Rebooting: the Casting

A little bit of casting news for Friday.

There are reports floating around out there—or are they rumours?—that Martin Sheen and Sally Field have been cast in the Spider-man reboot as—who else?—Uncle Ben and Aunt May.

Now this would be quite a casting coup, though—honestly—I think Cliff Robertson has more of the “Uncle Ben” vibe than Martin Sheen. Sheen, to me, has too much Apocalypse Now and West Wing for me to ever think of him as Uncle Ben. He’s too distinct. These days, he just carries too much intrinsic gravitas to be kindly Uncle Ben.

Sally Field as Aunt May I might buy, though for a visual likeness from the comics, Rosemary Harris totally won. I can’t see Sally Field doing the same. Then again, maybe they are going for a younger Aunt May.

What all this means—sadly—is that we’re going to see another origin story, that is unless all the Uncle Ben scenes are flashbacks. For the number of people who will see this movie who don’t know the Spider-man mythology, re-doing the origin is a waste of time. It’s a waste of time that could be used selling us on this new Spider-man. Seriously, I don’t want to see origins of Spider-man, Superman, or Batman ever again.

Someone like Green Lantern, who is a little off the mainstream media radar, okay. He also hasn’t had an origin movie (or two) already. Think of X-Men. That movie showed the origin of Rogue, in a manner of speaking, but it was over quick and the movie got on doing what we wanted it to do.

It’s too bad that this Spider-man reboot can’t do the same.