The Amazing Spider-Man Trailer Review

The Amazing Spider-Man trailer was recently released mid-afternoon today.

AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!

The trailer starts off with a young Peter Parker talking with his parents (or grandparents? Why are they so old?) and in the next scene you see present-day Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield, The Social Network, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus) talking to Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone, Zombieland, Easy A) and her father, police captain George Stacy (Denis Leary, Rescue Me, Ice Age), while the trailer shows images of him being a school outcast.

Is it just me or does something about Andrew Garfield just scream jock? He's got the whole skinny, goofy look to him that Peter Parker had down pat, but there's just something about him that doesn't feel right to me, like he escaped out of Twilight or he's been practicing that pretty boy stare in the mirror for years.

Anyway, he eventually gets bit by a spider, gets his super cool powers, starts to show them off, and you know the rest. Probably the most controversial part of this trailer is Spidey's POV at the end. This has received so much criticism, but personally, I kind of like it. It shows what Spider-Man actually sees when he's off web-slinging, as opposed to the original Spider-Man where they just did the "Spidey cam", with the camera swinging along with him.

My most favorite thing I like about The Amazing Spider-Man is that they gave Peter Parker web-shooters, which in the comics was how he did his web-slinging. One of the greatest disappointments in the original Spider-Man trilogy was that Peter Parker had organic "web glands". If you are a Marvel geek like me you would know that Spidey had organic webbing much, much later on in the comics after his fight with Queen, a villainess who could control insects, where he died and was "reborn".

One other thing I liked was casting Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy. The whole concept of Gwen Stacy alone is alright in my books, but this also leads to the question, will the Green Goblin be the next villain? The one thing Gwen Stacy is famous for, if nothing at all, is her death. In the comics, the Green Goblin had kidnapped Gwen and took her to the George Washington Bridge (later changed to the Brooklyn Bridge). Spider-Man, who was feeling a bit under the weather and not performing as he usually did, found them and at that moment, the Green Goblin threw her from the bridge. Spider-Man caught her with a string of web. Unfortunately the sudden stop in midair had in fact killed Gwen from whiplash. In anger, Spider-Man fought with the Green Goblin and it had ended with Osborn being impaled by his glider (much like the first Spider-Man).

As much as I like the web-shooters idea, can't say I'm a big fan of the costume. It's kind of like a mixture of the classic Spidey outfit mixed with the Spider-Man 2099 uniform mixed with Ben Reilly's costume after he took over the role of Spider-Man (not the Scarlet Spider). Call me a cliche, but it seems that the costume is too dark for Spider-Man. It feels like at any moment he could whip out a "Spider-Gun" and ask for your wallet.

 

It's just too bad they didn't cast anyone to portray Mary-Jane Watson, even if it was a minor or she was just a friend. I think that they should have at least introduced MJ, but hey, after all this is The Amazing Spider-Man and it is just the first of a trilogy. The Amazing Spider-Man hits theaters July 2012.