There have been leaked photos of Andrew Garfield dressed up in Spider-Man attire, but today Sony has released an official photo and the title to the next Spider-Man movie due out July 2012. The title is a throwback to the original comic book title, “The Amazing Spider-Man” and the photo clearly shows that in this movie, Peter Parker’s web slinging ability comes from web-shooters on his wrist.
Obviously the studio had been paying attention to all the chatter following the release of the last photo, using this one to come right out and say, “Yes, this version of Spider-Man will have web-shooters.” Said shooters are the clear highlight of the image, which features Spidey crouched down, about to spit some webs out from his (we assume) homemade device, which was absent from Sam Raimi’s trilogy because the director didn’t think a teenager would be smart enough to piece something like that together.
That’s right: a teenage science wiz wouldn’t be smart enough to build a webshooter, but he had no trouble sewing the intricate costume Spidey wore. I also thought it weird that his web came out of his wrists rather than his tail end.
It’s late, I’m tired, and I think I’ll call it a night. But, Alan, these are the sorts of comments your readers will undoubtedly miss when you no longer allow comments.
Personally. I enjoyed the fact the webs came out of his wrists, as opposed to “web shooters” web shooters made him weak in my eyes, because in the cartoon he was always running out of webbing. Web shooters was the equivalent of him having suction cups taped to his hands to climb up walls.
This may sound nitpicky, but as an artist it’s the kind of thing I’m always thinking about…
When I look at this picture I can’t get over the blue on Spider-Man’s hands. This is surely partly because I’m so used to red hands after many, many years of looking at Spider-Man. But I really feel like having the blue on his hands is a poor graphical choice. Hands are so important for conveying emotion and leading the eye during action, because often the actions are initiated with the hands. To use so much blue on the hands will make them blend in more with the rest of the costume and make it harder for the viewer to immediately read what the hands are doing. It seems like too often in recent movies complicated designs are chosen over simpler designs that would better aid the storytelling (for example, all the robots in Transformers, although calling that storytelling is giving them too much credit).
Okay, that’s the end of my rant. I clearly have too much time on my hands tonight.
I couldn’t immediately tell how his hands were positioned either – bad bad bad design choice. The silhouette is the most important part of body language and that is now missing in the hands… Also, I loved the web-fluid that oozed from his wrists, much more macabre than clunky “shooters” and therefore more interesting.
Never thought about the red hand effect! Very good point. I don’t think the web shooters matter either way, but just don’t have “bad” Peter return … that was nuts (and horrible).
Truly, a bad, bad silhouette. All I did was put the test to their own publicity shot. They did this to themselves.
http://kellymcnutt.blogspot.com/
http://homepage.mac.com/nickandkel/ilike/spider-man_bad_silhouette.jpg
Tony–
Totally agree on the gloves/costume design. Steve Ditko’s character/costume design was utter perfection…don’t mess with it! And I always loved the way John Romita drew Spidey’s index finger and pinkie fully extended while the other fingers were folded in on the palm to shoot webbing. Not anything a real person can do, but he sure made it look great!
If the movie writers were smart; they would keep the actual webs flowing out of Spiderman’s wrists, yet have them then flow into the webshooters; (combining both ideas). The new webshooters could be explained as being devices that now fire the webs at a greater / further distance than without them.
However, peter, if say, he was out of costume, could also still launch the webs, same as he did in the first 3 movies, if he needed to…just at less of a distance than with the shooters.
Effectively getting rid of the need to constantly refill the shooters, as he always had to do in the middle of battles, in his comic book. [Thus no more clunkiness].