The Rhino will be a... Russian mobster...

[MIB41]

Here's an excerpt...

Giamatti goes on to tease that his suit in the film will be slightly updated. "And I have a particular kind of suit, but I don't think I'm supposed to talk about it. He's a Russian mobster. Russians are always good villains. I have an ability to just destroy things. My accent is pretty hammy. I loved doing it. it seemed to me like an opportunity to be as over-the-top hammy as possible. It was really fun."

http://www.superherohype.com/news/articles/179125-paul-giamatti-talks-the-rhino-in-the-amazing-spider-man-2

[madmarva]

I really like Giamatti. Don't know if he is right for the part. Just have to see how it comes out. I don't mind adding the Russian mob to the character's backstory. The Internet is going to go nuts over "hammy" accent, but hammy is a relative term.

[palitoy]

I find the dude overacts in everything I've seen him in. I'm lukewarm with this franchise to begin with, so he's not keeping me out of the theater but he's just another log in my apathy pyre.

[MIB41]

[VintageMike]

He was identified as Russian in the last few years of Amazing Spider-Man comics so no stretch there.

[Aricosaur]

I still haven't seen the first Amazing Spider-Man, so, eh.

[ctc]

>I still haven't seen the first Amazing Spider-Man

Yes you have, but it was probably called something else.

>He was identified as Russian in the last few years of Amazing Spider-Man comics so no stretch there.

Okay. Weird. I guess the Rhino's one of them characters that even though he's a regular Spidey-foe we've never really got a lot of his story before, so I can see them wanting to flesh that out a bit for the movie. (Although personally I think the Marvel universe as a setting really lends itself to the idea that supervillains almost LITERALLY crawl out of the woodwork somtimes.)

Don C.

[Earth 2 Chris]

(Although personally I think the Marvel universe as a setting really lends itself to the idea that supervillains almost LITERALLY crawl out of the woodwork somtimes.)

Yeah, I always got that feeling. If you go back and look at the early Marvels, a few of the villains are well-fleshed out (Doom, Green Goblin, Magneto, Loki) but most of the B-listers are just basically costumes. It's no wonder the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is full of sometimes up to four or five iterations of the same character, with some pretty random real IDs.

As for Giamatti, I can take him or leave him. The on-set photos do indeed have him looking very hammy. But I'll take the tried-and-true wait and see approach. It's how I now live most of my life...especially concerning comic movies.

Chris