With all of The Avengers hoopla over the past few days, I haven’t had time to post this cool new trailer for The Amazing Spider-Man, which debuts on July 3. I’ve watched it both before and after The Avengers, which I think we can all agree has raised the bar for any and all superhero movies from here on out. It simply has, best we all accept that now.

I’m finally happy to say that I’m hopeful about The Amazing Spider-Man.

The trailer is still very dark and very brooding, which I’m generally opposed to in a Spider-Man movie. I’m not saying it has to be light and colorful, but this isn’t Batman. Andrew Garfield could do a good job as Spider-Man. I never liked Tobey Maguire in the costume. The few jokes/quips we get in that trailer seem legitimately funny. So I definitely have hope there. And the action sequences look pretty great.

I am a little worried about all this talk about the secret to Peter’s origins, and the focus on his parents. Usually I don’t care if a movie studio decides to change some aspects of a superhero in order to make them fit the screen. But if they mess with the actual, philosophical definitions of a character, then I get peeved. Like when they revealed in Spider-Man 3 that Sandman actually killed Uncle Ben and not the original thief. That was just so incredibly stupid! And it took away the guilt Peter felt for his uncle’s death.

Unnecessarily changing a superhero’s origin and raison d’etre just grinds my gears. But maybe I’m just reading too much into the trailer, which otherwise is a pretty good trailer. I’m hopeful about this movie being good now.

Battle damage!

Though as a rule, I don’t trust this movie. If you don’t know the circumstances here, the movie license for making Spider-Man films was sold to Sony years ago, which gave us those three Sam Raimi-directed Spider-Man films a few years ago. They were good. But now if Sony ever stops making Spider-Man films, the licensing rights revert back to Marvel Comics and their parent company Disney. Sony does not want this to happen, so it’s likely that they will be churning out Spider-Man movies for as long as humanly possible.

Which brings me to naturally assuming this new movie won’t be any good.

However, that’s exactly what I thought to expect with X-Men: First Class last year. Fox is in the same situation, since they have the licensing rights to the X-Men franchise. But then X-Men: First Class was amazing! So now I know not to just assume these new movies will be bad. I think it’s safe to say that Sam Raimi was not the only person in Hollywood with an awesome vision for a Spider-Man movie. Frankly, I think we all have, in our hearts, an idea for a Spider-Man movie.

It just so happens that new director Marc Webb is the one who gets to make his version. Lucky bastard.