We’ll cover some of the news, descriptions of the footage, and discussions with the cast about the film today. We’ll try to move through quickly so try and keep up! First up…
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Dane DeHaan. According to multiple sources, such as Hollywood Reporter and EW.com, he’s your new Harry Osborn for this iteration of the Amazing Spider-Man series. He takes over the role that was originated by James Franco in the original Spider-Man Trilogy. He also will probably not sabotage the Academy Awards and star on a soap opera but I’m only venturing a guess at this point.
Back to DeHaan, you might remember him from that unrated Josh Trank pic Chronicle. He played Andrew Detmer, the social outcast turned super emo kid with powers. He turned in a terrific performance in showing his issues and his calm, if not frightening nature as he developed a superiority over others with his powers. He also was in Lawless with Tom Hardy and Shia LeBeouf, which he also did a great job in. Looking even further, you might recognize him from In Treatment and True Blood. He apparently was also ‘Second White Soldier’ in Lincoln so this is definitely the next step up from that.
He appears to be the last of the major castings for the new Spider-Man sequel, with Jamie Foxx slotted in as Electro, Shailene Woodley as Mary Jane and Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone returning from the previous movie. Obviously we all should know that Harry Osborn becomes the heir apparent to his father’s villain alter ego, The Green Goblin, but we have yet to see Norman Osborn so perhaps we might see him sooner than we might think. I think DeHaan will be a good addition to the cast as he definitely comes off as a terrific actor in his previous roles and it will be interesting to see how they tackle the Harry Osborn character. This seems to be running along the same lines as the Ultimate Spider-Man comic book series so maybe we’ll see…Hobgoblin? I don’t know but I’m excited with this casting news. More so than the Jamie Foxx casting because Booty Call was just on television the other day and…just wow.
Welcome back to the Hero Express, your one-stop sometimes SPOILER filled shop through the top five stories in comic based Film & TV news!
Armie Hammer Likely to play New Justice League’s Batman
This interestingly enough isn’t the first time he has been in the running for the role. The last time there was a Justice League film project Hammer was again preferred for the part. Even though that project fell through WB’s still feel he would be the best to play the part of DC’s JL Batman. I believe with this choice that WB’s wants a different style of batman than has been displayed recently in Bales performances. What I mean is that with Batman needing to fight side by side with other superheroes that this time around the character will have to be more of a team player.
I haven’t seen a great deal of Hammers work except for his role in The Social Network so I can’t say how well he would take on the legendary role. However he will be starring in the upcoming Lone Ranger remake coming out next year, and so we should be able to find a good understanding of his acting abilities under a mask of sorts.
Silver Samurai, Viper and More Wolverine Images Revealed on Set
First off is a sneaky image of Silver Samurai where to get a good look you have to zoom in a bit, still it looks interesting and the design seems to be based strongly off the comics but we will have to see the front before full judgement. Next we have an image of Svetlana Khodchenkova (That’s a mouth full) playing Viper a rather complicated character from the comics and should be interesting to see how they use her in this film. Lastly we have some stunt photos of Wolverine with claws out and on stunt wires; he is however a stunt double as you can tell it’s not Hugh Jackman.
The cast of RED returning to set for the upcoming sequel and we have some new cast members as well. So who can we see new from these pictures. First off Catherine Zeta-Jones getting into a car with Bruce Willis with Willis not looking happy (wouldn’t be my reaction). We also have David Thewlis playing The Frog (not sure what that means yet) who is doing plenty of stunts on a motor bike. We also get a good look at the returning cast with Bruce Willis, John Malkovich and Mary-Louise Parker.
The Latest synopsis for RED 2:
“The sequel to the action-comedy hit RED, which reunites our team of retired CIA operatives as they use their old-school style to take on a new set of enemies all across Europe.” The film is being directed by Dean Parisot (“Galaxy Quest”) and will star: Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Hellen Mirren, Catherine Zeta-Jones, David Thewlis, and Mary-Louise Parker.”
The Oldboy remake staring Josh Brolin has recently had some set photos leaked of Brolin on set with and without a shirt on, granted there’s nothing shocking about that but it does prove that it’s on track to be released next year. We also have the latest synopsis for the remake and it does shed some light on how this American remake of a popular South Korean film will play out. There has been some concerns over how this remake will be made, however I haven’t seen the original and plan to this weekend.
The latest synopsis for Oldboy remake:
“Spike Lee helms this remake of Park Chan-wook’s grim tale of a man who seeks revenge against his mysterious captors, who held him imprisoned for 15 years. Josh Brolin stars, with Thor’s Mark Protosevich adapting the script.”
