The Amazing Spider-Man Movie: Our First Look

This month we had a chance to take a look at an early screening of the upcoming blockbuster action film The Amazing Spider-Man, and what little we can tell you at the moment includes this: the visual effects here take the cake. While the refresh of the Spider-Man movie series has a story that is thrilling in its relative newness, it's the mise en scene that will strike you hardest. If The Avengers proved to us that its prime time to bring the Marvel Universe to the big screen in a massive way, Spider-Man is the knife that cuts all the sweetest bits of this delicious visual cake and serves them up with the friendly neighborhood kid this superhero was always supposed to be.

There's not a whole lot we can say about the individual characters without giving away the plot of the movie. That said, there's no holding back the fact that Spider-Man takes the great high-flying feeling you get in the first three movies and keeps ahold of it fully. Though instead of seeing Peter Parker doing all manner of rubber-bodied wobble-flips like we saw in Spider-Man 1, 2, and 3, we've suddenly got a whole new generation of web-slinger in which he looks one heck of a lot more real, and feels that way too.

You'll find Peter learning his skills fin a complete reboot of the Spider-Man storyline, with his physical transformation being shown clearly in his bent-body calamitous crashes and bloody bashes galore. This movie has Andrew Garfield getting cut and bruised more than the other three Spider-Man movies combined, and the audience is certainly going to have a great time while he does it. The most important thing this movie does is make you believe that Spider-Man is born of the same kid hero that went big in the 1960s when an adult hero was the only kind there was.

As far as the presentation goes, this is certainly a film you're going to want to see in IMAX 3D. The screening we had a peek at today was presented on one of these massive screens with stadium seating, (the only kind any theater should have these days, of course), and RealD 3D. While I'll never get over how odd it is to wear 3D glasses of any kind, or that these glasses make the whole movie just a bit less bright, the third dimension here is top-notch.

Have a look back at our talk with 3ality Technica about their involvement with Prometheus to see what kind of gear the crew was using to make The Amazing Spider-Man's 3D camera setup a reality. This film was made with a couple of RED cameras on every shot where there's 3D, with 3ality Technica's gear allowing the filming of this movie to be no more difficult than a 2D movie would have been – and it shows. There's no holding back here when it comes to effects shots and all manner of building-crawling angles here. Expect a ride, and you shall receive it.

We'll be having a more involved look and review of The Amazing Spider-Man once the film is actually out in theaters early next month. Meanwhile, stay tuned for several more features – including interviews of all the stars and some of the crew, too – we'll be producing right here in the main news feed in our fabulous [Entertainment portal] – web-slinging action coming at you for weeks!