A Sneak Peek at Spider-Man 3!

Cinematical was invited to Sony Pictures on Saturday for a top-secret screening of several scenes from Spider-Man 3. Needless to say, they didn't have to ask me twice. I would have spent several days after I'd gotten the invitation building web-shooters if I needed to. Although Peter now uses organic webbing in the movies, so I'd have to try and genetically splice spider-DNA onto my own, which would have been too time-consuming. Thankfully, they weren't that demanding. OK, before we proceed any further, I should wave the giant spoiler alert flag. If you don't want to know anything about the plot of Spider-Man 3, then you should read no further. You especially don't want to find out from me that Aunt May is actually Galactus. Whoops. Sorry, but you've been warned. Just wait until you see a 300-foot tall May stomping on New York. It's not pretty. Although imagine the size of the cookies she could bake.

Anyhow, onto the screening and into the swanky Cary Grant theater. Sony, if you're not using that theater all the time, mind if we use it for movie watching and playing video games? OK -- here's what happened. Sam Raimi himself (dressed in his ever-present suit) came out and introduced the footage to us and called it a "super ... sneak .... preview ... scenelet." He told us the footage was brand-new, hadn't been seen outside of Sony, had a temporary score, and that some things had been shortened a bit for this preview. He then had to run off to do some audio recording with Stan Lee, who was next door, so we begrudgingly let him go. I mean, no one makes Stan "The Man" Lee wait, even if he does have yet another scene in this Spidey flick.

The footage was broken down into three scenes as follows: a love scene with Mary Jane and Peter, a touching family scene between Auny May and Peter, and a slam-bang mid-air fight between Peter and Harry Osborn. That's also the order they rank in, from "ehh" to "holy crap, I want to see this movie right now or I might explode." We'll break it all down for you right here. The scene titles are my own, not from the film. The two brief scenes are as follows:

• "Peter and M.J., sittin' in a web ..." -- it's a beautiful sunset over New York, and the camera cranes down to reveal ... Peter and M. J. laying side by side in an enormous web that Pete has strung between two trees. They're pretty high off the ground, and Spidey's webbing dissolves in about an hour (in the comic books, anyhow), so I hope he's paying attention to the time. She tells Peter how she'd like to perform on stage for the rest of her life with him in the front row. He then confesses his eternal love for her, "I love you so much. I always have." Then they smooch. Yadda, yadda, yadda. It's touching, if you're into that sort of thing. It's just that my inner fanboy was really jonesing for some web-slingin' action.
• "Tea and cookies with Aunt May" -- Peter has a touching moment with Aunt May, where he tells her that he plans to propose to Mary Jane. She tells him, while pouring tea and setting out cookies, about the proposal she received from Uncle Ben. He took her swimming one day and, "Oh, he was a knockout in his bathing suit, and I didn't look too bad myself." Aunt May and Uncle Ben in swimsuits? Someone shoot webs over my eyes, please. She goes on to describe how them swam to an island, and he found a perfect spot and proposed. "We'd been married 50 years, come August, if ... " she trails off and it's a very teary moment for both of them. Then Aunt May takes off her ring and offers it to Peter, for him to use it to propose to M.J. Dammit, it's a tearful moment all around, including me. Rosemary Harris is just great in that role. Bring on the action already so I can get out of this weepy stuff.

Then the jackpot scene. "Meet the new Goblin, not quite the same as the old Goblin." Peter is wearing a shabby suit and tie, and riding his dorkmobile scooter happily down the street, complete with his goofball helmet. Seriously, he looks like an extra from Revenge of the Nerds in that getup. When suddenly from out of nowhere, danger strikes! He's lifted off the scooter and into the dark skies above New York by a mysterious figure on a jet-powered hoverboard. Could it be? Dare I say it? Yes! It's Harry Osborn! In a completely revamped and different looking Goblin suit, down to the very board he's riding on. It all looks much sleeker and more "extreme" than the stuff his father used. The suit is very cool, and has a mask that covers the lower half of his face, complete with some goggle-esque eyepieces.

