Andrew Garfield

“The Amazing Spider-Man” is off to a strong start, and director Marc Webb’s film has escaped the clutches of its biggest foe — the crowded summer schedule. Trapped between “The Avengers” and “The Dark Knight Rises,” the Sony reboot was in real danger of becoming the friendly neighborhood afterthought. Our readers got to see “Amazing Spider-Man” early thanks to the Hero Complex IMAX Screening Series. In the Q&A portion of the evening, Webb spoke about the chemistry between his lead actors, Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, and said that “casting them was the single most important” thing. Take a look at the video above to learn more about the casting of Garfield, the differing style of the two young stars and the director’s funny line about the off-screen romance between the two actors. “We did a lot of work in […]

Not many actors from a summer superhero movie would cite Shakespeare to justify their film’s existence. Then again, not many actors are “The Amazing Spider-Man’s” Rhys Ifans, an unlikely person to grace a big-budget action extravaganza. A classically trained theater performer who dropped off the Hollywood map for more than a decade, the Welsh actor, 43, presents an odd blend of thoughtful eloquence, rock ‘n’ roll swagger and career ambivalence — not to mention a certain, er, high-mindedness about the work he’s doing. “There are these enduring, socially mirroring qualities that Spider-Man has that begs us to revisit him,” Ifans said when asked over breakfast why he thought the time was right for a new Spider-Man movie. “He’s in a sense a spokesman for every generation. And like all great albums, or movies, or pieces of literature, we revisit them. […]

Sony’s “The Amazing Spider-Man” swings into theaters everywhere on July 3 but 350 of our readers are going to see the movie early, for free and in Hollywood’s most heroic format thanks to the Hero Complex IMAX Screening Series. “Amazing Spider-Man” director Marc Webb will be the special onstage guest for the Q&A that follows the 7:30 p.m. screening on July 1 at Rave Cinemas, at 6081 Center Drive in Los Angeles. Tickets for the event will be available at our RSVP SITE, which goes live at 10 a.m. (PDT) on Tuesday. “Amazing Spider-Man” opens a new era in the Hollywood history of the most famous Marvel Comics creation. Webb, who made his feature-film directorial debut with “(500) Days of Summer” in 2009,  brings a different energy to the franchise as well — along with new stars in Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone. Webb says […]

A new trailer for Marc Webb’s “The Amazing Spider-Man” is out, finally offering a good look at the film’s supervillain — the Lizard. In the comics, gifted scientist Dr. Curt Connors becomes the reptilian monster after injecting himself with lizard DNA in a limb regeneration experiment. As the Lizard, he longs for all humans to be transformed into super-reptiles. Connors (Rhys Ifans) might be after the same thing in the film, asking someone, presumably Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield), “Are you ready to play God?” The trailer then shows the Lizard releasing billows of green gas into the air as a news announcer says, “There’s been a biological attack on New York City.” The trailer also gives fans a glimpse of some sweet Spidey gadgets. A quick scene reveals inventive Peter Parker’s trial-and-error process building the web-shooters. And a fancy gadget […]

This summer, the wall-crawling hero Spider-Man celebrates his 50th anniversary, so in more ways than one, the Marvel Comics creation is a pop-culture icon that sticks. That should be nothing but good news for the filmmaking team behind this summer’s “The Amazing Spider-Man,” but instead it views that history as part of its challenge — just like the towering shadow cast by the previous Spider-Man films and their $3.5-billion box office success. “Our movie — with this hero, at this time — has to be great, and we know we have to show people that we know what we’re doing,” said producer Matt Tolmach, who — like director Marc Webb and stars Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone — is making his first Spider-Man film. “But we’re excited about that because we know what we’ve got.” Webb, Stone and Tolmach appear […]

Fans at WonderCon will be able to pick up a free copy of our new Hero Complex magazine. This is just our second printed edition and inside you’ll find a major exclusive: The only “Dark Shadows” set visit by an American journalist, as well as never-before-seen images from the upcoming Tim Burton movie. The issue also has a cover story on Spider-Man’s 50th anniversary, an in-depth look at “Star Wars: The Old Republic,” a preview of “Before Watchmen” and a new Quizzam trivia challenge. Fans who pick up the magazine also have a chance to attend a free WonderCon screening of “The Cabin in the Woods.” The upcoming horror film will be screened at 8 p.m. Saturday at Ultraluxe Cinemas and, after the credits roll, writer-producer Joss Whedon and writer-director Drew Goddard will participate in an on-stage Q&A. Passes for the Saturday night screening […]

Who was the big Hollywood winner at Comic-Con International this year?  Our vote goes to Andrew Garfield and “The Amazing Spider-Man,” the star and film that will ask moviegoers to start over with a new type of wallcrawler in 2012. Our Geoff Boucher caught up with Garfield to talk about arachnid life, fame and his cupcake-baking costar, Emma Stone. GB: Coming into the role, was there anything you felt like you had to avoid as you put together your version of Peter Parker and Spider-Man? AG: There’s so much to do with it, I didn’t really think about avoiding anything. I just didn’t come at it that way. I wanted him to have fun. I wanted it to feel like Peter Parker could have some fun and wasn’t just trying to save the world. He could have fun even after the responsibility has been thrust upon […]

Executives at Columbia Pictures  think they have a winner with their new web-spinner. “The Amazing Spider-Man” doesn’t reach theaters until July 3, 2012, but the studio has already locked in a May 2, 2014, release date for a sequel. A Columbia Pictures spokesman said the scheduling move “speaks volumes” about the superhero relaunch with director Marc Webb and star Andrew Garfield, who are coming off of a winning appearance at Comic-Con International. There was considerable fan skepticism early on about the choice of Webb, who has directed only one feature film — the 2009 romantic comedy ”(500) Days of Summer” – and arrived on this project in the long shadow of Sam Raimi, whose three “Spider-Man” films earned close to $3.5 billion in worldwide box office and keyed billions more in home video, toys, licensing and video games. “The Amazing Spider-Man,” now in post-production, takes the Marvel Comics icon back to […]

Moviegoers have seen Spider-Man swing across Manhattan in three hit films already, but when the hero returns next July, there will be a big change in the webs he uses. The franchise’s aptly named new director, Marc Webb, is going back to the traditional comic-book portrayal in which the super strands are a product of web-shooter devices built by the young and inventive Peter Parker. When Sam Raimi took Spider-Man to the screen in 2002, he made a major departure from the classic mythology of the character by portraying the webbing as a organic substance created by Parker’s mutated biology. The move seemed to smartly streamline the origin but some purists complained that it tampered too much with tradition.  Webb says that when he took on the reboot project he wanted to go his own path, which meant breaking from the Raimi movies in places where it made sense — and when it came to […]

With great power comes great responsibility, and maybe that’s why Andrew Garfield’s expression alternated between somber and seasick an hour before he faced the spotlight glare of Comic-Con International. “We all know how big a deal this is,” said the 27-year-old British-bred actor who will wear the mask in “The Amazing Spider-Man” next summer as Sony Pictures tries to reboot the franchise that has earned close to $2.5 billion at the box office. “We don’t need to talk about it. We know what is at stake. We know the fans are everything.” That’s the potential burn — and signature sizzle — of Comic-Con, the annual, four-day San Diego pop culture expo that concluded Sunday. Dating back four decades, the event has grown from its scruffy comic-book swap meet beginnings into an extravaganza attracting 120,000 people, and Hollywood has come to […]