Shailene Woodley Likely to play MJ Watson in the Amazing Spider-Man 2
Shailene Woodley Playing Spiderman’s new love interest Mary Jane is a little shocking. I really wouldn’t have picked her from other options for May Jane but Webb probably knows what he is doing in the cast roles, what with casting Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield. Shailene Woodley maybe an unusual choice for the role of the feisty Mary Jane but will most likely display a greater acting ability than the previous Jane played by Kristen Dunst (her see through tops where pretty good though). This isn’t all the news though in terms of new characters for The Amazing Spider-Man sequel.
We have also got confirmation from the studio that the sequel will have Harry Osborn involved and Electro set to be the main villain. The studios have started looking for cast members to fill the roles of both the villains to Spider-Man’s world. Electro is an interesting choice for the main villain since he has never been on the big screen before and is a weird character to base a film around if he is indeed the main villain. One last thing I would like to say is that my prediction for the way this series is going is looking more and more likely. Osborn will be introduced in this film and will then be the Green Goblin in the third film killing Gwen in the last scene (totally called this!).
In probably the most groan inducing and obvious news to ever surface, a sequel to this year’s The Amazing Spider-Man is in the works. After the first one came out to a generally positive reaction from audiences, this money grab new franchise reboot seems determined to follow through with its shameless planned effort to make a new Spider-Man trilogy. At the time however, director for the first film, Marc Webb, was unconfirmed for a return. Now it seems like we’ll have to endure get to see another film starring the wonderful Mr. Garfield and his spectacularly lame portrayal of the hippest, least relatable, and most lame-sauce version of Peter Parker yet. [Editor’s Note – I totally disagree, Garfield > Maguire]
Aren’t I tortured?
Now if it wasn’t clear, I’m not a fan of the movie. I found myself trying really hard to stay positive about the movie right up until I actually saw it, but boy was I ever let down. I wasn’t expecting a masterpiece of epic proportions, nor was I even expecting a knockout, drag down epic superhero film. What I got instead was probably one of the stupidest, most uninteresting, boring superhero films I’ve ever seen. As I was watching it I found myself groaning in disgust or facepalming at the inanity of everything, literally every 5 minutes. Not to mention the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen in a movie since the Hulk Dogs from Ang Lee’s Hulk; The goddamned lizard mouse. Plus the sweaters Peter wears, oh GOD the layers on this guy! What is he anemic? Dude wears at least 4 layers of clothes in every scene where he’s not in his Spider-Man garb.
4! Four layers of clothes! Ah! Ah! Ah!
I’ve never seen a film with such a perfect mix of boring, dumb, and redundancy. I kept trying to forget all of the previous things in the film that I found retarded, for lack of a better word, but they just kept coming. Eventually I realized the true meaning of this film lied in it’s franchise value, and the lack of any substance, or anything new or interesting was because of this. People often talk about who is or isn’t a hack in Hollywood, and the guys who wrote this, god bless them for trying. They’re obviously fans of the character, who had to deal with immense studio pressure to make the film as toyetic, commercial, broad and franchisable as possible. What I mean by this, is that it’s the case of a studio counting its eggs before they hatch. The whole film felt like an attempt to make a movie, solely to make other movies, rather than actually tell an interesting, coherent, original story.
Script? Story? Just make the damn movie, we need that Spider-Cash!
So hearing that Andrew Garfield and Marc Webb are coming back isn’t exactly a surprise, but leaves me with no real feelings of joy either. I had no huge problems with Garfield, although he did seem to be sleepwalking through the scenes that didn’t have to have him crying, skateboarding, or crying while skateboarding. He’s not the blame for his character being utterly shit-tastic. I’ve never seen a guy whose shit was so ruined despite looking cool, having a hot babe be obviously into you, being rad at skateboarding, and being a goddamned genius. Furthermore all of the awesome camerawork that was promised by Marc Webb was mostly absent, as I recall a big hooplah being made about the POV swinging sequences, of which I can barely remember. I don’t mean to trash them both, because they did what they could with what they had. The entire thing was a massive failure on every level, except for monetary gain. Which it was made for to begin with, so in that regard it’s a success. I know I’m in the minority with that opinion here at GB, (4.5/5) but It’s how I feel.
Seriously, look how tortured he is!
Will I be looking forward to seeing the new Spider-Man film? No. Will I see it? If somebody else pays for the ticket, snacks, and then is willing to sit through my rant after the film is over? Yes. Will I be continuing further coverage of the sequel as plot details are released? Yes, but only because my editor hates me. [True.]
It has a few flaws, but for a first installment of the rebooted Spiderman franchise it is better than any of the original films, especially Spiderman 3! The characters especially where far better this time around with Andrew showing Toby how to play Peter Parker. I will be looking forward to the next films in this great new Spiderman reboot. But I would love to see flaws I found fixed, they are so small though that a sequel would be able to see and fix them.