Peter and Harry (although at first it's unclear that it's him) fight above the rooftops, including a very cool scene where Pete shoots web-balls at Harry with one hand while trying to circle him holding onto a webline with the other. Harry knocks Peter into the side of a building, where he gets sunk deep into the bricks. While he's momentarily stunned, Harry hits a switch and his mask folds away, "You knew this was coming Pete!" Peter tries to explain that Norman killed himself, but Harry doesn't want to hear any of it, and the fight continues. It's pretty fair to say that Harry hands Peter his ass in the first part of the scene. Plus, just to nitpick, why didn't Pete's spider-sense warn him that Harry was coming in the first place? Anyhow, Peter gets punched, slammed, dragged, whacked, and pummeled all over the place, while trying to catch Aunt May's ring that has fallen out of one of his pockets. He manages to retrieve it during all of this abuse, and finally starts to hightail it out of there.

However, Harry won't let go so easily, and pursues him into an extremely narrow alley on his super-sleek hoverboard. Harry hits a footswitch and a razor-bat pops up into his hand, and he hurls it after Peter. "I hate those things!" he let's us know, in case we were wondering. Then just to hammer the point home, Harry hurls about five more after him. Talk about a vendetta. Pete has had enough of the chase and decides to go on the offensive. He turns around in mid-air, webs over the razor-bats "eyes," and then uses a web to hurl one right back at Harry. It gets buried in his right shoulder (ouch) and he yanks it out in a manly fashion. But when he looks up, zing! Pete has strung a web across the alley and Harry gets clotheslined off the board. He crashes headfirst into a pipe, falls onto a metal dumpster about fifteen feet below, and looks to be pretty out cold.

Eyes wide open, Pete shouts out "Harry!" and zips down to his friend. Apparently there are no vital signs, and Pete rips open his Goblin suit and starts performing CPR. Then the scene fades out. Talk about leaving us on the edge of our seats. In fact, Sony showed it to us a second time, just to torture us with the fact that this movie won't be hitting theaters for about eight more weeks. Curses! Anyhow, it was really impressive stuff, and really pumped us up for the film. In fact, there is a short "teaser" with multiple scenes from the movie in it at the very end of this footage, and that stuff alone was almost as good as everything else we'd seen that day. This looks like a good one.

Avi Arad, former president of Marvel Studios and current producer of Spider-Man 3, then came out for an extremely short Q&A with us. Some of the key points he talked about:

• The main challenge of making of a third film in the franchise: "Beating up Peter Parker harder, to see if he can take it, to see if he's still a hero."
• The trailer, which reveals that The Sandman is actually Uncle Ben's killer, instead of the hoodlum that Peter chased in the first film. Does this mean that Peter's motivation has changed? "Peter discovers that there are always consequences to everything you do. Sandman is a fascinating villain for us ... we pride ourselves in connecting our villains to our hero, and we found a way to do it. We made him an interesting victim of circumstance. This film is really about Peter dealing with a dark side, and the dark side comes out of issues. Sandman is one of the issues."
• Does he see this as a conclusion to the franchise? "No, there are never conclusions. This story has been going on for a long time, and it will continue going. Peter Parker's story will continue forever. He's still young, and the love story will always be the thing that rules his life."
• Has he seen a leap in technology between the films? "Yes. Huge. Not only the technology, but there is a team here that knows the character and the different processes. It is fortunate to us that Sony and Sony Pictures Imageworks has every confidence in this franchise, so everyone is pushing themselves. They pride themselves on pushing the envelope and doing it better than they did it before."
• So, was Harry the new Green Goblin? Is he the Hobgoblin? Is he something entirely new? What's going to be on the toy box for his action figure? "Just call him Harry." Wait, he doesn't really have a name or he doesn't take on a name? "Just call him Harry. He will be named later, but for now we'll just leave it alone." Hmm...

Ari then ducked off to ostensibly continue working on the film, or to figure how best to toy with the lives of fanboys and fangirls. We aren't too sure. According to our Sony contacts, some of this footage will be seen during tonight's episode of Heroes on NBC. Then the full seven and a half minutes that we were treated to will be made available on NBC.com, in high-definition no less, as a free download. In fact, when you're done reading this, head over there and and see if it's up. We're pretty sure you're gonna like what you see.