The Spiderman Scriptment Part Two

Now they're both beating on him, and he retreats in confusion. This spider Man thing is going to be harder than he thought. People sure are complex. He has the physical powers, but not the wisdom. Yet.

Spying on Mary Jane, the girl of his dreams. He discovers that her home life is a living hell, with mean-spirited and abusive parents. Mary Jane is desperately unhappy... living behind her mask of the popular girl. She has no one to share her pain. Peter is struck by the parallel in their lives.

Peter makes the big time. A syndicated variety show, on one of the local independent stations. The host introduces Spider Man and nobody comes on the stage. A beat... and then Peter (in costume) drops from the stage ceiling right toward the audience, which screams. Peter swings and lands deftly on the stage. He does some amazing Spider stuff... swinging, web-shooting, acrobatics.

After his appearance on the show. Spider Man is leaving backstage when he is approached by the most beautiful woman he has ever met. Cordelia. She appears out of the shadows and hands him a note. It says: THERE ARE OTHERS LIKE YOU.

There is an address and time for a rendezvous if he wants to learn more.

He looks up and the woman is gone. He runs out the backstage door and sees her getting into a limo in the alley behind the studio. He reaches the car just as it is pulling away. Suddenly a hand grabs him and spins him around. He confronts a solidly built guy in a trenchcoat, a hat pulled down to shadow his mean eyes. BOYD. His hands are huge.

Peter tries to shrug off the grip, and is surprised that he can't. He punches Boyd in the stomach... but his fist sinks in up to the elbow. He pulls his hand out and sees that it is covered with... Sand. Huh??!!

Enter Sandman. Boyd slams Spider Man in the jaw with a roundhouse haymaker. It feels like concrete. That's because Sandman can soften his body into sand, or harden any part of it into rock, at will.

Spider Man is slammed back against the alley wall. Boyd clips him again, then gut-punches him, doubling him over.more solid roundhouse and Peter is on his knees, gasping.

He looks up, groggily. He know this guy is more than human. Peter yells and leaps up, putting all the force he has into a roundhouse which could go through the side of a truck. It catches Boyd squarely in the face... And goes right through. There is an explosion of white sand. Boyd's face shifts and reforms. He brushes at the sand on the lapel of his coat. Then laughs eerily. His face dissolves again, into sand, which runs down... his whole body losing its form, dropping into a puddle of sand, which drains through a grating down into some tunnel below the alley. Only the coat and hat remain, and a few grains of sand blowing in the wind.

Peter is dumbfounded. He is not alone. There are others with strange powers. But it is cold comfort if they are bastards like this sand-guy. He limps down the alley to where he stashed his clothes and then climbs into the night.

The next day Peter learns that making money as Spider Man is harder than he thought. The TV shows can't pay him cash, so he has the sleazy booking agent cash the checks for him. Peter gets his uncle Ben to drive him to the booking agent's building, under some pretense. He goes in alone and changes into his costume in a restroom. Peter goes in to collect his money and the guy is broke, out of business. The guy tells him to beat it.

SLEAZY AGENT Go ahead. You want to call the cops... Call 'en. I'm sure they'll be happy to press charges for you. The second you take off the stupid mask and show them some ID.

Peter doesn't want anyone to know who Spider Man is. He doesn't want to be revealed as Peter Parker, the freak. He wants to spare his aunt and uncle the humiliation. As long as his identity is secret, then people can go on thinking the web-shooters are man-made gizmos... and not a part of him which he can not take off.

As Peter is leaving, he encounters a robbery in progress on the same floor. The thief is wearing a ski-mask. He does a double take at Peter... two masked guys staring at each other. Peter notices the thief has a tattoo of a cobra on his hand.

The thief runs past him, and down the stairs. A security guard runs up... a fat guy who has no chance of catching the criminal. He recognizes the Spider Man costume and tells Peter to go get the guy because he can't. Peter, dejected and pissed off, shrugs.

SPIDER MAN It's not my job.

Peter secretly changes and returns to the parking lot to meet his uncle Ben...

Only to find a small crowd of people gathered around someone lying on the ground. It is his Uncle. He has been shot in the chest by a car-jacker who pulled him out of his car and took off. Peter watches him die before the ambulance gets there.

