We knew The Amazing Spider-Man was a reboot, yet somehow I still had some vague hope that the movie might find new material to mine within Peter Parker’s universe. We don’t need to see the things we’ve already seen, we don’t need to redo that origin story. The character is established, it seems like a good opportunity to just jump right out of the gate and have fun with his universe, maybe with only a cursory nod to his origins. That’s not happening.
The movie’s first trailer is set to debut during the San Diego Comic Con and Movie Web claims to have a blow by blow description of everything it’ll contain. In a word, it’s a rehash.
According to their description the trailer is just a redo of the origin story we already saw acted out by Tobey Maguire in his first Spider-Man, only with Andrew Garfield playing the character and with The Lizard as the villain instead of Goblin. The trailer starts with a shot of Peter Parker being beaten up by bullies, seen it. It then progresses to show him being bitten by the Spider, seen it. Somewhere in there is a shot of Uncle Ben dying and saying his “great power… great responsibility… yada yada” line, seen it. Then he puts on his costume and starts webslinging, seen that too.
So what’s different? Apparently Peter Parker gets bitten by the spider in his own attic, where he’s set up some sort of home lab. So they’ve changed the origin of the character a bit. Actually that’s sort of more in keeping with the comics. The Peter Parker of the comics is a genius, and you never really get any sense of that with Tobey Maguire’s character. And there’s the Lizard, played by Rhys Ifans, though even that doesn’t sound all that different. Norman Osborne gets turned into the Goblin by green gas. In this description of the trailer Curt Connors gets turned into the lizard by green liquid. Bottom line, stay away from green stuff. It’s bad for you.
Should this description pan out to be the real deal, then count me even more uninterested in The Amazing Spider-Man than I already was. If this is what Sony’s about to show us, are you still on board? Let me know in the comments below.