The Amazing Spider-Man is the story of Peter Parker (Garfield), an outcast high schooler who was abandoned by his parents as a boy, leaving him to be raised by his Uncle Ben (Sheen) and Aunt May (Field). Like most teenagers, Peter is trying to figure out who he is and how he got to be the person he is today. As Peter discovers a mysterious briefcase that belonged to his father, he begins a quest to understand his parents’ disappearance – leading him directly to Oscorp and the lab of Dr. Curt Connors (Ifans), his father’s former partner. As Spider-Man is set on a collision course with Connors’ alter-ego, The Lizard, Peter will make life-altering choices to use his powers and shape his destiny to become a hero.
To start off let’s talk about the acting. The acting was very passionate which was a little surprising as it’s a super hero film, but you could really feel the emotional responses from its main characters (Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone) when various emotional scenes play out, beyond that would be a spoiler. Now for the main character who’s name I forget, nah only joking its Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) who I must say is the best interpretation of New York’s friendly neighbourhood Spiderman I have seen in a film. But as his competition is a cheap 80s film and Toby Maguire it was an easy win.
The best part about Garfield was that he looked and sounded the part, nerdy kid from Brooklyn. He was a teenager who had enormous power and treated it like a toy as you would. But my main compliment to this Peter Parker was that he made jokes even during battle’s which was always missing from the last Spider-man.
Sadly the thing many of us worried about was it feeling too soon for a reboot and it was lingering about. Mainly I would say in the origin of his powers but I don’t see how it could be avoided, at least with this film they tried to explain a very clever excuse for the radioactive spider what with using spider silk to create super strong cable.
Think I have talked enough about people and their silly human emotions. Now let’s talk about something more fun like the visuals. The special effects, physical props and visual landscape shots where excellent viewing as expected of a web slinger film. There’s nothing quite like being taken around New York through the eyes of Spiderman.
The lizard looked good and I am one those people who commented on him not having a snout but thinking about it now am not sure how they would get him to talk using a snout without it looking absolutely stupid, but at times the lizard looked more creepy than scary (Picture above for example).The best thing I felt about this films look was the way that the set of action scenes and spidey web slinging took place at night which was what Spiderman should be doing since he fights crime and it’s easier to keep a secret identity when you are fighting crime at night (don’t ask me how I know that).
My favorite scene without giving anything away would be the fight scene in the high school between the lizard and Spiderman, because it shows a great physical fight which plays with the effects and also shows a lot of the Spiderman humour whilst in the fight, which was never used in the original Spiderman. But of course this scene also includes my favorite Stan Lee cameo yet (you’ll see) The Avenger cameo was good this one is better.
What I liked about this films origin of the hero and the villain was that both a very much in development today, for example splicing technology used on the lizard has been in development a lot recent with plants to make super strong and big vegetables. Now another good point we see more spider-like creativity with Spiderman, this time for example in the pic above he sends out webbing in all directions and senses for vibrations much like a tarantula does to catch its prey plus he makes his own web shooters, I love clever stuff like that and it’s more true to the comics. Finally it’s a small flaw but it grinds my gear, why didn’t Uncle Ben state the legendary life lesson for Peter “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility” to be far there was some variation of those words but I don’t see why they couldn’t just do the damn line! But finally it’s a good film with strong characters.
My buddy Aaron is a bartender for a certain movie theater here in Michigan, and on occasion, the theater will have advanced employee screenings for movies a couple nights prior to the film’s release. These are his thoughts on The Amazing Spider Man…
Aaron: Watching spiderman was like watching the drunkest guy at the bar hit on the hottest waitress at the bar at the end of the night. – 3:08 AM
Aaron: It’s actually pretty entertaining, there’s a lot of misguided effort, but some how, you find yourself rooting for the guy because he’s trying so – 3:10 AM
Aaron: hard. – 3:10 AM
Aaron: And more than likely, he’ll try again next week. So, yeah, Im definitely lookin forward to the sequal. – 3:12 AM
It’s that time again where an old-yet-familiar intellectual property gets the time tested, sometimes proved, sometimes failed reboot. As many of you are assuredly aware, The Amazing Spider-Man gets brought to the silver screen, only now it’s more of an adaptation of the Ultimate Spider-Man comics, in which he was younger, in high school, but still trying on the tights. This Spider-Man seems to be focused around getting us to watch this origin story yet again. This time they’re dangling the elusive prospect of “hidden secrets” about Spider-man we’ve never seen before. From what the preview material would have you believe, it has something to do with his parents and how they died, and implies they were murdered. Were his parents cruel Colombian drug lords? New Yorker mob hits? Genetic scientists experimenting on human/spider DNA fusion? Well, probably not that last one, I hope. Whatever the reason, they’re deliberately trying to bring some freshness and possible subversion of expectations this go ’round.