A random crime. Senseless. Hard to solve. Peter becomes obsessed with finding his uncle's killer. Using his Spider Man skills he begins a one-man manhunt. For the first time we see him using his new powers for a non-selfish end. He spies on the police, taking what they know and following his own leads.

He tracks the guy down to a warehouse and goes in to get him. Peter drops into the room with the guy... who laughs when he sees him.

KILLER Well. The fag in tights. We keep bumping into each other.

Without warning the guy grabs a gun and shoots at Peter, who reacts without thinking, actually dodging the bullet. The thief keeps firing and Spider Man moves like lightning, dodging the rounds as he leaps... firing his web and jerking the gun out of the guy's hands. He grabs the killer and slams him against the wall... wanting to pound the life out of him. He hauls back his fist to smash the guy's face in... And sees the cobra tattoo on the back of his hand. FLASHBACK: The guy in the hall. The tattoo. The guard telling him to catch the guy.

Peter realizes it is the thief who ran past him in the building. If he has stopped him then, his uncle would still be alive. He could have done it. The power, the speed, the strength, to do it... all his now. But he didn't use it responsibly. The crushing weight of the responsibility that goes with power suddenly descends on him.

He releases the guy, his anger gone. He is overwhelmed by guilt. He raises his hands and shoots webbing all over the guy.

CUT TO two cops driving through the park. Spider Man drops down in their headlights, with the killer over his shoulder. He slams the guy, bound in webbing, onto the hood of the car and tells them he is the killer of Ben Parker. Peter expects to see some justice done...

But the cops aren't about to take the word of some whacko in tights. The killer is wailing and trying to get free, saying this crazy guy tied him up, HELP! The cops tell Peter to pull off the mask. He won't. They tell him to come to the station with them. They put handcuffs on him and start to take him in. Peter becomes furious... that he is being treated like the criminal, when he has solved the crime and brought them the murderer. When he resists, the cops get rough.

Spider Man breaks the handcuffs and hurls the cops away from him. They land on the pavement, and go for their guns. Peter, cursing, leaps into the darkness, catching a streetlight, swinging up to a rooftop, and vanishing. The bruised cops are amazed.

That night a local TV station, owned by J. JONAH JAMESON, runs a story on the evening news that two cops were assaulted by the mysterious character known as the Spider Man.

Thus begins Spider Man's feud with the cops and Jameson, his media nemesis. This can be developed over ensuing scenes as Peter accepts the mantle of crime-fighter.

Peter goes after criminals now with a vengeance. He wants the world to have some justice... something that seems to be lacking everywhere he looks.

Spider Man becomes a one-man anti-crime wave. He goes after crooks so single-mindedly and viciously that we fear for him... for what he is becoming. He seems to feed on it, going a little nuts. He makes enemies of virtually everybody. Except for a few grateful victims or near- victims. Maybe it was all those years of being the helpless geek, kicked around by the schoolyard bullies, with no one to protect him. No father. No older brother. Now he wants to be the big strong older brother to the world. Fix it all. Let there be no more victims... no more pain. As long as he has this strength, these senses... he's going to go for it.

One night he sees cops beating the shit out of a guy. He intervenes and webs up the two cops. Now spider Man is officially a wanted criminal. And Peter has crossed the line... with the realization that justice is something that exists only in the mind... not in a uniform or a badge or any symbol which our society sets up to represent it.

And now, as a felon, he can't make any more public appearances for money. He's back to square one... broke.

Peter feels outcast, persecuted, misunderstood... answerable only to himself... and he doesn't have the answers. He is alone in a moral wasteland, without a map or compass. He is totally isolated... with no parents to talk to, with no one to confide in who would understand what's going on inside him.

He needs someone to tell him what to do, what to be. And there is no-one. He tries to ignore his powers... and the path of non-commitment is the guilt and pain of his uncle's death. He realizes he must accept responsibility and use his gifts, but how?

The cops want him. He can't go work with them. Does he ignore the crime and injustice going on around him or become a vigilante?

When he stops criminals in the act, the cops hate him more for making them look ineffective. He is condemned in the media as a vigilante.

J. Jonah Jameson, using the media, shades the story, creating a threat... going for the dark side, peddling fear. Fear of the spider, which lurks in the dark.

