New 'Spider-Man' trailer debuts, but is it 'Amazing'?

Posted Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 4:41 PM Central
Last updated Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 10:32 AM Central

by John Couture

Next Summer, Sony is rebooting the Spider-Man franchise and we figured that this week's Comic Con would feature the first look at the new movie. We were right, sort of.

Ahead of the largest Comic/Movie/TV/Pop Culture convention in the world, Sony Pictures released the trailer for public consumption via their own web site. And guess what? They actually released a version that was embeddable so that all of the movie sites in the world didn't have to go through other sites to include it in their stories.

That was brilliant.

The trailer, on the other hand, is a bit of a mix bag for me. I always put a disclaimer out there on comic book movies that I'm not a huge comic book fan, so I'm not the best judge, but as such I should be a pretty good average joe opinion.

I liked the tone of the trailer quite a bit. It seemed very dark and mysterious which is smart for a teaser trailer of a well-known property. Right away, it felt that they were taking the character in a new direction. I also enjoyed Emma Stone's scenes as Gwen Stacy, but again if I didn't know she was playing Gwen, I would have assumed from the trailer that she was playing Mary Jane.

What I didn't care for in the trailer was the whole storyline about his parents' demise. I'm not sure if it's canon or not, but I don't know. Something about it really reminded me of the Batman mythology and if this inclusion was simply a stab at trying to get the Christopher Nolan fans on board, then I'm a more miffed.

Finally, I just didn't like the web slinging sequence at the end. This was the biggest complaint of the first three film for me and it doesn't look like the new movie will address it. To me, it just looks too fake. I know it's CGI and they have made great strides in the technology, but I see that footage and immediately think video game.

What do you think? The Amazing Spider-Man is set to swing into theaters on July 3, 2012.