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Edwin Davies: Both films would probably have been much more worthwhile ventures if they cost less to produce. I mean, The Amazing Spider-Man cost more to produce than The Avengers and that film was the culmination of four years of build-up coupled with salaries for some fairly established names and Mark Ruffalo. I know that how much an actor gets paid doesn't necessary inflate the total budget of a film by that much (except in the case of Adam Sandler: I refuse to believe the $70 million reported budget for Jack & Jill went on anything other than lining his pockets and those of his friends) but if you're starting afresh with new talent, then keeping costs down is only good sense, since you can't expect the audience to turn up for the new guys in the same numbers they did for the old ones. Thee are too few historical precedents of that happening. As a result, Spider-Man winds up seeming like a damp squib despite taking in north of $250 million because it cost so damn much. The same is also likely to be true of The Bourne Legacy, albeit with lower numbers.

All of this is rendered somewhat moot by the fact that these films aren't really meant to make all the money on their own, but to set things up for future installments. In that respect, both look like they will just about do, but you can't help but feel that money was left on the table since in both instances the studios rushed into rebooting their franchises and delivered films that were inferior to those that went before. That suggests to me that neither franchise has a hope of reaching the heights their predecessors achieved going forward, so even if they do make money, they won't make the sort of money they could have had the films been handled better.

Felix Quinonez: I think that The Amazing Spider-Man was definitely a success. Most importantly (in my opinion) it did a great job of erasing the memory of Spider-Man 3 and it's starting to rebuild the reputation of the franchise. Box office wise it's already approaching $700 million worldwide. Also I think people forget that when it comes to comic book movies, from a business point of view, the films themselves can be seen as commercials for the merchandise. A character like Spider-Man has so much earning potential that the movie is almost a secondary earner. When you factor in all of the merchandise, tie-ins, and eventually the home video market, The Amazing Spider-Man will be a big winner.

As for The Bourne Legacy, as I said before, I thin the jury's still out on this one. Obviously this franchise doesn't have as much ancillary earning potential so we'll have to see how well it holds in the coming weeks and how well it performs overseas.

David Mumpower: This is a debate of art versus commerce. To a distributor, the discussion boils down to the finite terms of how much the movie earns as opposed to the financial outlay. Public corporations are driven by short term decisions about stock pricing. Whether a brand gets damaged long term is a problem to be addressed down the line and probably by an entirely different set of employees. The ungodly turnover at movie studios forces the money now focus. Nobody here will argue that The Amazing Spider-Man or The Bourne Legacy is a financial loser, definitely not in the same way that Battleship and John Carter were. Before people start emailing to point out the global totals for these films, I remind you that Disney has already taken a write-off for John Carter that cannot be returned while Battleship is still not in the black since overseas box office revenue brings a significantly lower revenue return per purchase. With regards to New Spider-Man and Fake Bourne, the good news for me/bad news for content owners is that many fewer consumers are watching these reboots than the originals. At least there is some discretion being demonstrated by consumers. Still, 70-80% of a whole lot is still a lot. Financially, these gambits have succeeded to varying degrees.

Spider-Man and Fake Bourne as art, on the other hand, are examples of milking a name brand in order to take money from the pockets of consumers. There were no new ideas presented in either movie to justify their existences. The Bourne Legacy re-examines events from The Bourne Ultimatum while attempting to introduce a new character. The Amazing Spider-Man is a variation on the same story told only ten years ago. Let's put this last statement into perspective. If the content rights owners of Casablanca had behaved similarly, telling a variation of the same story every ten years, Rick and Ilsa would be on their eighth version this winter. And this is the direction Hollywood is stubbornly heading right now. Twilight isn't finished yet but somehow everybody already knows that plans are underway to tell the story again. This is not Sparta but this IS madness.

Content owners are testing the limits of the short attention span generation in a provocative but sickening way. Is the endeavor worthwhile? I never blame the con artist running the game of Three-card Monte. I do think less of the marks who are persuaded into playing.

Max Braden: I don't think it was worth it for Spider-Man, because nobody was asking for it and the story doesn't go anywhere new. I do think it was worth it for Bourne, because it fleshes out the story and the fanbase welcomed it. Plus there is the story opportunity for a Bourne 5 with both Damon and Renner.

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