Bruce Campbell may be out of the Spider-Man films, but he’s still in the new Spider-Man game.
Because of his tight connection to Sam Raimi – and for more insight on that, I heartily recommend his most excellent autobiography If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor – Bruce Campbell has appeared in all three of the “original” Spider-Man films. In 2002, he played the ring announcer who actually gave Spider-Man his name; in 2004 he was the “Snooty Usher”; and in 2007, he did a turn as the Maître d’. Naturally, he also loaned his voice to the videogame tie-ins to all three movies. Yet while he’s not going to appear in the upcoming reboot The Amazing Spider-Man, he’s still going to turn up in the videogame.
Why? Because he’s Bruce Campbell, I guess. The man has a great voice and the sort of vocal enthusiasm that’s ideal for that sort of work, and he’s got a lot of experience in the field, but I suspect that what it really comes down to is that everything – I mean everything – is better with Bruce.
Will the game itself be any good? Probably not; I don’t mean to inject my own bias into the conversation but games based on movies have a well-established record of suck, and while I’ve heard that previous Spider-Man games haven’t been entirely terrible, that’s a pretty thin basis for optimism. Then again, where there’s Bruce, there’s hope.
The Amazing Spider-Man comes out on June 26 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, DS and 3DS.