And fear sells. Jameson is getting ratings. It's a good story and he's going to work it as long as he can.

Oh, and incidentally... he still has to deal with the actual bad guys themselves, who want him dead. He's hurting their business. He's got them looking over their shoulders. All the gangs in the city, and the mob, the crack dealers, the Colombians, everybody... they all have a grudge against this guy.

At the same time, in some neighborhoods, he is a local legend. Crime is down, and the friendly neighborhood Spider Man is a welcome sight. And everybody wants to claim him.

Black kids think he's black. White kids white. Hispanic etc.

"Spidey man ain't no white dude. He too down. What I'm sayin. You see his moves? He definitely a brother." "No way, home. My brother knows a guy that talked to him once, man." Italians say he's Italian. Gays think he's gay.

Peter, working with Mary Jane to finish the science project, discovers that she is a big Spider Man fan. She thinks he is mysterious and romantic... someone with courage and conviction. And she relates to his need for a mask. To keep his inner self private.

Peter wants so much to tell her... but he can't now that he is a wanted criminal.

He follows her after school and she goes by herself to her private place. The place she goes to think. None of her friends even know about it. He watches her from a high place.

ON MARY JANE, walking home. She is being followed by some punks. They accost her. There is no one around to help. She screams and they drag her off the street into an abandoned junk-yard.

Suddenly, Spider Man is there. He trounces the attackers and webs them up. He knows by now that without a crime actually taking place, the cops won't even hold these guys, so all he can do is warn them.

SPIDER MAN If you worthless chunks of vomit show your faces around here again, I'll decorate my Christmas tree with your intestines. Got it?

They get it. They're still worthless chunks of vomit, but at least they'll be somewhere else.

He picks Mary Jane up and whisks her through the air, swinging from roof to roof. It is a wild fantasy ride for her... like a dream. He takes her to the top of the top of the world... literally. The stainless steel globe from the '64 World's Fair in Flushing Meadow Park. They sit up there in the moonlight. she melts against him. And with the confidence which the mask gives him... he kisses her... through the fabric. It is a tender, sensuous moment.

PETER, in costume, goes to the rendezvous point. He is met by Cordelia and Strand. This begins the most important relationship of the film.

Strand is looking for others like him. Exceptional people, people who have been touched by fate, through some cosmic fluke. People who have been given some power which elevates them above the teeming masses. He describes finding Boyd, who was doing nickel and dime bank jobs with his new powers as Sandman.

Boyd apparently was a low-paid maintenance man at a big military research project having something to do with SDI. They were experimenting with a quantum physics effect called bilocation. They thought they could find tunnels in the fabric of space, and transpose matter between the two ends of the tunnel... essentially teleportation. And this would be a really neat way to deliver a weapon payload to the bad guys, inside deep bunkers etc.

Well, Boyd was fixing some pipes in a service tunnel under the main floor of the experiment and nobody told maintenance that day that they were going to test the big collider that generates the bilocation effect.

Somehow, things went wrong. There was a runaway reaction, then an explosion, and Boyd got hit by the effect. He transubstantiated with the sand underneath him in the crawlway. His molecules and the sand molecules took on each other's characteristics.

Boyd wasn't happy about what happened. Especially when he told the project doctors and they wanted to lock him up and study him. So he dissolved under the door, and escaped. They even tried to shoot him... but the bullets went right through. He turned from a mean-spirited little guy with no power to a mean-spirited guy with incredible physical power. Needless to say he wasted no time abusing it.

FLASH BACK SCENE: Boyd robbing an armored car. The guards fire into his body, but only puffs of sand mark the exit wounds. He turns his fist into a rock-hard sledge-hammer. It actually looks like a sledge-hammer. He swings it, knocking the guards flying. In a fury he beats his way through the steel doors of the truck and takes the money bags.

CUT TO: Boyd in a cheap hotel. On the lam. He has some stacks of money from the robbery on a dresser. A tough- looking girl is in bed next to him. He is drinking vodka straight and looking about ready to eat a snake. He gets up to find another bottle. The girl brushes distastefully at the sand in the bed. She hates sand in the bed.

There is a knock and Boyd warily answers the door. It is STRAND.

