Spider-Man is Back! First Official Picture of Andrew Garfield in Costume

When Sony announced a new Spider-Man film franchise under the helm of Marc Webb, director of 2009′s 500 Days of Summer, fans weren’t exactly sure what to expect from a completely new direction, fully separated from the Tobey Maguire/ Sam Raimi films. Little snippets from the last couple of months have been looking good, starting with the extremely intelligent casting of The Social Network stand-out, Andrew Garfield, but now the world at large can see what we can expect from the upcoming super-hero blockbuster.

The image shows a notably darker tone than we saw with the sometimes campy Raimi films. With the claw marks on our leading man’s chest, this image likely comes shortly after an encounter with the film’s primary villain, classic Spidey character The Lizard. The tone seems to mimic the most successful superhero franchise of the modern era, the Christopher Nolan Batman series, an intelligent move for young director Marc Webb. Even his choice of The Lizard matches Nolan, with the decision to focus his first film on the main character, and pulling a secondary villain from Spider-Man’s rogues gallery, to prevent the villain from overshadowing the hero. It seems likely that a second film would introduce the classic Spider-Man arch-nemesis, the Green Goblin, especially if Webb continues to follow Nolan’s winning formula.

The as-of-yet untitled Spider-Man reboot (I’d personally wager that producers will go with the name of the monthly comic book series, The Amazing Spider-Man to separate the new series from the previous franchise) continues to impress on all cylinders. The film will showcase Andrew Garfield as the web-slinging Peter Parker, Emma Stone as the original Spider-Man love interest Gwen Stacy, Martin Sheen as Peter’s Uncle Ben, Rhys Ifans as Dr. Curt Connors (The Lizard), Dennis Leary as Gwen Stacy’s father and Police Captain George Stacy, and a similarly star-studded secondary cast.

The Spidey reboot looks like a winner amidst what will likely be the biggest Superhero summer in film history, with the release of The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises. Nevertheless, mark your calendars for July 3rd, 2012 for your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

See the image at full size [here]

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