say? Black Cat shows way more Cleave you say? And she has psychic abilities while Catwoman only gets rusty thimble claws you say?

Well it definitely sounds like you’re underestimating the power of tetanus. That’s lockjaw, dude. Psychic brain power’s got nothing on lockjaw.

Just ask our Aunt Judy – not that she’d answer you. A dirty nail rusted her mouth shut.

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Fact: Spider-Man 3 was stupid – so stupid that if you put a hot iron in its hand and made a telephone noise it’d burn its own ear off.

But don’t think that Sam Raimi hasn’t learnt his lesson. He’s decided to make Spider-Man 4 intimidatingly cerebral in its complex exploration of themes like Oedipal desire, quantum immortality and the ethical ambiguity of human interpretations of good and evil.

Well, that’s what we assume, anyway. It’s been announced that the script for Spider-Man 4 will be penned by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire. Great! We loved his play Rabbit Hole – especially the scene where, after wrestling with grief following the accidental death of her four-year-old son, the lead character dances the Twist with Kirsten Dunst, cooks some eggs and then pulls a funny face.

It’s easy to forget that Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 had impressively deep themes. Spider-Man taught us that with great power comes great responsibility, and Spider-Man 2 taught us the sacrifices necessary to achieve greatness.

Then Spider-Man 3 came along and taught us that if you ever get covered in sticky black alien-jizz you’ll end up with hair like Pete Wentz. It rounded the trilogy off nicely, really.

But since then The Dark Knight has been released, and for the first time Spider-Man is playing catch-up. Audiences have moved on – they don’t want their superheroes to fight big sandy men and then dance with Ron Howard‘s daughter any more. Now they want their superheroes to wrestle joylessly with ethics, in the dark, while adopting a weird voice that sounds like a farting buffalo.

So, with that in mind, Spider-Man director Sam Raimi has decided to give 2011′s Spider-Man 4 a punt into the realms of the highbrow. He’s hired Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire to do the script, as MTV reports:

Apparently, “Spider-Man 4” has landed one heck of a screenwriter in Pulitzer Prize winner and playwright David Lindsay-Abaire. Since Lindsay-Abaire’s plays focus on (in his own words) “outsiders in search of clarity,” the choice suggests that Columbia wants a return to a character-driven “Spider-Man,” and a Peter Parker who struggles with his heroic powers.

We’re sad to say that this news has actually made us a little bit intrigued about Spider-Man 4. David Lindsay-Abaire’s plays are as universally acclaimed as they are high-minded, and this bodes really well for the movie. And if he remembers that nobody wants to see Kirsten Dunst again, we’re even happy to overlook the fact that David Lindsay-Abaire also co-wrote the low-rent animated 2005 Paula Abdul movie Robots.

But mostly we’re excited because it looks as if Spider-Man 4 will be far more intelligent than Spider Man 3. Don’t get us wrong, there’ll still be an excrutiating kitchen-based dance scene in the new movie, but this time the characters will be doing abstract interpretive jazz-ballet to Bartok’s Rhapsody Folk Dances for Violin and Orchestra No. 2.

If the failings of Spider-Man 3 could be summed up in two words, they’d be ‘Kirsten Dunst’ – five words and it’d be ‘Kirsten Dunst and everything else.’

So imagine what the forthcoming Spider-Man 4 and Spider-Man 5 movies would be like without Kirsten Dust’s anemic wailing and egg-based dance routines. You’re imagining they’d be quite good, aren’t you. Well, you’re in luck, because Spider-Man director Sam Raimi is giving off the impression that Kirsten Dunst won’t feature in either of the two new movies.

Actually, we should be a bit more accurate – Sam Raimi implied that Kirsten Dunst’s character Mary-Jane wouldn’t be in the new Spider-Man movies. He also hinted that one of the new Spider-Man villains could be a vicious scaly reptilian humanoid, though, so if that doesn’t warrant a callback for Kirsten Dunst then nothing will.

Remember when the Spider-Man movies were good? Remember when the thought of another Spider-Man sequel seemed like a good thing, rather than something you’d happily drown yourself in cattle guts to avoid? We do too, just about.

We don’t any more, obviously – the musical numbers, eggy dancing, evil haircuts, 19-hour running time and bad sand of Spider-Man 3 has made us fear 2011′s Spider-Man 4 with all the dread we’d usually reserve for an exam or a jail rape.

But luckily, Spider-Man director Sam Raimi has sensed our fear and he wants to calm us all down the best way he can – by implying that the services of Kirsten Dunst probably won’t be required for Spider-Man 4. Or Spider-Man 5, for that matter. Raimi told MTV:

“Kirsten, I’d love to work with her again,” Raimi explained to us this week, making it sound as if current plans to include Dunst for “Spider-Man 4” and “Spider-Man 5” are still up in the air. “I hope she’ll be written into it. I couldn’t imagine making one without her, and I think she’s an important part of the movies.” Nevertheless, Raimi admitted that the very nature of an episodic series requires that characters come and go.

