It would appear that we are at another crucial moment in human history. A moment that shall not be soon forgotten, and will be forever remembered in story and song, as longs as there are eyes to read and voices to sing. It will be one of those days where years from now, people will look back and remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news: Spider-Man 4 has been cancelled.

OK, obviously it’s not that big of a moment, but I think it is pretty significant. Even though Spider-Man 3 was a huge waste of time and money, there was still a lot of life left in the franchise. Some clever storytelling and interesting characters like the first two films, and Spidey is back on top. The studio however, felt differently and Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire are out, and the franchise will be given one of these “reboots” I’ve heard so much about.

I’m not against rebooting a tired franchise. I think that sometimes the art of movie making needs to evolve before certain stories can be told. Spider-Man was case in point of this. If that movie had been made at any other time, it would have been terrible. Movie special effects and the seriousness with which Hollywood takes comic characters these days hadn’t caught up to a story as important as Spider-Man’s. But reboots only work after significant time has passed.

Spider-Man came out in 2002. That’s less than 10 years ago, and now the Studio is telling me that they want to take Peter Parker back to high school? They want him to deal with “contemporary” problems? What the hell does that mean? Didn’t I just see that?

When Marvel did a similar Spider-Man re-boot in the comics in the form of Ultimate Spider-Man, it was fantastic because it had been 30 years since Peter Parker was a teenager. Too little time has passed for a Spider-Man reboot, and anything they put out is just going to feel out of place because the Raimi/Maguire era is still fresh in our minds.

They are planning a 2012 release for this “New” Spider-Man. All I can hope is that the production is delayed enough to give some breathing room between the two eras of the character in movies.

Also, there better be no mention of Spider-Armor, clones or (God help me) Mephisto.