Aside from a brief, predictable period in high school when he was replaced by Holden Caulfield, Peter Parker’s been my favorite fictional character since I was old enough to know what a Spider-Man was. Which means, I think, that I should be really stoked about The Amazing Spider-Man, Sony’s attempt to reboot the webslinger even though Sam Raimi’s last spider-movie is only five years old. This time around, Sony’s desperately trying to convince us that Amazing is the “untold story”—which mostly seems to hinge on the facts that this time, Peter’s annoying parents are going to be involved somehow (UGGGHHH), and now he has mechanical webshooters that have little flashing lights on them. It’s a whole new Spider-Man!

I’m legitimately curious about two things here, though: The casting, which seems fantastic across the board, and the humor, which was the biggest thing missing from Raimi’s movies. One of Spidey’s defining qualities is that he’s a smartass, but Tobey Maguire was always too busy moping to crack a joke. Give me a funny Spider-Man any day, and if he just so happens to be in a movie with Denis Leary and Emma Stone? Hell, I might even look past his sparkly webshooters.

With honor and distinction, Erik Henriksen served as the executive editor of the Portland Mercury from 2004 to 2020. He can now be found at henriksenactual.com.

5 replies on “New <i>Spider-Man</i> Trailer Boldly Promises Same Old Spider-Man Who’s Possibly Kind Of a Little Bit Different Maybe”

  1. Did Spider-Man always have built-in webslingers? I seem to remember mechanical versions at some point, that always got damaged or ran out of juice at the key point in the fight…

  2. spider-man had mechanical webshooters until the sam raimi movies.
    this movie looks alright but i don’t see why they’re focusing so much on peter parker’s parents when they aren’t really that important to spider-man’s story. also, why no j jonah jameson?

  3. There is a horrible part of me that perversely wants an awesomely terrible Clone Saga movie. It was one of the worst things to ever happen in comics, but I kind of want to watch that trainwreck.

  5. Balls out stoked for a new spider-man movie. Don’t love the web-slinging device, but I’ve always hated web-slinging as device thing. I really liked they did it the other way in the other movies.

    I mean, how did he know he was a spider-man without being able to make his own web?

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