Assuming you have some base familiarity with Marvel’s Spider-Man comics, please take a moment to imagine The Lizard in your mind. Got it? Okay, so what did you see? Some of you may have imagined Dr. Curt Connors in his one-armed human incarnation, while others may have conjured up a giant bipedal amphibian with huge teeth and a massive tail. What all of you imagined however, was a white lab coat. It’s intrinsic to the character’s appearance, whether he’s a human or a lizard.
Fortunately for those all comic fans who have been burned by Hollywood’s creative license in the past, it seems that Sony Pictures agrees with us at least in regards to that iconic white coat.
Two new images from the upcoming Amazing Spider-Man film have emerged, at long last giving us a good look at the film’s villain, and well, he’s about what you’d expect. The man is a giant lizard in a lab coat. He’s got claws, he threatens people and presumably there’s a lot of guttural hissing noises. So far, so faithful to the character’s comic book origin.
What these two images don’t depict however, is the transformation Connors goes through to become The Lizard. One would assume the studio would be using CGI to morph relatively meek Curt Connors into a hulking beast, and that’s simple enough, but regrowing that extra arm via computer imagery might be a bit dodgy. The audience may be willing to accept a super-powered teenager fighting a giant scientist lizard, but arms spontaneously sprouting out of nothing could stretch the suspension of disbelief too thin unless the graphics work is very, very convincing.
The July 3 release of The Amazing Spider-Man is only two months away, so we’ll find out rather soon.