Hope for Spider-Man

Friday, May 4th heralds the return of pop-culture icon Spiderman to the big screen in this summers pending hit, "Spiderman 3".

To be sure, I liked both Spiderman 1 and 2. Surprisingly, so did my wife (maybe that's just because she loves me, but that's another blog entry...).

I'm reminded of a story I first heard regarding a draft of the script for the first movie. Apparently, someone wrote a scene where Spidey wields a knife and attacks a bad guy, injuring him fatally. To the rescue came the producers who basically said "You can't do that!"

They knew a scene of that nature with Spiderman would have destroyed the entire movie series.

This is one of the reasons I enjoyed Spiderman 1 and 2.

Here is a fictional hero in today's culture that keeps it relatively clean.

Even at PG-13 (for stylized action/violence and mild language), the innocence of Spiderman/Peter Parker shines through.

Will Spiderman 3 hold up in that department?

Will it still herald the classic values of family, love, responsibilty, friendship, fatherhood, and purpose?

Will kids (including the one in all of us) still be able to look up to him as a good guy whether he's in or out of costume?

Lets hope so.