Do you hear that? Kirsten Dunst might not be starring in any more Spider-Man movies. But then if that’s the case, who’s going to upside down kiss Spider-Man? And who’s going to provide the emotional core? And who’ll sing in the movies twice despite having a voice like an asthmatic 80-year-old? And who’ll be a shadowy reminder that age, unhealthy lifestyles and ill-advised romances with dirty indie stars can obliterate your once-good looks completely in a matter of years? Actually, come to think of it, no, we’re alright without any Kirsten Dunst in our Spider-Man thanks.

Actually, that’s a lie. We do want Kirsten Dunst in the new Spider-Man sequels. That’s partly because without her we won’t get the creeping sensation that she thinks she’s bigger than Spider-Man or the constant whining about how hard acting is.

But mainly it’s because, if Kirsten Dunst isn’t hired for Spider-Man 4 and Spider-Man 5, it’ll only give her more time to make more films like Marie Antoinette. And that’s worse.

Marginally.

The internet in digest form. But with less pornography, sadly.

5 - Busuu.com – it’s like Facebook but you learn a new language doing it rather than get publicly ridiculed for the way you’re beginning to resemble members of bad 1990s American jam bands. So it’s better – Busuu

4 – It’s a hamster that looks like a cake. And it looks delicious, which is probably counterproductive - Gawker

3 - The hecklerspray IT department in full force

2 - Known Gary Glitter Aliases. From The Onion, so just as funny as you’d expect – The Onion

1 - How to make Spider-Man 4 not so awful that it makes us want to punch Tobey Maguire in the face as hard we can. Tough job - IGN

There are sequels that nobody wants to see and then there are sequels that nobody wants to see – and Spider-Man 4 is one of those sequels.

Despite Tobey Maguire not really wanting to make Spider-Man 4, Sam Raimi not really wanting to make Spider-Man 4 and an entire planet of people who've had enough time and money stolen already not wanting to see Spider-Man 4, Producer Laura Ziskin has announced that Spider-Man 4 will be released in May 2011.

Awful news, we know. But on the plus side Spider-Man 4 can't be any worse than Spider-Man 3 – that is unless someone decides to give Spider-Man a crime-fighting Scrappy-Doo style son and they go into space together to save the world from global warming and… no, wait, then it'd still be better than Spider-Man 3. No omelette scenes, you see.

Make a list of all the things you'd hate to see in a superhero movie. What's on it? Several extending singing and dancing numbers? A goodie who turns bad when he brushes his hair a certain way? So many villains that they only get about a nanoblip of screentime each? A mid-film interlude about how fun it is to dance the Twist and cook eggs at the same time? Congratulations, you've just described Spider-Man 3.

Spider-Man 3 stands as one of the most clueless big-budget studio movies of all time; a film where the writer, studio, director and each individual actor tried to make a completely different movie. Spider-Man 3 was such a mess that Kirsten Dunst said she didn't want to make Spider-Man 4 before it was even released, and then went off for a boozy little meltdown in rehab afterwards. And Kirsten Dunst was in Marie Antoinette, so she knows cack when she gets paid to star in it.

But even though Spider-Man 3 looked like a franchise-killer of Batman And Robin proportions, it's not over yet. Last week producer Laura Ziskin told cinemas that Spider-Man 4 is still going to happen, and it'll be released in less than three years too. Firstshowing reports:

Producer Laura Ziskin told theaters owners on Thursday that Spider-Man 4 is tentatively scheduled to arrive in May of 2011. Although rumors have been circulating surrounding both Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire's return, nothing is concrete yet. The farthest they've gone is to pay Marvel to secure the rights yet again, which is at least confirmation that they will continue.

There isn't a script for Spider-Man 4 yet, but one is apparently being written by James Vanderbilt, who wrote Zodiac (good) and a film that had John Travolta in it (bad). But however Vanderbilt's script turns out, it still can't be any worse than Spider-Man 3's for the simple fact that it wasn't written in purple wax crayon by a farting egg-fixated toddler.

And only then can discussions start seriously. If the script's good enough, Sam Raimi will direct it. If the money's good enough, Tobey Maguire will return to star in it. And if there's a trail of vodka miniatures leading from her house to the film set, we don't doubt that Kirsten Dunst will make an appearance as well.

Phew! If that happens, it'll be business as usual. Except, you know, Spider-Man 3 was business as usual as well, and that made us want to vomit blood into a bucket. And then drown ourselves in all the blood-sick. And then set ourselves on fire. 

So, yeah, more of that please.

Read more:

Spider-Man Will Return in 2011! But Do We Want Him To? – First Showing