Pretty quickly for the Hollywood blockbuster. They had the cast already locked into sequel deals, and the studio liked the early cuts of the first movie shown them by director Raimi so they set up his sequel deal before the first movie was even released. It’s not unusual to have the cast commit to a franchise; it is unusual to have the director commit. That enabled them to turn the movie around more quickly than is typical.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like they’ve improved the CGI over the first one. That almost ruined it for me, and I’d hate to see it happen again.
Looks like they ported a PS2 game. And if it looks that way at 2"x3", 60 feet isn’t going to be good.
Well, to be fair, this is just the teaser. They’ll probably be working on the special effects right up until the last minute.
That being said, bad special effects never really bother me. King Kong and Jaws look fake, but those are still kick-ass movies. Similarly, even if Spider-Man looks a little plastic at times, it’s still cool to see him swing through the skyscrapers.
I was at a Special Effects Conference once, one of the guests was the CGI supervisor on Spider-Man. He was immensely proud of his work on it, and didn’t seem to like the unspoken resentment many people have for the cartoony look. He utterly despises motion capture. His argument was that “you can tell” when it’s used.
What I wanted to tell him was that you can also tell when it isn’t used, and in his case it gets very distracting to see unrealistic (dare I say ‘bad’) animation.
Not that motion capture lends itself particularly well to swinging on a rope, but I’m sure with some thought they could adapt less spectacular swings into something larger using mathematical boosts to the code generated by it. Or something. (Arguably that’s not particularly easy to achieve, but then I never said it would be - it’s worth the additional effort if it works. cf. Weta’s MASSIVE)
Like the movement and poses in the comics were realistic, especially in the McFarlane years.
I think a large portion of “it looks fake” comments come from an unconcious realization that it looks fake becasue you know it’s impossible to actually do. You know that the studio isn’t going to have some stuntman swing across a New York boulevard on a rope, that a stuntman can’t climb up a wall, that no actor can move that fast, etc. You know Jar Jar Binks can’t exist. You know the Hulk can’t exist.
There is a lot of completely mundane CG out there that is never noticed by the audience; this is especially evident in the Star Wars prequels, where there are a lot of digital set extensions and the like that the audience has absolutely no idea about. This is because, to some extent, there’s nothing in the viewer’s mind points out to them that this CG is impossible in real life.
Of course, animating humans and living creatures is extremely hard, and getting it a bit wrong is exceedingly easy.
Well, that’s the excuse. If you can accept that, then I suppose it’s all right.
But when so many of the rest of these kinds of movies, and Spider-Man did too, tried to inject a good amount of realism in the superhero premise, anything that distracts you from that is, I think, a mistake. Not a huge one, I suppose, because I love the movie, but nevertheless it still bothers me (and obviously it does for others too).
No, it wasn’t that the movement wasn’t realistic, it was that in some scenes it looked like they has put a Spider-man skin on Mario or Luigi.
Not all, in many scenes I was fine with the CGI but there were enough bad ones that it threw things off for me.
Didn’t they almost dump Tobey? I seem to remember reading something about back problems that almost meant that he wouldn’t be able to handle the physical demands or wasn’t willing to make the effort. Or something like that. Turned out to be inadequate communication that caused the problems.
I think.
I don’t know why people complain about the CGI Spidey in the first movie; I never noticed it enough to get distracted from the movie. Maybe because I was just having too much fun watching. 
He did have back problems (related to horse training for Seabiscuit, as I recall), but his contract was never in jeopardy; the rumors were overblown.
Good trailer. I like the look of Dr O. They managed to avoid the Elton John look. Am I the only one who thinks his tentacles should be longer though?
I thought the CGI in SM1 was fine. Some of the best CGI actually. There was a slight cartoony look to the webswinging, but a) they couldn’t have done this without CGI and b) it was a helluva lot better than the matrix.
I’d definately like to see Venom in the next one. I know they’ve hinted at the return of the green goblin, but surely this is too soon in the franchise. GG didn’t come across very well in the first one, so it makes little sense to go backwards. If they have to bring him back, can we have Hobgoblin instead?
If they’re introducing John Jameson, then can we expect Man-wolf?
I dont think it really matters where they go villain wise in the 3rd one. After all, their compressing 40odd years of storylines. Once they get over the exposition of how the character came to be in the 1st, which went on FAR too long (even my 87 year old gran knows how Spidey became Spidey) they can do what they like, as long as it has some kind of sequentiality/character development.
It didnt make a difference to the quality of the X men films, because they aren’t following the Original comic plotlines from the beginning verbatim.
If they send Harry down the route of the Goblin, they probably won’t use the Green Gob again. Having him become (or hire/create/whatever) the Hobgoblin makes some sense and it lets them extend in new directions.
Ummm…I’m pretty sure Batman and Robin had a rather large budget, too. Just because you put money into something, doesn’t mean it isn’t going to suck worse than passing a kidney stone the size of a golf ball. You don’t seem to like Raimi much, but if it weren’t for the directing and writting, the movie wouldn’t have been nearly as popular.
And I’m another one who didn’t see any problem with the CGI. I did notice it, because I knew they couldn’t get anyone to do that kind of stuff. Still, I was amazed at how well it looked, and it really didn’t destroy my suspention of disbelief at all.
I wouldn’t mind if Harry became the Green Goblin, or Hobgoblin in the next film, but I really think they should avoid bringing Venom into the mix. I know he’s probably Spidey’s most popular villain, but there’s really no way to bring him into it without dragging it out to two movies at least, and that’s just silly. I mean, first you’d have to have a movie with Spidey finding it, having fun with it, getting scared to it and fighting it off. Next film would have it bonding with Brock, causing problems, and then you’d have another big fight. In the meantime, they’d have to throw in other villains as well, and it could all just get too clustered.
InUltimate Spiderman, they brought Venom into the storyline by having it be some man-made creation that was part of some attempt to cure cancer. So, there are ways to bring it into the fold without the premise of space, but I think it’d would just make things too convoluted.
All that being said, I really liked the trailer for number 2, and think it’s going to be a lot of fun. I’m not sure if I like the actor for Doc Oc, but the look is good, and the tentacles are pretty nice. And I gotta admit, the car smashing threw the window was really impressive. I’m definitely going to see this one and expect it to be rather enjoyable.
I’ll be happy just if they give some real screen time to J Jonah Jameson. He was one of my favorite parts in the first movie. Especially as he defined his reasons for wanting to brand Spiderman a public menace. That provided real depth to a character who could have just been a dimensional comedic foil.
Oh, and let me just say…
Peter, when Kirsten Dunst asks if you love her…
THE ANSWER IS ALWAYS “YES”!!!
Regarding “fake-looking” CGI:
[Cranky Old Man]You damn kids! In my day, we would have had bowel movements right in the theatre if we coulda seen the special effects they have now! How perfect does it have to be? We had lizards with fins glued to their backs for dinosaurs, for Christ’s sake! And we liked it that way…[/Cranky Old Man]
Heathen! Alfred Molina is one of the best that-guy actors ever. Y’know, one of those dudes whose name nobody knows, but when you find out who he played, you go, “Oh, yeah, that guy. I like that guy.” 
He’s long-overdue for a higher-profile role, in my opinion.
In the comics, Mary Jane eventually learns that Peter=Spidey. I hope they do that in the movies. I get annoyed with the Superman-like constant ‘reset’ of the premise everytime there’s real development or change. (Like in the Superman movie where Lois learns Clark’s identity, but her memory is erased in the end.)
I prefer a Buffy (and Spidey comic) universe where eventually people figure things out and aren’t immediately wiped out by a plot device just because they put one and one together.
Peace.