• What's going on in 'Amazing Spider-Man' post-credits scene?

    Columbia Pictures

    Dr. Curt Connors (aka The Lizard) in the New York sewers. He is visited by a mysterious man who could be Norman Osborn in a scene during the end credits.

    By Cody Delistraty, NBC News

    Spoiler warning: Don't read this if you don't want spoilers for "The Amazing Spider-Man" and possibly its sequel.

    Checking out "The Amazing Spider-Man" this week? Don't leave the theater right after the end credits start to roll. If you do, you'll miss a tantalizingly brief scene that hints at questions the movie left unanswered.

    In the scene, Dr. Curt Connors (aka The Lizard) sits alone in a cell. Lightning flashes and a cloaked man appears between two slivers of moonlight.

    “Did you tell him about his father?” the mysterious man asks Connors.

    Connors says that he told young Peter nothing about his father, Richard Parker, and nobly pleads that Peter be left alone. The shrouded man quickly disappears with another strike of lightning.

    The scene is brief, but there may be some clues.

    First, it’s impossible to know who the second man is. Connors, once a friend of Peter Parker's mysteriously vanished parents, was recently a giant lizard, so it’s hard to trust the soundness of his mental health. Perhaps he imagined the visitor? Maybe it’s a manifestation of the Hyde-like voice inside his head that pushes him to wreak havoc and do evil? Yet, maybe, it’s a real, in-the-flesh person?

    When the Huffington Post asked whether the man is Norman Osborn, the head of Oscorp who becomes the Green Goblin in Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man,” director Marc Webb played coy.

    “It’s intentionally mysterious, and I invite speculation,” he told the Huffington Post.

    He added, “I like this idea that Oscorp is this Tower of Babel. And every crazy thing in the universe somehow relates to Oscorp.”

    Some critics, like Screenrant’s Kofi Outlaw, believe Connors' visitor could imply that The Sinister Six, a group of mad-scientists-turned-monsters, may make their way into “Amazing Spider-Man” sequels.

    But, this seems unlikely. “Amazing” turned out strikingly similar to Raimi’s 2002 “Spider-Man," so there’s little reason to think that a sequel will suddenly diverge and add a slew of villains.

    Rhys Ifans, the Welsh actor who plays Connors, seems to support the theory that the man is Osborn when he carefully explains the final scene.

    “Connors is sent to an asylum … and he’s visited by, shall we say, a representative from Oscorp,” he told MTV.

    In March, movie blog CinemaBlend posted an interview with director Marc Webb filmed at WonderCon in California, and in it, Webb suggests that the film ties in to a future sequel. Does this quick scene, then, mean the Green Goblin (played by Willem Dafoe in the 2002 Tobey Maguire version) will be the villain for the second film? Fans will find out when the sequel comes to theaters in 2014.


    What do you make of this mysterious scene? Share your thoughts on our Facebook page. 

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  • Romantic chemistry helps 'Amazing Spider-Man' stay true to its name

    Columbia Pictures

    Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) and Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) share a tender moment in "The Amazing Spider-Man."

    By Cody Delistraty, NBC News

    REVIEW: "The Amazing Spider-Man" is a reboot of the classic comic-book franchise, and this summer, it risks getting lost in a deluge of superhero movies. But Spidey’s story of a parentless teen endowed with great strength and responsibility will always have significant drawing power -- it just needs a team that can mine its remaining gold.

    Thankfully, director Marc Webb (“(500) Days of Summer”) knows how to do just that. Casting Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone was a superpowered decision. Their witty dialogue and bantering romance brings pleasure to a film that's otherwise a rehashing of superhero clichés. Webb also adds in a greater sense of mystery about Peter's vanished parents, opening the film with a fast-paced sequence that shows their frantic, curious departure.

    You know the basics: High-school science prodigy and photographer Peter Parker (Garfield) is bitten by a genetically altered spider, affording him great strength and web-slinging abilities. (In a slight departure from the 2002 "Spider-Man," he must invent his own web technology; it's not organically produced). Then, Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), a friend of Peter's missing father, mutates into The Lizard, wreaking havoc in Manhattan after Peter gives him an algorithim he found in his father's files that he believes will allow the doctor to regrow his amputated arm.

    The plot, while it contains a few diversions and interesting turns, is mainly a device for moving the film along to explore the characters of Peter and pre-Mary Jane Watson girlfriend Gwen Stacy (Stone). 

    Garfield and Stone's real-life romance clearly shines through, especially when Peter can’t find the words to ask Gwen on a date. She helps him through it, nodding her head and leaning forward as if to coax the question from his mouth. Their relationship is an exercise in clever nonverbal gestures, and, likewise, the film’s success lies not in the excited cries of Peter as he web-slings through the city during his cartoony chases, but in the understated stakes and tension that are set between Peter and Gwen.

    It’s never a question that Peter will prevail in the action sequences or that he’ll win Gwen (a sequel is already slated for 2014). It’s Garfield’s ability to don an American accent and embody a character who’s earnest and humble yet overconfident and extremely able that’s most pleasing and surprising. Like Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark in “Iron Man,” the layers of carelessness, seriousness, light romance and sense of duty make Peter magnetic.  


    While the requisite bad guy chases and a subsequent death of an important character carry a certain weight, Webb generally keeps the film breezy. Peter quietly takes photos of Gwen from afar, exclaims “Mother Hubbard!” when flustered, and gets smashed against a locker by his school nemesis before humorously humiliating him. It's not so much an in-depth look into the meaning of responsibility and manhood as Sam Raimi's 2002 forerunner seemed to be. Rather, it’s a tale of young love, fun and impossible adventure framed by a good-versus-evil story that’s grown increasingly dull.

    What we love about superheroes now is how their peculiar personalities shine brighter than their super abilities. It's empowering and enjoyable to watch Tony Stark/Iron Man sip whiskey and crack jokes before facing Loki in "The Avengers," or to see Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow take care of Russian thugs while chatting on the phone and tied to a chair. "Amazing Spider-Man" falls right in line. 

    A perfect couple if there ever were one, Peter and Gwen's witty, smart and charming chemistry outdoes the tired mad-scientist plot, rendering the routine action sequences more superfluous than super.  

    How do you feel about Hollywood's reboot of the Spider-Man franchise? Planning to see it? Share your thoughts on our Facebook page.

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