'USA Today' Debuts a Bunch of 'The Amazing Spider-Man 2' Pics

It's funny how there was a point in history, way back in the early 2000s, when the Spider-Man movies were the biggest box office giants around. The first Spider-Man became the first movie to ever open with a weekend past the $100 million mark and currently stands as the 13th highest grossing movie in domestic box office history. Sam Raimi's two follow-ups both crossed the $300 million mark in their lifetimes.

Then, something went wrong. I'm not sure if it was a sour taste in moviegoers' mouths after Spider-Man 3 or if it was the delay and squabble over villains that killed Spider-Man 4, but Spider-Man slipped away. Part of the issue could be that when Marvel decided it would start its own studio and invest in the characters it still had movie rights to, Marvel did so with a plan more ambitious than the movies had ever seen, creating the Marvel Cinematic Universe and rewriting the box office record books in the process. With The Avengers to root for, why did kids need Spider-Man anymore, especially if he could never hang out on the big screen with Iron Man and Captain America?

I loved Marc Webb and Andrew Garfield's The Amazing Spider-Man. Sure, the movie had to retell Spider-Man's origin story, but that movie understood Peter Parker unlike any of Raimi's movies did. The Amazing Spider-Man also started from the beginning, casting Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy, allowing Peter's girlfriend before Mary Jane Watson to finally get the proper cinematic treatment. Sure, I know things won't end well for Gwen, but I'm prepared to have my heart broken in a few years.

The promotional machine for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is in full swing now, with a trailer coming on Thursday and a new series of posters being released which revealed that we'll see Dane DeHaan become the Green Goblin in the upcoming sequel. USA Today joined in on the fun on Tuesday, debuting a series of pics from the movie, with the majority of them focusing on Garfield's Spider-Man taking on Jamie Foxx's Electro.

I love the new version of the Spidey suit. It's probably the most perfect version we've seen on the big screen so far. Hopefully we'll be able to say the same thing about The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in a few months.