The Amazing Spider-Man is a 2012 American superhero film directed by Marc Webb, based on the Marvel Comics character Spider-Man. It is a reboot of the Spider-Man film franchise, portraying the character's origin story and his development into a superhero while still a high school student. The film stars Andrew Garfield in the title role as Spider-Man/Peter Parker, with Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy and Rhys Ifans as Dr. Curt Connors.
Development of the film began with the cancellation of Spider-Man 4 in 2010, ending director Sam Raimi's Spider-Man film series that had starred Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst. Opting to reboot the franchise with the same production team, Sony Pictures Entertainment announced a July 2012 release date for The Amazing Spider-Man. James Vanderbilt was hired to write the script while Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves helped fine-tune it. Pre-production
involved auditioning many actors for the roles of Peter Parker and Gwen
Stacy, resulting in the casting of Garfield and Stone. Using Red Digital Cinema Camera Company's RED Epic camera, principal photography started in December 2010 in Los Angeles before moving to New York City. The film entered post-production in April 2011 with the film being shot in 3D with 3ality Technical and with James Horner contributing to the film score.
Sony Entertainment has focused its marketing campaign with a
promotional website with released images and three theatrical trailers,
along with a prologue screening in certain cities, a video game tie-in being developed by Beenox and a viral marketing campaign among other products. The Amazing Spider-Man premiered on June 13, 2012 in Tokyo, Japan and was released in the United States on July 3, 2012 in 3D and in IMAX 3D.
The critical reaction to the film was generally favorable with the
consensus that Webb and the cast deliver thrills despite having similar
elements to the 2002 Spider-Man film due to the following of some of the same source material of the comics.
Effects
The company 3ality Technica of Burbank, California was involved with the equipment for shooting the film in 3D. The film was reported to be the first to be lensed in 3D using 3ality Digital's TS-5 wireless and handheld beamsplitter mirror rig. 3ality technology helped make it possible for the film not to be post-converted to 3D. About 3D Webb explained that he wanted to create a new 3D experience for Spider-Man: "Because we're shooting in 3D, I wanted to conceive of certain things very specifically for 3D. There's an experimental component to 3D that's fascinating and we're experimenting with generating that point of view – so you feel what Peter Parker feels, you feel what Spider-Man feels when he's jumping over buildings and over the streets. He felt that if there ever should be a 3D film it should be about Spider-Man while also admitting that he and the crew "started making the movie around the time Avatar came out" which made every studio in the world want 3D. He said that he had not worked with it before and did not want it forced upon the movie as he had seen in bad conversions of other films. Thus, he wanted to figure out a way to use 3D but give the audience an experience "that's worthy of a Spider-Man film". While James Cameron liked to play 3D as depth, Webb wanted to push it a little bit further—similar to the way things come out at the audience in films such as Creature from the Black Lagoon and House of Wax.About the creation of the Lizard, that there was an entire staff of people dedicated to make the Lizard look lifelike. They started by thinking about a lizard's biology and how his muscles would work. When shooting sequences with the Lizard, a large man referred to as Big John stood in as the character, doing much of the interactions with other characters. Once this filming was completed, a computer-generated lizard was created to replace him. Ifans used motion capture for the Lizard's speaking parts, which Webb found to be a challenge to incorporate into the character's final version.
In February 2012, the film was reported to be getting a digital touch up in Vancouver by Sony Pictures Image works.
