Movie Preview: The Amazing Spider-Man

In my opinion, Spider-Man and X-Men are Marvel’s two most valuable franchises.  The two movie series have generated billions of dollars in revenue and still have decades worth of comics to draw stories from.  So as long as superhero movies are popular, neither of Marvels two biggest cash cows will be completely dead.

The X-Men franchise underwent a reboot this summer and next summer Spider-Man will be getting the same treatment.  The Amazing Spider-Man is set to be released on July 3^rd, 2012 and will be taking the series back to its roots.  Yes, Peter Parker is going back to the awkward high school years (before this godforsaken scene) when a guy named Eugene “Flash” Thompson still bullied him.  Andrew Garfield, best known for his role as Eduardo in The Social Network, will be playing Spidey.  My only complaint about Garfield is that he is already 27 and will be playing a high schooler, however, I think he looks young for his age, so it isn’t a huge issue.  Here’s one of the first pictures of Garfield as the Wallcrawler:

Getting a boner while wearing that must be painful

Mary Jane is Spider-Man’s primary love interest but casting lists indicate she will be M.I.A. in the reboot.  Instead Emma Stone will play Gwen Stacy, who is essentially Peter Parker’s second-string love interest.

Not bad for a second-stringer

The film’s primary villain will be The Lizard, portrayed by Rhys Ifans.  There aren’t any images of the movie’s portrayal of The Lizard yet, but in the comics he was always very acrobatic and fast, so it should make for some great fight scenes.

He looks so intelligent in his lab coat

The movie’s credits also list Van Atter, a somewhat obscure Spider-Man villain who is basically a demonic version of the Green Goblin.  The extent to which Van Atter will be in the movie is unknown, but all signs seem to indicate that he (it?) will be secondary to the Lizard.  Here’s a picture of his comic book form:

Is he about to fart on that guy?

The cast is rounded out with Martin Sheen (#Winning) as Uncle Ben and Sally Field as Aunt May.  The internet rumor mill indicates that the first teaser trailer for Spider-Man will be shown with Transformers: Dark of the Moon.  Not sure if this is true, but I will Trailer Trash the teaser if it is.