On Monday the 6th of February I had one of the most exciting experiences of my life. I have to give many thanks to my friend Jason because he was the one who saw that tickets were available for a sneak peek of The Amazing Spider-Man and booked them before the allocation ran out. I was already looking forward to the film but after seeing the sneak peek it’s my most anticipated film of the year (although admittedly I am slightly biased).
The show started at 8pm and after the debacle of the Conan premiere at the Empire Big Screen event last year (where we ended up sitting in the sixth row in front of the biggest screen in England for a 3D film which featured frenetic battle scenes , hello bleeding eyes) we decided we needed to get there nice and early. Which turned out to be 4:15. No matter though, we had dinner and a few drinks and by 6:30 we noticed a line was starting to form.
I have to say I was a bit disappointed that there wasn’t a massive poster but I suppose they didn’t want random people trying to jump in, and it’s not like it was a premiere. We did see this guy hanging around though.
We queued up and yeah it was very cold and I wasn’t wearing enough, also I had to keep my jacket unzipped to show off my Spider-Man t-shirt. We got talking to a guy in front of us who said he goes to a lot of free screenings and events like this. I may have to get in on some of that action, especially if they have a similar event for Star Trek (1)2. Eventually some stewardy type person came along and was asking people to do Spider-Man poses. No-one was joining in, which I can understand because most of his iconic poses are either upside down or swinging through the air. I chose to do the classic ‘crouching down with his hands placed between his legs ready to swing into action pose (and I did actually pretend to swing into action)’ which part of me hopes doesn’t end up on youtube or the dvd because I doubt it looks as cool as it did in my head at the time.
After her came another lady who was asking people if they’d like to be interviewed and of course I jumped at the chance. I was hoping it would be shown on tv or something but she said it was just for the executives. However, the guy who we were chatting to (I should have really asked his name) said that sometimes they put this stuff as a special feature on dvds, so here’s hoping!
She asked us the usual questions like what we were expecting, how long we’d been Spider-Man fans, then she asked who were our favourite villains. I said Mysterio just to be a bit different, the other guy said Venom, we got into a discussion about which would be better for the next film (I thought it was the perfect place to push my campaign for Mysterio to feature, obviously I subtly hinted that I’d be willing to write the script) while Jas said Doc Ock and I feel a bit sorry for Jas because the woman found the discussion about the next film interesting. So we had to repeat the first part of the conversation and then carry on, and by the end I had persuaded the other guy that Mysterio would be amazing. So if Mysterio is indeed a villain in the sequel it’s because of me, so yay!
Eventually we got in the building and they made us queue with some people facing one way and some the other, I think they were trying to make a snake. It didn’t work. As soon as people were being let in we all just moved towards the front. I was hoping that we’d see something in 3D so I was very pleased to see 3D glasses on each chair. We had to wait about another 30 mins but at least we were in the warm and there was a cool logo on the screen.
We were linked with other cities around the world, and I feel bad for Madrid, Paris, Berlin and the others because they didn’t get a special guest. I know it’s very fussy of me but I was a bit disappointed that we had Rhys Ifans, yeah he’s The Lizard and he’s pretty cool, but he’s not Emma Stone (who was in Rio) or Andrew Garfield (New York). We were also linked with LA where Mark Webb introduced the trailer and the footage.
They were all really cool, Andrew Garfield especially. He said that he was just the guy in the suit and it could be any one of us in there, and he was just representing the symbol but the symbol belonged to us. The trailer looked amazing in 3D, if there’s one character made for 3D it’s Spidey.
The footage was also really cool and I’m going to describe what I can remember so spoilers follow:
SPOILERS!!!
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There’s a scene in the trailer where Spider-Man is in the back of a car while it’s being robbed. We saw more of this scene, and the robber pulls a knife. Spider-Man mockingly whimpers before shooting some web which sticks the guy to the wall. Then he has some fun, he pretends to sneeze, pitch a baseball and just fires his webbing from different angles while firing off wisecracks.
At school Peter defends a guy from being bullied by Flash Thompson, who then beats up Peter. Later on we see him throw Flash up against some lockers. Uncle Ben comes to pick him up from school and he gives him a speech about how revenge isn’t a good motivation. They run into Gwen and Uncle Ben has a few funny lines about how she’s the girl on Peter’s computer. There’s a cute moment where Peter awkwardly asks Gwen out.
When he firsts gets his powers he wrecks the bathroom, then we see a few clips of him training in a warehouse which kinda reminded me of Footloose. We see some mishaps with the mechanical webbing until he perfects it.
There’s tension between Peter and Captain Stacy, and I’m curious as to whether they’ll go down the same route as in the comics. There’s a good fight scene where a team of police officers take on an unmasked Spider-Man.
There was a scene where The Lizard was tossing people off the bridge but Spider-Man had caught them in webbing and left them safely dangling. We also saw what I presume is Dr. Connor’s introductory scene where he explains why he’s researching reptiles. I’m wondering whether we’ll see his family.
Other than that there were a few more fight scenes, a scene with Peter in his first costume, some stuff with Aunt May and Uncle Ben about Peter’s parents and a little more of Peter & Gwen.
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END OF SPOILERS!!!!
Overall I was completely buzzing when I came out. I love the Raimi films but from what I’ve seen this is going to be on another level. I heard more smartass wisecracks from Spidey in the bits of footage I saw than I did in the span of 3 films, and Andrew Garfield is a lot more natural with that type of material than Tobey Maguire was. The actions sequences seem more intense, The Lizard is monstrous and vicious and we’re back to mechanical web-shooters.
There’s also a nice contrast between Gwen and Mary-Jane which Emma Stone brought up, and that’s that MJ really falls in love with Spider-Man first whereas Gwen falls in love with Peter. And if they go the route that the comics did with Gwen’s dad we could have a very interesting situation indeed. It’d be a bit of a spin on the love/hate relationship.
There’s so many good movies coming out this year but The Amazing Spider-Man has leapt to the top of the list. I know there’s a lot of people who think ‘what’s the point, the last one was only a few years ago’, but like I said this is on another level,
Your Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man Fan.
man of yesterday 