Spidey, Lisbeth and Cap: Official pics are here

Towards the end of last week, the first official "in costume" pics were released for 3 of the most highly anticipated upcoming movies of the next 18 months: Captain America: The First Avenger (releasing 22 July), the American adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (21 December) and the Spider-Man reboot (releasing 3 July 2012). And damn if I'm not blissfully happy with each of these first looks.


Entertainment Weekly scored this first pic of Cap in full costume, after we'd only been exposed to the closely matching concept art before. Initially I was resistant to Chris Evans (who already has played The Human Torch in the Fantastic Four movies) claiming another icon of the Marvel universe for himself, but in every image I've seen he has increasingly looked the part - being completely devoid of Johnny Storm's cockiness.

I've blogged before about the new Captain America film and why you should be excited about it. For the record, Captain America: The First Avenger is probably the comic book adaptation I'm most looking forward to this year, seeing as it's a costumed hero tale set in Word War II instead of typical present day. Evans is weedy Steve Rogers, a young man deemed medically unfit to serve in the US military. However, in volunteering for a top secret scientific experiment he is transformed into the perfect human specimen - a genuine super soldier on the side of the Allies. I fail to see how this won't be a ton of fun, especially with Cap facing off against always awesome villain Hugo Weaving as devious Nazi agent, Red Skull.

Here's a collage of several official images released so far for the movie (Enjoy, ladies!;)).





The Spider-Man reboot is currently filming, so there are a ton of behind-the-scenes on-set pics available online (check out SuperheroHype's Spider-Man gallery here). However, this is the first official image of The Social Network's Andrew Garfield as brainy high school nobody Peter Parker, who develops superpowers after being bitten by a radioactive spider. Apparently based on the "more realistic" Ultimate Spider-Man comic series, the new Spider-Man ignores Sam Raimi's trilogy to present its own origin story, and has Spidey learning to harness his new abilities while coping with schoolwork, romancing Emma Stone's Gwen Stacy (NOT redhead MJ!) and facing off against various villains, including Rhys Ifans' Lizard.

I've blogged in detail before about the new Spider-Man film here and here.

Anyway, as for the new pic, I dig it. Andrew Garfield has an appropriately slender physique for acrobatic, wall-crawling Spidey. This is in marked contrast to the bulked up Tobey Maguire in the Raimi movies. Plus Garfield is way cuter than Maguire, suggesting his Peter Parker will be shy and lanky as opposed to a completely socially inept dweeb. This interpretation is not unlike the 1994 animated series actually. As a final note, Garfield's Spidey may even be using self-constructed web-shooters as opposed to generating organic webbing in his body. As some eagle-eyed fans have noticed, in the pic above, there are distinct metal discs on both of Spider-Man's wrists.


Finally, W Magazine got the scoop on director David Fincher's highly anticipated American version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, a graphic, sexually charged mystery based on Stieg Larsson's bestselling novel. W's February issue features the first images (in an admittedly modelled photo shoot) of A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) actress Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander, Dragon Tattoo's complex goth hacker heroine - who helps disgraced journalist Daniel Craig solve a decades' old disappearance.

While I do have issues with how eager the magazine and filmmakers are to demystify the process of "making their Lisbeth" almost a full year before the movie is released - the Swedish language version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was released in 2009, with Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth - I have to admit Mara looks good. Time will tell how her interpretation of the character stands up alongside Rapace's performance, but I have confidence in Mara. In Nightmare on Elm Street, for example, she convincingly transitioned heroine Nancy from teary, browbeaten victim to gutsy survivor and fighter. And a gutsy survivor and fighter is definitely what Lisbeth is!

Click here to read W Magazine's article and view their complete slideshow of Lisbeth Salander pics.

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