Spidey rebooted without a second thought as Raimi hesitates...

With this evening's news that Sony are planning a back-to-school reboot for the Spider-Man franchise because Sam Raimi doesn't want to make another movie as bad (if phenomenally successful) as Spiderman 3, I have to wonder just how short Hollywood imagines its consumers memories are.With both Planet Of The Apes and Fantastic Four mooted for a remake/remodel in the light of less than thrilling entries, and with Batman and Bond rebooted in recent years from the shark-jumping antics of much-derided (but not exactly ancient) sequels, one can only think that the twelve year-old boys who form the core demographic of such failed franchise runs now simply get ousted for the new generation of twelve year-old boys who consider the pre-reboot efforts as $1.99 bargain bin coasters.

Time was, if you turned out a lemon in a series, you gritted your teeth and forged on; you hid it from the vicar when he turned up for tea; you wore it.

By Hollywood's current rationale, Star Trek V would have ended the cinematic run of the original ST:TOS cast, but studio execs were made of sterner stuff in those days, and simply went back to the guy (Nick Meyer) who had brought the TOS series cult credibility with Wrath Of Khan. Likewise the pedestrian For A Few Dollars More was survived to allow the epic The Good The Bad And The Ugly to burn its way into cinema history. And the utter horror (not in a good way) of the otherwise redoubtable John Boorman's Exorcist II: The Heretic, was gently slid under the carpet to allow William Peter Blatty's superior Exorcist III to redeem the franchise in 1990 (though let's conveniently forget that Stellan Skarsgård had to remake the same bad prequel twice in another failed reboot in the mid-2000s).

The less-than-stellar reception of The Sum Of All Fears led to yet further reboot plans for the Jack Ryan franchise, even though that wasn't such a bad film and Affleck showed some potential with the character. And Affleck suffered the same syndrome over Daredevil, also the subject of a new reboot barely six years after the initial entry.

Jesus, Hollywood, you're going to need the Men In Black and their memory-wiping technology at the reboot turnover that you're trying to adopt.

/Film