With all the hype surrounding the impending release of Joss Whedon’s The Avengers and Christopher Nolan’s final Batman film, it is easy to forget that the biggest comic book movie franchise of them all is getting a major reboot right smack dab in the middle of this coming summer movie season. Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man opens nationwide on July 3rd and features a highly-talented young cast led by Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone.
 
It is clearer than ever from this Japanese trailer that the fate of Peter Parker’s parents and the events that made him an orphan will be a key “origin story” secret that Webb’s movie will attempt to unlock.  It is also clear that Webb apparently hasn’t stinted on the kinetic elements that help make Spider-Man success on the big screen, since the trailer is jam-packed with action snippets that consciously or unconsciously reference all sorts of action movie classics from 1933’s King Kong to the present.
 
The foreshortened Spidey pose on the new poster is no surprise for comics fans, but it does make a great companion to the new international trailer because both of these marketing tools stress the action that the rebooted franchise is poised to deliver.  With sensitive actors like Garfield and Stone plus Marc Webb’s previously demonstrated skill in evoking revealing, well-rounded performances in films like 500 Days of Summer, the “character” aspects of the Spider-Man reboot never appeared to be in jeopardy, and this trailer provides evidence that Webb will be able to deal with the equally important “spectacle” side of this potential summer blockbuster. So far Sony has done a good job with posters for this film, with several cool designs (see "'The Amazing Spider-Man' 3-D Poster").