This summer, Spider-Man is back, in his biggest and boldest adventure yet! And he looks completely fake!

Yes, making the leaping, climbing, swinging, diving and building-scaling antics of Tobey Maguire seem even slightly realistic has always been problematic. And, unsurprisingly, for Spider-Man 3, they have again resorted to the rendering room to produce a computer-generated hero who is as convincing on screen as the Super Mario Bros.

But it could have all been so different. It has been revealed that Sam Raimi, the director of the Spider-Man movies, had discussions last year with the ace French wall-climber David Belle about bringing some much-needed urban grit to his franchise. Belle is the undisputed king of the death-defying street acrobatics called parkour, known in the UK as free running and was last seen leaping over roof-tops and down stair-wells in a BBC promo. Parkour hit the mainstream last year when it was featured, to devastating effect, in an early sequence of Casino Royale.

Raimi was on the right track. Belle, however, perhaps sniffing a sell-out, told him that he wasn’t interested. “I’d rather appear on a poster with my own name,” he told The New Yorker.

BACKGROUND

• Spider-Man 3

• Spider-Man 3 - Tokyo premiere

• Shock revelation: why Spider-Man’s real name isn’t Peter Parkour

• Spider-Man 3 slams the accelerator down in pursuit of the Big Thrill

• Spider-Man climbs up to challenge Titanic

BACKGROUND

• Spider-Man 2

• Bad things come in threes

The quiet American

He's a superhero and drop-dead goodlooking, but Tobey Maguire is no troublemaker

Related Internet Links

• 2007 London Film Festival coverage

• Times Online Film Trailers

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