Almost 8 months ago I was super excited when I first read about Spider Man slinging his web over to star in his own show on Broadway. There are times when the word impulsive just can’t begin to describe how over excited I get upon hearing news like this. Momentarily I become a little kid again without even thinking of previous disasters like the 1966 musical, It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s Superman. I wasn’t even on Krypton let alone Earth when some genius let that outrage make it to Broadway. How could Spider Man be as bad as that? We’ve come so far since then, haven’t we? With 3 blockbuster films, an animated series, comics, and toy web slingers, could there possibly be another way of running this Marvel property into the ground? Why yes, as a matter of fact, Spidey on Broadway! Looking back, I have no idea how I didn’t see this disaster of epic proportions looming on the New York City skyline.
Why the f-ck did I even want to get tickets to this piece of trash anyway? First of all, no offense to the Marvel maniacs out there, but I’m a DC loyalist and have been since 1982. I still enjoy many Marvel characters and their films, but I have always enjoyed the DCU more. I would never EVER want to see any of the DC characters in a musical on Broadway, so hopefully if some marketing guru from DC Entertainment tosses that idea around…GET IT OUT OF YOUR HEAD IMMEDIATELY and then someone give that m-therfucker a swirlie.
So, yeah, I’m coming clean. I did something stupid. I bought tickets the moment they went on sale. Originally my excitement was high for no good reason other than sheer boredom and a lust for fanboy stimulation. There also seemed to be a bit of mystery involved since no details were available yet. Spider Man: Turn Off the Dark (dumb title) was set to premiere on January 16th, 2010. With no info available, I incessantly called Ticketmaster since the transaction wasn’t even appearing in my account history. There was no record of me even purchasing tickets to this crapshow. After several calls, I gave up. (I loathe Ticketmaster by the way.) A few months later, the Internet was buzzing with bad press about the budgetary issues, production problems, and set design perils that the Spider Man musical had run into. This almost sounded as bad as the time those mynocks latched onto the Falcon and started chowing down on those power cables.
The premiere date was pushed to the end of February. I hoped that the new date might give the producers enough time to get their shit together, but truthfully, I started to get fed up when I received an e-mail from terrible Ticketmaster. They wanted me to call them to EXCHANGE the tickets for the new date?!?!?! WTF? Shouldn’t they have just sent me tickets for the new date? I purchased the tickets and now I would risk losing the seats that I bought? That is pure bullshit, but like a shmuck, I called and exchanged the tickets like they asked. The employee who answered had no idea about anything I was referring to. She even snickered when I told her for the second time that I was calling about the Spider Man Musical. Clearly none of the Ticketmaster employees are made aware of postponements or cancellations. When she asked for an order number, I couldn’t even give her one because the transaction didn’t even exist and I was never given an order number, nor did it show up in my account. I was super pissed now. Finally, she figured it out, but the same seats I purchased were no longer available! They gave me seats at the end of the same row, which I settled for.
Today, more articles were published all over the Internet about Spider Man being postponed until Fall of 2010. Many of the news pieces reported that Ticketmaster would be offering refunds at this point. Earlier today I received an automated message on my phone from Ticketmaster stating that I was able to call them for a refund if I desired. If not, I would have to wait for a new sale date to exchange the tickets yet again. As soon as I got home, I called Ticketmaster and asked for a refund. Wouldn’t you know that the jackass who answered the phone had absolutely no clue about anything I was referring to. I told him that I received an automated call and that I was requesting a refund since the show would be postponed for a third time. I’d say it took a good 3 minutes of holding and listening to the same stupid music until he came back and asked more questions. By the end of the near 14 minute conversation full of needless back and forth, I got my refund. Now all I have to do is make sure it actually goes into my account or I’m suing Tickemaster for $200 bucks!
If you’ve been following the continuing debacle of the snowballing Spider Man Musical budget, you probably have a pretty good idea how I arrived at my decision. As of today, the budget is apparently in the realm of $50 million dollars and growing. Maybe I was sucked in by the thought of Edge working on the musical score for the show, or the idea that Mary Jane would be played by Evan Rachel Wood. Why don’t they just take those ideas, and before they shove them up their asses, put them to good use in either another feature film or an animated DVD movie? Considering that ticket sales for plays and musicals have been slumping for the past few years, the question here is…how many of you would be eager to go and shell out $100 bucks per ticket to see a Spider Man musical?