Hoping for Spidey's Skyfall (Spoilers)

The year 2002 was when which the Spider-Man film franchise kicked off in fine style, ending the year as the highest grossing film at the expense of such formidable opposition as the second Star Wars prequel, as well as sequels in both the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings franchises. It was also the year in which another popular film franchise continued its downward spiral into virtually terminal schlock. Die Another Day was the twentieth film in the long-running (then 40 years) James Bond film franchise, and the fourth starring Irish actor Pierce Brosnan. After the first, well-regarded film Goldeneye in 1995, the subsequent films starring Brosnan got progressively worse, with Die Another Day representing a creative nadir. It got so bad that the solution was to start all over again from scratch, with a new bond in Daniel Craig, and a new timeline, though it retained Judi Dench from the Brosnan era as "M."  Casino Royale was a commercial and critical success.

It was not all smooth sailing, however; the next installment, Quantum of Solace, notwithstanding the goodwill generated from the Bond reboot, was not as well received as its predecessor and was seen as a creative misfire, notwithstanding the fact that there was clear narrative continuity between Casino Royale and itself. The new Bond series was conceived as a trilogy, but the second part, which was left conspicuously hanging for a third, sagged, leaving doubt as to the viability of the next installment.

So Sony cut their losses and made Skyfall, which had nothing to do with either of the two films that came before it, although they did retain Craig as Bond and Dench as M. They told a new story, unsaddled by previous baggage, and one conceived entirely as its own thing, and the results were dramatic.

Skyfall made a billion dollars at the worldwide box office, nearly twice the grosses of its immediate predecessor, garnered critical acclaim, and won a passel of awards, including two Oscars.

In the span of ten short years, the James Bond went from a creative low with Die Another Day to a creative high with Skyfall.

In that same period, the Spider-Man film franchise, which saw the release of the acclaimed, award-winning blockbuster Spider-Man 2 in 2004, has apparently gone in the opposite direction with this year's release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, quantifiably the worst-received film of that entire series.

Now, when Sam Raimi's original Spider-Man films went the way of Die Another Day with the disastrous Spider-Man 3, Sony correctly decided it was time to start anew, and two years ago produced the flawed but nonetheless highly watchable reboot The Amazing Spider-Man, which wasn't quite Casino Royale to Die Another Day but which nonetheless provided the studio with a much needed clean break from the past.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is arguably the Quantum of Solace of this new series of Spider-Man movies, and even though it's still making money, to my mind the producers really have to start rethinking their approach to the series, which they apparently already have planned out for the next several years, just as the Bond producers did. Their plan is for Spider-Man to face off with the Sinister Six, his fabled team of enemies from the comic books. So confident are they, apparently, that they even have a spinoff planned for the supervillians. The underwhelming grosses and vicious reviews, however, should get them to seriously rethink their long-term plan.

My (admittedly unsolicited) advice for them is to keep things simple; focus on Peter's core relationships, which was one of the things they did well, even, in this widely reviled new installment, and they should never let another whole movie go by without Peter Parker ever mentioning Uncle Ben by name. That was just wrong on every narrative level. They should also make it a point to have his villains and supporting characters played by actors who play them less like cartoon characters and more like human beings.  Jamie Foxx (Electro), Paul Giamatti (Rhino) and Marton Csokas (Dr. Kafka) all went extremely heavy on the camp, and it was extremely distracting to watch. Imagine how horrid Captain America: The Winter Soldier would have been if Robert Redford's character had abruptly started speaking with a German accent.

As Batman and Robin showed back in 1997, all it takes to bury a film franchise is one bad film, but as Skyfall showed back in 2012, the converse is also true: an outstanding film can really turn things around for a franchise in freefall.  I'm still holding out hope that the next Spider-Man film is the latter type of sequel.