Sony Pictures Shows 30-Minutes of The Amazing Spiderman 2 at CinemaCon

Tim here, and in my continuing coverage of CinemaCon we got a special treat during the Sony Pictures presentation: 30-minutes of The Amazing Spiderman 2! We got to watch the beginning of the film, a little action sequence a bit later in the film, and a lead in to the climatic end. All followed by a sizzle of all the footage previously seen in trailers.

Before describing the footage, the biggest news Sony revealed is that their decision to have 3 villains in this movie had to do primarily with setting up the Sinister Six, which they plan on bringing into the franchise, and as well spin-off films. They mentioned Venom.

We opened with the beginning of the film, which gives another perspective to the beginning of the last film and explains what happened to Peter's parents. We move forward to the present, a year after the events of the last film, and Spiderman (Andrew Garfield) is in his prime. He has tried to keep his promise to Gwen's father by keeping away, and it seems his crime fighting nearly keeps him away from his high school graduation as Gwen (Emma Stone) calls him from the ceremony to figure out where he is. It sets up an early relationship with Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx) that is then returned to in the next sequence we got to see. We also meet Aleksei Sytsevich (Paul Giamatti) who is in the midst of a heist that Spiderman works to foil.

Max is now Electro, and is discovering just what his powers are capable of in the middle of Times Square. Peter is with Gwen reconnecting as "friends" when his Spidy senses tell him something is amiss nearby. We witness the first battle between Spiderman and Electro, which works great in 3D. The next short sequence is when Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) attempts to get the upper hand on the Spider by teaming up with Electro.

The footage was screened in S3D, which was a nice change since most of the previous footage shown by studios has been in 2D. Although, I can tell it's a conversion for the pure live action elements, the rest works in the same Hybrid manner that Gravity did. Since Spiderman and Electro are so often CGI created in the computer the stereo works great. As much as I wish they had shot it natively, it still will work fine in the 3D format.

Pretty exciting stuff coming from Sony this year! The Amazing Spiderman 2 hits theaters in 2D, 3D, and IMAX 3D on May 2, 2014.