The recent success of aged versions of popular superheroes have proven that there is indeed a market for such tales. Old Man Logan, Old Man Hawkeye, Punisher: The End, The Dark Knight Returns, and Kingdom Come are all testament to this fact. There is also an Old Man Spider-Man story arc. But we never hear much about it. That is because Old Man Spider-Man was an epic failure and Marvel wants you to forget it ever existed.
Why Old Man Spider-Man Movie Rumors Are Catching Steam
After Tobey Maguire’s appearance as a significantly aged version of his character from the Sam Raimi trilogy in No Way Home, viewers started vouching for a movie base don him. Spider-Man 4, a movie Sam Raimi never got to make because of the Spider-Man 3 debacle, could finally be in the works. Tobey Maguire, who reveals he has made a life for himself now as a family man, could be the star in Spider-Man 4, as an older web-slinging superhero. Marvel already has a movie made on these lines. Logan was essentially a retelling of the Old Man Logan arc with a few twists. Spider-Man 4 could be the tale of an older Peter Parker for a new generation of readers.
Why The Idea Seems So Interesting
When Stan Lee came up with the idea for a wall-crawling superhero, he saw a gap in the market he needed to fill. There were not many well-known teenage superheroes out there. Since most of the readers of comic books are teenagers, there was potential in introducing a younger hero in the comic books who was not a supporting character or sidekick. But with the passage of time, Peter Parker has developed as a person. He is now an adult with a job and has to now juggle between his normal and superhero life, more so than he used to when he was in high school. Old Man Peter Parker/Spider-Man would take that story much ahead, giving us an aged Peter Parker who is now entering an all new phase of life.
Reign – The Old Man Spider-Man Tale That Was An Epic Failure
There is already a tale exploring the adventures of an aged Peter Parker. In Spider-Man: Reign, an extremist police force called Reign now controls New York City, which ahs become fully totalitarian. Peter is aged, now a florist. After being fired from his job. he meets an older J Jonah Jameson, who expresses his regrets for slandering Spider-Man’s names. Jameson convinces Peter to wear the mask again. The corrupt New York City mayor releases supervillains from prison who then form the “Sinner Six“, the next generation of Sinister Six.
Reign received humongous backlash from fans all over the world. Marvel later discontinued making any further efforts for other such tales. One of the primary reasons was that Reign turned Peter into a bitter and vengeful superhero who wouldn’t hesitate to kill his enemies of need be. A hero whose moral compass always pointed north falling so far from grace did not bode well with the readers. The other reason was the death of Mary Jane. It is later revealed in the issue that Mary Jane has died because of Spider-Man’s radioactive semen. Who we thought was Mary Jane were actually Peter’s hallucinations of his late wife. Mary Jane being killed to conform to the “Woman in Refrigerators” trope was one more reason Reign ended up as a failure.
The idea of an older Spidey stands totally against the very basis that forms the foundation of the character. Peter Parker has always been a younger superhero. By turning him into a responsible adult, Marvel would be essentially destroying the very essence of Peter Parker. An older Spider-Man themed Spider-Man 4 movie sounds like a bad idea because it is one.
