Boston Film Student

Just watch it.

Watch it and tell me its going to suck.

Trust me, its not going to suck.

There are quite a few reasons why it was such a good thing to reboot this series so soon without Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire.

1) A Younger Cast – I remember seeing the first Spidey film in 2002 and while I loved it. Tobey looked like he was going on 30 years old. Which as a kid didn’t bother me too much, but now its not that believable that he’s a senior in high school. Even more so as a comic book geek, there was no Mary Jane for quite a while. Even in the animated series, it was a long anticipated wait to see the very beautiful Mary Jane Watson, and the guys who produced the animated series new that. The first movie waited no more than the first 30 minutes to introduce the girl, the best friend, and the villan. Andy Garfield and Emma Stone look and act the part of their respective roles and it makes this new Spidey film a proper rendition of the comics.

2) The “Batman Begins” Approach – Remember Batman Begins? You know, the movie before the blessed Dark Knight? The film that recreated the universe of Batman in a much cooler and interesting way, and completely LEFT OUT the Joker for the first film? This is kinda what this new Spidey film is doing. No more “Lets bring in the arch villain and kill him off in one movie” bullshit, the producers hopefully new that Kurt Connors is essential to the universe of Spiderman and had to bring him in to light before any other villain and establish this new Spiderman as a worthy hero. Worthy enough to face a bigger challenge being the Green Goblin to finally have a much proper face off and NOT kill the most important Spiderman villan. Like Batman Begins, this movie will be more about Spiderman and less about the villan for this first movie.

3) Web-shooters – When many of the Marvel movies were coming out in the early 2000′s, everybody seemed to have an infatuation with making powers more “organic” (ie. Dr. Doom being a metal mutant that shoots lightning). Spider-man never has the powers of organic web shooting, with the exception of one series of comics where his powers develop more and more. The web shooters pose a potential plot point as he could run out of fluid mid-fight and the tables could turn on a dime. Which is what was interesting about the comics and series. The organic web crap kinda made him too ‘mutant like’ and not enough of a science nerd. Which is another point, this gives us a chance to see a geeky inventive Peter Parker again.

4) More Stunts – When Spiderman 1 & 2 came out, instead of a cool acrobatic stunt man flipping around and kicking butt for real they used a CGI replica of Spidey to accomplish those feats. Sure, some things he does is a bit out of human capacity but a couple of flips and a kick to the bad guys face can be done without CGI. My point with this is that the trailer seems to show off more real life action and less of a flippy animated Spidey.

5) 3D – Yeah I know, its a bit of a shocker. But after seeing Underworld 3 in 3D and it being a really entertaining monster fest, seeing Spiderman might actually enhance the action all the better. For those 2D purists out there, 3D is just a phase in filmmaking that will go away eventually. But until then, I think its nice to enjoy some of these action spectacles in all of its glory.