This Spider-Man totally loves dubstep bro. WUB WUB WUB.
I have to admit, I’m still skeptical about the direction of the whole thing. For every moment or line that they get right, another rubs me the wrong way. I suppose it’s a feeling similar to the much ballyhooed “event fatigue” that many Marvel fans claimed to be suffering from, starting with 2006’s Civil War, continuing now with Avengers VS X-Men. I think we’ve had a lot of Spider-Man in our media, from that terrible third movie and it’s subsequent terrible third video game, to the main Marvel comic being published 3 times monthly, to the Ultimate comics where he “dies”, to the current Spider-man movie being a re-telling of a re-telling. They say you can only skin a cat so many ways, although why they say that I don’t know, because that’s a creepy idiom, but I believe it stands in this case. That’s not to say that I don’t find the interpretation of this actual Peter Parker and Spider-Man character welcome. The wisecracking Spider-Man/shy Peter Parker dynamic is kept, and done much better than it was. On the flip side, you’ve got things like the Lizard, who is a B-villain at best, who has been mentioned many times by the internet crowd out there, to look like a Ninja Turtle.
Pizza Power!
All that being said, the one thing I’m definitely looking forward to, is finally getting some good acting from a female lead in these movies. Kirsten Dunst could never hang, (oh god awful pun) but Emma Stone seems certainly more than capable of pulling off Gwen Stacy, which is a story I’m glad to see come to fruition, as the famous issue from the comics concerning her and Spidey is one of the best. I know spoilers are a big point of contention here on the internet, but when the story she’s famous for centers around and is literally titled “The Night Gwen Stacy Died”, I don’t think it’s too bad to say I’ll be looking forward to Andrew Garfield finding the right balance of pathos and energy to mourn his doomed new girlfriend. Check out an interview with both Peter and Gwen over on Splashpage. Spider-Man is British now. DEAL WITH IT.
Wot? Why, you Mewling Quim you.
The other good thing, that not many seem to be mentioning, is that Marc Webb is directing the movie, which may or may not excite and/or frustrate you, depending on what you thought of 500 Days Of Summer. I loved the movie, and thought it was a brilliant and accomplished directorial debut, although I admittedly really really love Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The guy has done a lot of music videos for… well terrible bands like P.O.D, My Chemical Romance, Jimmy Eat World and even Hoobastank. So I will be expecting a terrible soundtrack from the movie, if his work is any indication of his musical tastes. The amount of videos he’s directed indicates that he is capable of working with a broad spectrum of creative input and meshing it into a whole, which is something Spider-Man definitely needs. Fresh ideas like the creative depiction of POV aerial work as well as a more realistic approach to his web slinging will help keep it from the cheesy looking CG-fest every web slinging scene was in the previous three.
Despite the inherent tiredness of yet another Spider-Man movie, it definitely appears this one is shaping up to take back its source material and forge its own identity in our theaters. It could possibly pave the way for other, better films where we can see our favorite villains given a new life with their proper due, instead of being quick afterthoughts. *COUGH* VENOM *COUGH* I am cautiously optimistic about the movie, and initially I would have dismissed this, though the talent involved, and the direction it’s taking has proven to look interesting. The final verdict on it being Amazing however, will have to wait until it’s July 3 release.
So, sometimes in the haze of all the hype surrounding The Avengers, Marvel is also putting out another movie this year that looks pretty solid – Ghost Rider 2The Amazing Spider-Man. And I’m not just saying that because Dennis Leary is playing Gwen Stacy’s dad. After the disaster that was Spiderman 3, I’m glad they didn’t wait too long to reboot things and get that taste out of my mouth.
Anyway, much like with The Avengers, the Japanese trailer gives us some previously unseen footage, and had got me a bit more pumped for that movie than I was yesterday. Anyhow, without further ado, here it is…
Now it wasn’t that long ago that we got our first look at Marc Webb‘s upcoming reboot The Amazing Spider-Manstarring Andrew Garfield as Spidey. The first footage was interesting to say the least, and it offered a pretty great look at Peter Parker and some of the cast of the film. There was a little Spider-Man here and there, but it loved up to its name. It was a teaser.
This is the trailer, folks. This trailer is chock full of new and great footage, including our first looks at the Lizard, some really great Spidey action scenes, and tons more. We’ll talk after. Enjoy.
4! Four layers of clothes! Ah! Ah! Ah!
Grizzly Bomb 