Stuart Smith - The Vulture, or the Lizard

With Sam Raimi expressing an interest in making Spider-Man 4, he inevitably started the rumour ball a-rolling - and, of course, it all comes down to the villains of the piece.

When Spider-Man 3 was still in pre-production, and before Raimi found himself pushed into a corner over the whole Venom situation (a character that he clearly had a dislike for) Raimi’s thoughts kept turning back to the Vulture. And I'm sure they will once again for the fourth film. At the time, Larry David was being considered for the role and with such a perfect actor waiting in the wings we can hopefully see this become a reality.

Another character that has been in the second and third film is the Lizard. Having built up this part, and with the brilliant Dylan Baker already in place, then maybe we will see the role come to life.

Then again, we could finally get Bruce Campbell playing Mysterio...

Craig Lines - Mysterio

I love masks. Sam Raimi doesn't. Therefore, he really needs to lay off the superhero movies. Fact. Masks are what make them super, as far as I'm concerned. The maskless ones just never did it for me. They can go eat kryptonite for all I care.

So c'mon. Bring someone else in to direct Spidey 4. Hell, rope in a
crackhead Mexican wrestler to do it for all I care, but PLEASE let's
see more masks!

My pitch would be to keep it to one villain and for that villain to be
Mysterio. Sarah would be horrified by my choice as she believes his
fishbowl head is somehow laughable, but I'm sticking with him. To me, Mysterio's foggy featureless fishbowl would be the ultimate antidote to all the mask-free fannying about in Spidey 3. You could even bring in Doug Jones to play him, since it'd be mostly body work. Awesome, no?

Mysterio is also perfect for films because his very origin lies in the
film industry. A failing special FX artist who becomes a supervillain!
It's a great opportunity to bring in some spectacularly weird
illusions and do cool film-within-a-film stuff to boot. Oh yes. I've
got aspirations for Spidey 4 to just turn into one crazy-ass
Prestige-style magic-off. I'm also thinking how awesome a hall of
mirrors scene with millions of Mysterios would look, as a final
battle. I don't even care how we get there. Just do it.

Ah. Someone stop me before I get carried away, buy a fishbowl and grab the next plane to Hollywood.

Sarah Dobbs - Carnage, or the Black Cat

Okay, so the handling of Venom in Spider-Man 3 was less than ideal. I'm over it. Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst are all unsure as to whether they'll sign on for any more movies - great. Let's get rid of the lot of them and start afresh.

Granted, we still need Spider-Man himself, but that's not a hugely difficult role to recast since Maguire is devoid of all personality. Jake Gyllenhaal would actually be a massive improvement; and if it's that big of a deal, let's amp up the Spidey time and cut down on the emo Parker bullshit. Problem solved.

Now, the logical next villain is surely another alien symbiote character. There's still a chunk of alien left in the lab, and there's probably some more clogging up Eddie Brock's shower's drain, or otherwise miraculously hanging around. If we got Venom from a titchy little asteroid that no-one noticed, sorting out some more black goo shouldn't be a problem.

Plus, that whole storyline has already been set up, but far from exhausted - we barely saw Venom, we didn't see much of anyone battling the evil black suit, there's a ton of unexplored potential there. I'd like to vote for the introduction of Carnage, Scream, Agony, Riot, Phage, and Lasher in Spider-Man 4.

Or maybe just Carnage. See, I'm willing to compromise. I'll even cast him for you: Zack Ward. Perfect.

And since I've done away with Mary Jane, it's about time for a new love interest. (Really, is there anyone out there who genuinely finds the Dunst attractive? And if there is, well, couldn't you be persuaded to transfer your affections to someone more talented and prettier? Like maybe someone whose name starts with an L and ends with an aura Harris?) Since we've already screwed up the Gwen Stacy storyline, there's only one person left - Felicia Hardy.

And then Spider-Man 5 can be about the Black Cat. Rowr. Five films is a long way to get through a franchise without a female villain, so I think she's long overdue.

To recap: Carnage, and the Black Cat. Now now now.

So... what do you reckon?