Just a few days ago, it sounded as if Sony Pictures had decided to cast Josh Hutcherson in their new reboot of Spider-Man. Sadly, every time someone hears something from a “source” these days, it ends up changing a couple of days later, and that’s exactly what’s happening here.
Sony is now officially announcing that Andrew Garfield has been cast in the lead role of Peter Parker. The announcement showed up on Sony’s official Twitter page, which a is bit strange, but nevertheless, that’s the news!
This is a really odd announcement not only because of the Twitter reveal, but because of the actor cast. Garfield is almost 27-years-old, making ALL those reasons that Josh Hutcherson was a good choice disappear. It’s been no secret that this was to be an origins story starting with Peter Parker in high school, so the casting of a guy pushing 30 doesn’t exactly bring a whole hell of a lot of logic to the table.
Garfield is still relatively new, but he has appeared in movies like The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Lions for Lambs, and the upcoming Facebook movie, The Social Network.
I’m not personally familiar with the actor so I can’t say if this is good or bad. I was pretty happy with Hutcherson, so that changing to this gentleman at that age? Has me a little thrown off-balance here.
What do you guys think?
He’s not heart-throb, which I like. Thank god they didn’t go supermodel’ish like Zach Effron or someone younger. Good choice. Bleivable.
Comment by phil — July 2, 2010 @ 8:26 am
Anybody wonder if Hutcherson either A) priced himself too high or B) had a scheduling conflict by being in the “Journey to the center of the earth” sequel as was rumored?
You’d figure he’d do most anything to be freakin Spiderman.
Comment by Harkonen — July 2, 2010 @ 10:26 am
Wow, this clown will be a 29-year-old high school student when the movie comes out. Reminds me of that MST3k movie “Ring of Terror” about the 40-year old college students.
FAIL
Comment by Chris — July 2, 2010 @ 1:31 pm
I think he’s a good choice: he was really good in Parnassus and managed to look quite young so I think he can do it. Now they’d better try to make good scripts and that’s another story!
Comment by Jellyfish62 — July 2, 2010 @ 6:36 pm
Personally I think the origins story they already did with Toby as Spidey was good. We now need to break out of this idea that all superhero movies have to be origin stories, and accept that most people know how peter parker got bit on the hand by a spider etc. and get to an actual great story arc in spiderman history. But that’s just too much to ask of hollywood aye?
Preemptive rating of this reboot: FAIL
~NZ
Comment by NickZak — July 5, 2010 @ 12:20 pm
I don’t think it needed to be an origin story (Green Lantern First Flight found a nice balance), but why can’t Peter Parker be a 16 year old high school nerd?
Comment by Chris — July 7, 2010 @ 5:24 pm