Looking back at The Amazing Spider-man franchise

     After the failure of Sam Raimi's Spider-man 3, many of us weren't expecting a Spider-man reboot after 5 years. It seemed too soon; Zach Snyder's Man of Steel hit theaters 7 years after the awful 2006 Superman Returns, and Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins flew in 8 years after... that other Batman film. Rebooting Spider-man after 5 years seemed like a bit of a stretch.

     I'll never forget seeing the July 2011 cover of Entertainment Weekly with Andrew Garfield on the cover with the new Spider-man costume. It was bright blue! It had an awesome logo! It was different! Actually, I was at my friend's house when I saw it, so I asked his mom if I could take it home. I still have it. So, in preparation for it, I watched all the Spider-man cartoons (Spectacular Spider-man by far being my favorite) and read all of the Ultimate Spider-man comics. 2012 was going to be the most epic year of super hero films to date, with The Avengers finally assembling for the first time, Christopher Nolan's final chapter in his Dark Knight Trilogy with The Dark Knight Rises, and, starting fresh with a new universe, new actors, and new villains, The Amazing Spider-man. Now we look back at 2012 and think, Pfft, pretty soon, we will be seeing like 6 superhero films per year! But nevertheless, 2012 was a defining year for superhero movies. 

     I actually really liked The Amazing Spider-man. I loved how Peter Parker was back in high school, and the movie ended with a bunch of mysteries to be solved in future installments. So 2013 came along, with 4 new movies. In my opinion, this was a very weak year. Iron Man 3 was not a great film, (yes, I am one of the haters, not just because of the Mandarin) Man of Steel was OK, The Wolverine was the highlight of of the summer, and Thor: The Dark World was decent. But I kept paying attention to The Amazing Spider-man 2. I was ecstatic when I first saw that Jamie Foxx's Electro would be blue, just like the Ultimate version, I was excited to see the Rhino, and the set photos coming out made me so anxious to see the movie.

     Then, rumors were swirling that the Green Goblin would show up. There were reports that Harry Osborn would be the Goblin, and there were all these descriptions of his costume, and I just couldn't wait. It was during 2013 that I discovered a guy on Youtube named SevenWebHeads. He just might be the most passionate Spider-man fan I have ever heard. He provided great insight on these rumors and set photos. His energy came over to me. Heck, I even found myself trying to make web-shooters.

     The year The Amazing Spider-man 2 came out was my first year of high school. The very first trailer came out sometime in December, and I was pretty disappointed to say the least. The Rhino was just a tank with a horn. The Green Goblin, who was obviously Dane DeHaan, looked like Billy Idol with a suit that looked like random pieces of metal put together and flying on a glider. I wasn't happy. So pretty soon, another trailer came out, on Super Bowl Sunday. It was a short thirty second teaser, so after the game, I go online to analyze it. It was an extended 3 minute trailer. So new trailers kept coming out, along with new photos. And by the time May came around, I pretty much knew what would happen. The marketing for the movie simply revealed too much.

     The only unanswered questions that remained were: Will Gwen Stacy die? How many hints will we get for the Sinister Six? So yeah. The movie tried to hard to set up this new universe that the story wasn't clear at all. I walked out of the theater pretty disappointed, and, to be honest, feeling pretty tired of Spider-man. By this time, Sony had already announced their plans for The Sinister Six, Venom, and The Amazing Spider-man 3. All the other films of 2014 were amazing, then hearing about Warner Brother's movie plans for their interconnected Justice League universe, Marvel Studio's plans until 2019 and all of Fox's X-Men films coming out, Spider-man was in the back of my mind.

     All these Spider-man spin-offs seemed so stupid and so far-fetched. And I wasn't the only one who felt that way. So I kinda stopped following the Spider-man movie news for a few months. When I read about the Sony hacks, and about how Spider-man almost was going to appear in Captain America: Civil War, I was so bummed out. He was such an important part of that story. So close! Then a few months later, I was on Screenrant, and if you have ever been on there, you know that the top headlines are on the far right side. I saw a picture of Iron man, Captain America, and Spider-man, and I just knew that it had happened. Sure enough, I read the headline, and grinned. Spider-man was in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It was a dream come true.

     So now The Amazing Spider-man will sit on our shelves. Part of me is disappointed, as there were so many unanswered questions from the previous movies. Hopefully some old scripts will leak online. But they will probably be forgotten. No one will really care about them. Sam Raimi's films were integral to the development of superhero movies in Hollywood, the new Spider-man will be joining forces with the Avengers, and the middle Spider-man franchise will not be missed. The Amazing Spider-man really made me get into superheroes again, so for that, I will always be thankful. I thought it was a promising start to a new franchise, but the studio was just too eager to be like Marvel. But thank you Sony for finally coming to the realization that they couldn't bring this marvelous character to life in a good way without some help from the best.