IN THE PRESENT, Strand describes how he took him in, and showed him a better way. How the real money was made. Now Boyd is Strand's right-hand, his enforcer. He apologizes for Boyd's behavior the other night, but he felt it was necessary to get Spider Man's attention. Frankly, he was curious to see if Spider Man had the balls to fight back when the adversary was as strong as he was.

Peter realizes how much he has changed. How much the mask has changed him. He did fight back. He acted on his anger... and his anger made him fearless.

What does Strand want? Somehow he senses, though he does not know who Spider Man really is, that he is young. Strand wants to take him under his wing. Teach him. And Peter, needing a father figure, is seduced by this. Strand has had years to ponder the nature of his gifts, and he is so brilliant. The things he says make so much sense.

Strand believes that they are extraordinary individuals joined by fate. That's why he sought out the Sandman... and now wants Spider Man to join. Out of 5 billion people, they are the special ones... not freaks, but masters... each created by a fluke of technology. It is some new form of evolution.

Strand invites him to the Manhattan mansion. Peter has never seen such opulence. Strand sips a martini and strokes the electric eels in his huge aquarium. Peter stares around at millions of dollars worth of art and antiques.

Strand says the whole Spider Man costume and character are pretty juvenile, and wants to know who he's really talking to here. He asks him to remove the mask but Peter won't.

Strand expands his vision of the "special ones".

The huddled masses exist, in their vicious ignorance and limitations, to lift a few exceptional people on their shoulders. However unwillingly.

That's what human evolution is all about... the highest common denominator, not the lowest.

Natural selection honors the efficient predator. And Spider Man has the instincts of a predator. The top of the food chain is always held by the most advanced predators that millions of years of evolution could produce... noble creatures like the wolf and the lion, not the cud-munching herd beasts...

We honor competition right? We honor winners. But for every winner there must be a thousand losers. It's a law of nature. So you must ask yourself... am I a winner? Or a loser?

It is the temptation of power. A carefully rationalized seduction. But Peter also sees a kindred spirit in Strand. A gifted and misunderstood outcast. Alone. Peter feels so alone he needs that companionship. And it keys in psychologically... the father figure. The older brother. Someone who understands him. Cares about him. Doesn't think he's a freak.

We are more than human, you and I. Not less. We deserve whatever we can take. It is the only true law. The law that existed for half a billion years before the laws of man.

Cordelia comes on to Peter, trying to get him to relax. Strand watches as Cordelia does her thing. Peter is starting to get a bad vibe. Strand takes him aside and says if Peter joins him he can have his fill of Cordelias, they come with the territory.

Strand holds a lightbulb by its base, between two fingers. He holds it over Peter's head and makes it glow.

STRAND Starting to get the idea, kid?

Spider Man says he's not interested in a girl with values that screwed up, and he's not sure he likes Strand any more either.

Strand makes the mistake of going too fast. Of assuming that Peter will accept his amoral view of the world immediately. When Peter finds out that Strand is a crook, he says they are enemies. Strand says Spider Man cannot afford any more enemies. As a demonstration he blasts Peter across the room with a bolt of power, stunning him. He tries to remove Peter's mask, but Peter fights back. He dodges energy blasts by leaping to the ceiling, the walls, etc. Each blast cost Strand millions as he destroys his own place, growing more frustrated as he tries to hit Peter and can't. The spider sense is keeping him just out of the line of fire.

Boyd comes in and the carnage intensifies. Peter gets zapped and almost loses consciousness. He shoots a web, snagging the huge aquarium, and topples it in an explosion of glass and thousands of gallons of water which cascades around Strand's feet. Strand is temporarily shorted out. The eels flop helplessly.

Spider Man ducks the Sand Man's blows and leaps through a window out into the night. Boyd cannot follow. Strand looks around the demolished room. He is pissed off but intrigued.

He picks up some of Peter's stray webbing. Pulls on it with all his strength. Can't break it. Hmmmm.

Strand begins a campaign to win Spider Man. First he buys the TV station and gives J. Jonah Jameson and unlimited budget to bash Spider Man.

STRAND Here is what you will do. You will fixate on Spider Man. You will devote every program solely to him. You will not rest until this psychopath is arrested and his identity is revealed. He is a menace to the public. Trust me, your ratings will soar.

He gets stories on network, and into major magazines and papers owned by his media conglomerate.

