The Tobey Maguire Spider-Man
movies were lauded at the time for featuring a faithful interpretation of the Marvel hero’s iconic red-and-blue costume, but lauded artist Alex Ross actually created several alternate designs for the Sam Raimi film, which ultimately never reached the screen. This alternate suit would later be given to the Peter Parker of Earth-8532, becoming the main costume for his lethal Spider-Shot persona.
Speaking to Ain’t It Cool News all the way back in 2000, Alex Ross explained how he was commissioned to design a Spider-suit for the big screen in the hopes of getting work for Sam Raimi’s 2002 film. Ross states that he had been approached to work on a Fantastic Four film, but later inquired about working on Spider-Man.
Ross was told by a contact he had in the Marvel offices in L.A. that the upcoming Spider-Man film that they hadn’t yet locked in the costume.
Unused Spider-Man Movie Costume Found a Second Life with Spider-Shot
According to Ross’s Ain’t It Cool interview, he remembered that he had seen a proposed Spidey costume from fellow artist and friend David Williams, and thought that would be a perfect fit: “I told him at that point that I had a design, and I was speaking again of my friend’s design, that I’d be ready to pass onto them.” David Williams and Alex Ross’ redesign of the Spider-Man costume certainly fits in with the design aesthetics of the time, trading the bright blue of Spider-Man’s costume with black and limiting the web design to his mask and upper torso.
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As Ross noted in the interview, superhero movies at the time were still relatively rare in Hollywood, and the few that had been made had made drastic changes to the colorful costumes seen in the comics, most notably in the first X-Men movie from 2000. Ross explains:
“If you think about it in terms of real cinema, people have no reason to understand why a person who suddenly reaches a certain fantastic science-fiction ability is going to turn around and want to garb themselves in some kind of colorful, attractive disguise.”
Ultimately, Williams’ and Ross’ designs went unused, but it did seem to provide the inspiration for the Assassin Spider-Man, aka Spider-Shot, the lethal version of Peter Parker first seen in 2008’s What If? Spider-Man vs. Wolverine #1. This version of Spider-Man was trained by the Rook to become the best assassin on his Earth.
Alex Ross’ Realistic Paintings Helped Pave the Way For Superhero Films
The Artist’s Influence Is Felt Throughout The Industry
While the unused original Williams and Ross design lives on through Spider-Shot, and Alex Ross would later be hired to work on Spider-Man 2, where he contributed the memorable paintings in the opening credits that recapped the first film. Ross’ influence on superhero cinema extends even beyond that, as the artist states that producer Avi Arad had been using his work when pitching the Marvel characters as movies:
“(Arad) had already been using copies of Marvels to show people in Hollywood what the Marvel properties should be able to look like on-screen.”
This story about his work on the original Spider-Man is especially interesting to consider Alex Ross’ overall influence on the super-hero cinema boom of the 2000s.
While the lost Spider-Man costume wound up not making it to the screen in 2002, perhaps Spider-Shot will make a cinematic appearance one day.
Signature Ross series like Marvels and Kingdom Come came out in the 1990s, showing a more grounded, realistic portrayal of many characters that had previously been thought of as impossible to achieve in live-action. Combined with the rapidly developing computer technology of the same time period, this made adapting superhero stories to film seem so much more possible than it had before. And while the lost Spider-Man costume wound up not making it to the screen in 2002, perhaps Spider-Shot will make a cinematic appearance one day.
Source: Ain’t It Cool News, Alex Ross Interview (2000)
Spider-Man
Spider-Man is the name given to several individuals who have employed a spider-moniker throughout Marvel Comics. Typically gaining their powers through a bite from a radioactive spider, the different Spider-Man heroes employ super-strength, agility, and intellect while utilizing webbing to swing and tangle up their foes. The most notable of these Spider-Men is Peter Parker, who remains one of the most popular superheroes throughout the world.
