To his credit, director Marc Webb has been trying to build some buzz around The Amazing Spider-Man 2 by Tweeting one set photo every day that the film is in production. While some qualify as ominous – like showing the locker that Venom comes from – others are seemingly meaningless, like a guy planking on a dolly. Hell, the best part about Webb’s tweets are seeing the responses of one seemingly crazy Emma Stone fan, but again, he’s just trying to stir some interaction with fans for the sequel to his lackluster first effort.

But Webb isn’t giving us the good stuff, namely the set photos of Emma Stone, reprising her role as Peter Parker’s main squeeze, Gwen Stacy. Finally, though, photos have been popping up of Stone and Shailene Woodley, who plays Mary Jane Watson, as their characters meet for the first time. And nothing against Woodley – I’m sure she’s a lovely girl with a great personality – but Gwen Stacy looks like Emma Stone.

Maybe if she looked like Emma Thompson, Mary Jane would stand a chance, but if I’m expected to believe that Spidey is really torn between these girls, well, they better cram a few more villains into the film to distract me.

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It seems like the only reason Sony remade Spider-Man was so that they could recast it, since it was basically the same origin story, but with different actors and worse writing. And the only explanation I hear from people who liked it is that they hated Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield was way better. I imagine trading Kirsten Dunst for Shailene Woodley will have similar appeal. Here she is on the set of Amazing Spider-Man 2 in New York yesterday, with Marc Webb back to direct and a release date in 2014. I barely recognize her without the bikini, but it’s nice to know that she’s 21 now (phew). Though I’ll be honest, very few of my superhero fantasies involved a love interest wearing a skirt over leggings. Can’t we send Spider-Man to Hawaii or something? Though I guess his powers are much more effective in areas with tall buildings. That’s the curse of Spider-Man’s powers that no one ever talks about – high real estate prices. With great power comes exorbitant price per square foot.

[more pics at JustJared]

“I HAAATE MERLOT!!!”

According to a number of very important, very legitimate news sources that report only the Earth-shakingest of scoopy scoops, Paul Giamatti is in talks for the sequel to The Amazing Spider-Man, in which he’ll be playing a villain called “The Rhino.” The Rhino wears a suit that gives him super strength and super speed, and has a big horn on the top of his head. And now, I’m guessing, he’ll also have some kind of crippling neurosis.

Paul Giamatti is in talks to join The Amazing Spider-Man 2 as the villain known as The Rhino, and Felicity Jones is negotiating for an unspecified role.
The duo would bolster an already impressive cast. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone are back as Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy, Jamie Foxx is portraying bad guy Electro, Shailene Woodley is Mary Jane Watson, and Dane DeHaan is Harry Osborne.
The Rhino first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man #41 in 1966 as a thug from a Soviet Bloc country who wore a superhuman suit that made him invulnerable while giving him superstrength and superspeed. It also had a deadly horn on top.
In more recent comics, he became a sympathetic figure who found himself allying with Spider-Man. [HollywoodReporter]

Sony plans to rush into… er, begin production next month. I hope they write a really good motivation for the villain in this one, like they did for in the last Spider-Man. “Hey, what if he tried to turn everyone else into rhinos and then climbed a bridge for some reason? That’d be cool, right?”

I’m okay with the absurd motivations, but why not go all out with it? They keep trying to make the bad guy this disgruntled scientist who starts out a genius and then goes wrong, and then he has this incredibly convoluted master plan for world domination, and his plan doesn’t really make sense, but then the movie and everyone in it has to pretend like it does. Why not just go full crazy? Why does he have to be a sane madman? Like, maybe the bad guy kills a whole bunch of people at a football stadium like Bane, but instead of making a big speech he just goes out there and starts shoving bananas up his ass because he likes the attention. They need more people like me in these focus groups.

Aside from a few details – like the Lizard being the villain instead of Green Goblin, Emma Stone >>>>>>>>>>> Kirsten Dunst and Macho Man Randy Savage – I didn’t see much of a difference between the 2002 Spider-Man film and this year’s The Amazing Spider-Man. That’s probably because Columbia Pictures rushed this reboot to theaters so Marvel didn’t reclaim the rights to the franchise and add Spidey to The Avengers, but there might be a really small chance that Columbia just wanted to try telling the same story again. Hopefully with less singing this time.

But unlike the last Spidey trilogy, which featured Bryce Dallas Howard as Gwen Stacy in the third installment, the Amazing version started off with Peter Parker’s original love interest, played by Stone. For the sequel, we’ll once again be introduced to Mary Jane Watson so she can start her whole cat fight with Gwen again. Who’ll play MJ? Columbia really really really wants Shailene Woodley. Hooray, star power.

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