David Fincher’s Spider-Man movie cut “dumb” part of hero’s story

Spider-Man was known for his unique origin story but, back in 1999, David Fincher ran a red X through it when pitching his Spider-Man movie storyline.

Fincher is best known for his more dark movies like the cult classic Fight Club, Zodiac, Seven, Gone Girl, and his recent The Killer with Michael Fassbender. But Fincher once tried his hand at a Spider-Man movie.

Peter Parker, like Batman, has seen a few versions from Tobey Maguire to Andrew Garfield to the well-loved Tom Holland. Both Maguire and Garfield stuck to a more traditional version of the comic book storylines like his origin story. Meanwhile, Holland’s Spider-Man existed within the grand universe of the MCU, and his origin story was left a small blurb.

When Fincher pitched his Spider-Man movie idea, it got canned because of his one big idea.

David Fincher had a Spider-Man idea focused on an older character

According to an interview with The Guardian, Fincher had a different spin on the character Spider-Man. In his version, Fincher didn’t include the “bitten by a radioactive spider” backstory origins. Instead, he wanted to focus on an older Peter Parker.

Unfortunately for Fincher, back in 1999, Sony executives did not appear to have confidence in the legendary director’s radical take on this iconic character.

“They weren’t f*cking interested,” Fincher said. “And I get it. They were like: ‘Why would you want to eviscerate the origin story?’ And I was like: ‘Cos it’s dumb?’ That origin story means a lot of things to a lot of people, but I looked at it and I was like: ‘A red and blue spider?’ There’s a lot of things I can do in my life and that’s just not one of them.”

Spider-Man then went to Raimi with Maguire in the lead role. As the first live-action movie of the comic book character, it decided to go the full nine yards into how a nerdy high school teen gains superpowers.

On X (Twitter), some fans disagreed with Fincher calling the famed hero’s origins “dumb,” but were split on whether it was a smart idea to omit it from Spidey’s first live-action feature.

One fan commented, “It may be dumb to re-tell it now…but back in 1999? Hell no.”

Another fan agreed saying, “Wouldn’t say it’s dumb but we definitely don’t need origin stories for household names like Spider-Man or Superman anymore.”

However, others were vehemently against Fincher’s take on the origin story as a whole, calling out the famed director.

“Thank God he didn’t get it, if you don’t respect the origin story, then you don’t care about the character enough to tell their story,” commented another Spidey fan.

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