Need further incentive to see Men in Black 3 this weekend? Those curious about Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man may have found a reason.
Entertainment Weekly reports that a six-minute clip reel from The Amazing Spider-Man will screen before IMAX 3D showings of Men in Black 3, starting with the film’s midnight debut on Thursday, May 24th.
Columbia Pictures has really gone into overdrive with this marketing campaign; with three separate theatrical trailers, a four-minute online clip reel, and numerous press presentations of additional footage, the media blitz for The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises look positively timid in comparison. One wonders if this six-minute clip package is a last-ditch effort to secure some attention away from those rival superhero properties.
In the interest of transparency, professional obligations ensure I’ll be seeing Men in Black 3 this weekend whether I’m interested or not, but I will say that this six-minute preview definitely makes me want to splurge for IMAX.
It’s been very tough to get a read on The Amazing Spider-Man so far. I like the cast – especially Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone – and am confident in director Marc Webb, but there’s definitely a studio-manufactured quality to the trailers. I suspect the angst and parental-mystery angle will not be the central focus of the film – previews for tentpoles are manipulated like this all the time – but Columbia’s marketing department sure wants us to believe that, and I for one have little interest in watching a brooding Peter Parker. That’s Batman’s territory.
But critics invited to watch longer clip packages at press events have almost unanimously reported that the footage improves with a greater sense of context. Hopefully the IMAX preview will provide a similar point-of-view. I certainly would like nothing more than another great Spider-Man film, and if these six minutes of footage help squash my doubts (which are surely shared by plenty of others), then Columbia will have done their job well.
Here’s the recently-released four-minute ‘Super-Trailer’ to help whet your appetite before Friday:
The Amazing Spider-Man arrives in 3D, 2D, and IMAX 3D theatres on July 3rd.