Strand's agenda is to make the world such a hostile place for Spider Man that Spidey will be driven back to him. Strand can say, see how fucked up people are? See how frightened and dangerous they can be? He wants to sour Spidey on humankind.

Then he wants to be there for him, as the only one who understands what it is to be different from the herd. To be truly alone.

He even gets thugs to dress up in knock-off Spider Man costumes and rob stores, beat people up. Push down old ladies. There is a proliferation of Spider Man sightings, all negative.

Now even the neighborhood people don't trust Spidey. When he tries to help they tell him to get lost.

To make matters worse, his costume got wrecked in the big fight with Strand and Sandman. Can't be fixed. He goes looking for a new suit and...

Incredibly, Spider Man has become so popular that his costume is available in a specialty store for 120 bucks. They even have his size. Peter shrugs and buys it. What the heck. It's made better than his old one anyway.

He gets the flu one day and he still has to go out and do the Superhero bit. He's swinging from building to building and has to stop on a ledge and throw up. A black kid sticks his head out.

KID Hey yo, hey yo, Spidey. S'up, man?

SPIDER MAN I've got the flu.

KID Hey yeah. 's'goin' around , man.

The kid goes back in. His mom asks who you talking to?

KID Spidey got the flu, mama. He puking on the fire escape.

MOM Well you tell him to "spidey" his ass on over to the next building and throw up there. Shit, it's bad enough with the wino's in the neighborhood...

Peter is disheartened by the ungrateful response of the general populace to his well-meant attempts. And then he hits a string of bad luck, where his intervention makes the situation worse, because of his lack of experience in human affairs... the sheltered science nerd gets a rude education in the ways of the world. He comes in contact for the first time with the pain, desperation, and frustration which causes criminal behavior.

Peter will have a crisis of faith, where the burden of the world's ills becomes so overwhelming that he feels paralyzed. His new power is partially about the power to see, and the responsibility to not turn his head away -- he can go into the shadows, look in the windows, watch us all from above... and he will see human nature for what it is. He will enter a moral twilight zone where the victims and the crimes are not so clear cut, where it is hard for a well-meaning crusader to jump in and help or save when the victims must be saved from themselves, or from a society which grinds them down. And how can one man, one boy really make a difference? The tide of injustice and pain is too great... too overwhelming.

Like an avalanche thundering down on him... until he starts to think there are no good people to save. Only varying degrees of bad. That the whole city is a toilet of greed and dark passions.

He busts some thieves only to find out that they are just a bunch of kids, like himself. One of the kids runs, trying to escape, and slips off a fire-escape. Peter tries to catch him but he can't. The kid hits the street and dies. Just kids. Needing some money in a tough world. Just like him. The line between good and evil is getting blurred.

Aunt May can't make the house payments on just her social security check. Now with medical bills piling up. Peter is going to have to get a job. Let's see... there's Pizza Hut. Or the car wash. Or... mmmm. There's always the 20,000 dollars in twenties and fifties sitting on the coffee table of the drug-dealer's house he just dropped in on. There won't be any objection from the drug dealers, who are all webbed up and waiting for the cops (who will take credit for the bust). And there's the money. Go on, take it.

Aunt May needs that operation. Her medicare won't cover it. Why should she suffer in pain? Maybe die? There's the money. Nobody would know. Spider Man can move like a ghost. And Peter would have a little extra cash. Stop having to ride a moped or take the bus. He could buy a car... and take a girl on a real date.

That would show those sosh buttheads with the dentists and lawyers for dads... the smirking laughter of all the Mindys and Mandys and Sandys would finally stop ringing in his ears.

He is hovering on the brink of going over the line... of becoming a criminal himself. He sees the opportunities right in front of him. It would be so easy.

CUT TO: TOP OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER...

Spidey's lonely vigil. Still hanging upside down, over the world of bright lights and chaos.

SPIDER MAN I figured being your friendly neighborhood Spider Man would get easier as I went along. Well... I'm waiting.

CUT TO SPIDER MAN, his hands reaching slowly for the stack of bills. He looks into the eyes of the drug dealer.

SPIDER MAN What the hell are you looking at?!

He leaps out the window with the money.

CUT TO next morning. A parking lot in a bad neighborhood. Asphalt, chainlink and graffiti. Kids playing basketball.

