Jake Gyllenhaal was supposed to play the superhero in the sequel

And if Eric Stoltz's version of Back to the future is it done? Or if The Lord of the Rings had gone ahead with Stuart Townsend instead of Viggo Mortensen? Or Natalie Portman had played the role of Sandra Bullock in Gravity?

Jake Gyllenhaal, Tobey Maguire and the leading role in the greatest sequel of all times are among the hypothetical scenarios closest to reality.

After the first Spider Man The film had a huge opening in 2002, the production of blockbusters – and the realization of superheroes in particular – was shot in another sphere.

Suddenly, the biggest movie star in the world was the highly unlikely Tobey Maguire, who had alternated his career so far between a series of rather bizarre young men in such films as Wonder Boys and Fear and hatred in Las Vegas and leads relatively bland in movies like The rules of the cider house, where the secondary characters really shine.

Obviously, there was going to be a Spider-Man 2, with Sam Raimi behind the camera and Maguire's central trio, Kirsten Dunst and James Franco are about to return. But between the movies, Maguire made a little movie called Seabiscuit, another of those movies where he was in the lead but everyone (including the horse) was more memorable.

The film was a resounding success and was eventually nominated for the best film, but Maguire suffered a back injury during filming, and he began to feel he was not cured in time. Spider-Man 2 to start filming. Sony became nervous and started looking for emergency plans.

They watched Jake Gyllenhaal.

Gyllenhaal's career had been a strange mirror for Maguire, except for a lot, a lot more. At a time The good girl and Charming and amazingHe played a cute young man engaging with a spiral woman (Jennifer Aniston and Catherine Keener, respectively).

In Donnie Darko he played a young man doomed and unsuccessful, haunted by a giant rabbit and who carried messages about the end of the world. In Bubble Boyhe played a bubble boy. You can see the calculation in the studio which deduces that a Tobey Maguire could easily be replaced by a Jake Gyllenhaal.

After several weeks of speculation, Maguire was able to resume the fight and the game Gyllenhaal-as-Spider-Man has become another big "and if", which became more and more tempting over the years and which sparkled. huge with movies like Brokeback Mountain, Jarhead and Zodiac.

But what would happen if Gyllenhaal had played the role of Peter Parker in Spider-Man 2 (and probably also the third, very dance-centric Spider-Man 3), putting him in a fraternity with personalities such as Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Ryan Reynolds, Robert Downey Jr and any number of Chrissies – essentially all of the American men leaders.

Nowadays, it is almost impossible to be an influential Hollywood man and not have some kind of superhero franchise or at least hero action hero. Gyllenhaal, just … never. Not for lack of trying since he did Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Timebut I guess we can all be grateful for this bombed movie.

In many ways, it was the rebound of Prince of Persia This has led Gyllenhaal to this truly most excellent and bizarre phase of his career. He became one of our most unpredictable actors, bouncing back from the brutal police drama (End of the guard tour) to the jacked-up boxer (Southpaw) to the mischievous scientific adventurer (Okja), in the pure trash (Nocturnal animals) to pure inspiration (Stronger).

Even when he takes on roles apparently frozen in a black detective (Prisoners) or a western (The brothers brothers), his characters tend to be deep wells of strangeness. Even the unlikely meeting with the Spider Man The franchise this summer will see him play Quentin Beck / Mysterio, a deeply strange and self-referential character in this milieu.

Somnambulist, the film that Gyllenhaal directed with director Dan Gilroy in 2014, is an excellent example of a film that could have been made much more simply (the story of a crime scene photographer who gets in the way of his head) but which attracted attention because of the singular, often unggled performance of Gyllenhaal.

We all look forward to the emergence of something similar in Gilroy. Velvet Buzzsaw, who falls on Netflix this weekend.

Is Jake Gyllenhaal as audacious as an actor if he has the courage to play in a franchise worthy of the name? It's an intriguing Wormhole universe to consider. I say that's not it. I say that thank God, Tobey Maguire was able to return to the web in 2004. We are all richer, one way or another.

This article was originally published on Decider and has been reproduced with permission.