The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Watch the overstuffed first trailer
There's a lot going on in this first glimpse of the superhero sequel


The first trailer for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has finally arrived, and it's clear that the film is ready to up the stakes from the successful (but modestly received) original. "Every day, I wake up knowing that the more people I try to save, the more enemies I will make," says Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man in the new trailer. "And it's just a matter of time before I face those with more power than I can overcome."
The first trailer for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 goes out of its way to highlight a number of those villains, including a couple of faces that never appeared in Sam Raimi's original Spider-Man franchise: Electro (Jamie Foxx) and Rhino (Paul Giamatti). We also meet the new Green Goblin (played here by Dane DeHaan, who takes over the role of Harry Osborn from James Franco). As Osborn reveals, there's some greater conspiracy at play; Oscorp has put Peter Parker under surveillance, and it has something to do with his father's disappearance.
And that's on top of Peter's budding relationship with Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), a winking nod to fan-favorite villains Vulture and Doctor Octopus, and all the action and bombast you'd expect from a blockbuster superhero franchise. There's a lot going on in this trailer, which compares — perhaps unfavorably — to the overstuffed Spider-Man 3, which ended Raimi's run on the franchise and eventually led to The Amazing Spider-Man reboot. Will all these disparate elements cohere in the final film? We'll find out when the movie kicks off the summer blockbuster season in May 2014.
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Scott Meslow is the entertainment editor for TheWeek.com. He has written about film and television at publications including The Atlantic, POLITICO Magazine, and Vulture.
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