Suddenly hundreds of bills come fluttering down into frame like green snow, scattering far and wide on the wind. The kids chase the bills up and down the block. It is an instant celebration in the whole neighborhood. Somebody looks up in time to catch a glimpse of a red and blue figure swinging between rooftops.

SPIDER MAN (V.O.) What was I gonna do? Track down all the crackheads and give it back? Anyway, I figure there's more than one way to be a saint in this world. But I've gotta tell you, even fighting Sandman was easier than turning that bag upside down.

Meanwhile, Strand is analyzing the Spider Man sightings and incidents. He of course, knows which ones are real and which are faked to discredit Spidey. He has his analysis people plot everything on a map of the greater New York area and they see quickly that Spider Man's activities seem to center on Queens. Strand tells his minions to concentrate their search there.

CUT TO Mary Jane doing a TV interview. She is introduced as a local high-school girl who actually met and talked to the Spider Man. She has come forward, she says, because she is outraged by the beating he is taking in the media. Spider Man saved her, she says, and he is a kind, gentle man. He is a hero, and we should be thankful he is here.

MARY JANE goes alone to her private spot. She is sitting, thinking, when she hears something behind her. She turns as Spider Man drops down to her, and gasps, startled by his sudden presence. She feels a rush of excitement as he offers his hand to help her up.

SPIDER MAN Do you still trust me?

Her answer is a kiss. Sweet and soulful... their lips separated by the sheer fabric of the mask. She can feel his breath on her face.

MARY JANE Where are we going?

SPIDER MAN It's a surprise.

CUT TO: The Brooklyn Bridge. A stunning aerial shot. A tiny shape swinging in an arc, racing past the support cables, sweeps toward us. It is Spidey, with MJ in his arms. He shoots another web strand, swings to one of the stone towers, and races up the side. She is light as a feather in his arms. She screams like a kid riding Colossus, in fear and exhilaration.

They pass us. Her screams continue, fading as he carries her up to the dizzying heights above us.

ON TOP OF THE BRIDGE TOWER. Hold a beat. We hear screams approaching. Spidey appears and sets her on terra firma. She clings to him, looking down and around in wonder. He has put the world at her feet. She can't believe this is happening to her.

In a dizzying down-angle we see how the suspension cables all meet radially at the top of the tower... like the treads of some vast spider web. Peter and MJ seem to sit at the very center of the web, surrounded by the lights of the city. It is a warm spring night. And the moment is pure magic.

She stands with her back against a girder, needing to feel something solid. Spider Man stands before her, a perfectly formed male silhouette with a soothing low voice.

SPIDER MAN Courtship among the spiders is highly ritualized. It varies from species to species. The male spider may circle the female, or wave his front legs... to signal that he is not prey.

Spider Man moves in a hypnotic arc around her. He raises his hands in a dance-like movement. Lowers them.

SPIDER MAN The female usually signals her willingness by an uncharacteristic passivity.

MJ takes a deep breath. Her lip trembles. Her knees are weak. Her eyes, though, are steady, gazing at the silhouette before her. She doesn't move of speak. He moves closer.

SPIDER MAN In certain crab spiders, such as Xysticus, the male will attach strands of silk to the female... tying her limbs...

Spider Man moves his hand gracefully across her, and she sees the sheerest silk webbing glinting in the moonlight. First one wrist. Then the other. Hypnotic movement in the moonlight. Her arms are bound to the wall. Her breathing gets more rapid.

SPIDER MAN Since the female can break free at any time, the bonds have only symbolic significance.

MARY JANE The male must be very bold... to take such liberties with the predatory female.

SPIDER MAN Yes. He is very bold. But he must also trust her. (he moves very close) Close your eyes.

He removes his mask and kisses her. Their mouths very slowly and very sensuously devour each other.

Peter and MJ are locked together. He is mesmerizing, gentle, powerful. He pushes up her skirt. They make love, high above the world. She doesn't look.

CUT TO MARY JANE the next day at school. She is humming happily as she lets a tarantula walk over her arm in the science room. Two of her sosh girl-friends come up and are completely grossed out. They talk about Peter Parker having a negative effect on her, that she's becoming a nerd like him. She laughs at them and tells them exactly how full of shit they are.

Continue to Part Three