Rebooting the Spider-Man franchise just five years after Sam Raimi completed his own $2.4 billion trilogy was a controversial move in itself, let alone the idea of revisiting Spidey’s origin story, one of the most familiar and popular beginnings in comic book lore, yet again. But whatever qualms you might have about The Amazing Spider-Man treading familiar ground — this time with Andrew Garfield as a skate-boarding high-schooler/vigilante nursing abandonment issues — director Marc Webb himself wrestled with the very same issues from the start.
Webb rang Movieline to answer a barrage of questions about this week’s Spider-Man re-do, which re-frames the Marvel superhero’s journey as a teenage Peter Parker’s struggle with responsibility — not necessarily springing from great power so much as from choosing between doing good, and doing otherwise. Relationships are key here, not only between Peter and his Aunt May (Sally Field) and Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen), but between the orphaned hero and Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), a newfound mentor and scientist with murky ties to the parents who left young Peter behind years ago.
But the heart of The Amazing Spider-Man, and that of Peter Parker himself, belongs to Gwen Stacy, Spidey’s first love, brought to life with crackling energy by Emma Stone. Fans of the comics know where Peter and Gwen’s story eventually leads — and while Webb remains amusedly mum on the future of his would-be Spider-Man trilogy, he acknowledges that some parts of Marvel canon cannot be tinkered with. “It’s a very controversial part of the comics,” he teased of Gwen’s fate, “but let me tell you, I’m a fan of the comics.”
Read on as Webb addresses criticisms of his reboot, discusses the importance of the Gwen Stacy-Peter Parker relationship, explains why some questions raised in The Amazing Spider-Man were left deliberately unanswered, and talks about that eyebrow-raising post-credits scene.
[Beware: Some spoilers follow.]
The marketing campaign for The Amazing Spider-Man has been attempting to court female audiences, and the romantic element is a significant part of the film. How important did you feel it was to explore and emphasize that side of the Spider-Man story?
Spider-Man is of course this huge action film — there’s a boy behind the suit. But one thing that’s different in Spider-Man comics from many other comics is how important the relationships are, in particular female relationships. You can talk a lot about villains, but Spider-Man’s relationships with women are as iconic, if not more iconic, than the villains. You have Mary Jane, and you have Gwen Stacy, and Gwen is very different than what we’ve seen before. One of the reasons why I wanted to use Gwen — first and foremost, she’s his first love in the comics. Let’s just set the record straight, it’s not Mary Jane. But I like the idea of following somebody who is as smart, if not smarter, than Peter Parker. And Emma Stone is the perfect woman to play somebody who is much more proactive, much more intelligent and feisty. I just like that dynamic in relationships in movies where they’re kind of lovers as rivals, you know? There’s this back and forth that I love, in the laboratory, and there’s just this great bond that you feel between them. She’s not just a prize, she’s not just a damsel in distress. She’s a confidante, and that was a really important thing.
And their relationship is so different because of this — it’s like they’re the only two people in the world.
I thought that, you’re 17 years old and falling in love for the first time, some part of the thrill of that is openness, and you get to express a part of yourself and confide in somebody the things about you that no one else knows. It’s such a thrilling part about being in a relationship at a young age, and all your feelings are apocalyptic, all your emotions are so huge, that I felt that was an interesting and new foundation to lay for the character. It also raises the stakes of that relationship. So it becomes more meaningful when he has to let it go.
For those people who are familiar with Gwen’s fate in the comics, the depth and pull of their emotions makes it even more bittersweet. You even include a shot in the film in which Peter throws her out of a window that seems like foreshadowing of a sort…
[Laughs] Well, we’ll have to see. It’s a very controversial part of the comics, but let me tell you, I’m a fan of the comics.
But Gwen’s story is kind of one of those things, among other developments and plot specifics, that you kind of have to stay faithful to canon on. Right?
Honor, yes. I mean, Marvel has certain hard and fast rules, like about the spider bite — you have to have Peter get bitten by a radioactive spider, and Uncle Ben’s death has to transform Peter Parker into Spider-Man, you know what I mean? He has to learn a lesson by that. But I’m trying to find new inflections and new context so that the story feels new. Because I do think the character is different; you want to honor the iconic elements of Spider-Man but you also want to reinvent the world around him so that it feels interesting and new, and that’s a tricky line to walk.
It seems even trickier for you in this instance more than other folks rebooting a familiar franchise, just because it hasn’t been very long since the last Spider-Man movies and you’re also starting with an origin story.
It’s tricky. We have seen the origin of Spider-Man, but we haven’t seen the origin of Peter Parker and that was my entrée into it.
It does feel like more of a Peter Parker story than a Spider-Man story, which a lot of fans of the comics might get hung up on. How do you respond to those criticisms?
For me, I thought about it a lot when I was building this up and I really felt like the Peter Parker that I was creating was a different reflection of the character. And in order for the audience to understand that, I thought I needed to build that from the ground up. To me, the most definitive moment in his life — way more important than the spider bite — is the moment he was left behind by his parents. It had a huge emotional impact on his character. That’s where the narrative begins, but it’s also where the character is defined in a very significant way. I mean, anybody who’s left behind by their parents at that age is going to be distrustful of authority because authority has let him down before – so that’s part of the dramatic texture of his relationship with Captain Stacey, and the conflict he has with Uncle Ben and Aunt May. It’s also that he has this attitude, this sort of trickster, sarcastic quality, which is in some ways a defense mechanism that comes from that moment in his life. He’s an outside, but he’s an outsider by choice; he’s a smart kid but he just wants to keep everybody at a distance. That’s why I think the relationship with Gwen works so well; he can trust her.
We look at this as a reboot, so can we assume the story here will continue into at least a trilogy, but there are a number of plot points and questions raised in the film that don’t necessarily get answered within the span of this film. How intentional was it to plant those seeds here?
I wanted a universe that could sustain a larger story, and the broader arcs I worked out with Jamie Vanderbilt early on. Obviously you want the movie to work on its own, but because so many of these movies typically have sequels, I wanted us to do a little bit of groundwork that could pay off in later movies. The mystery that surrounds Peter Parker’s parents is the long shadow that’s cast over all of the story, and there’s a relationship between Peter’s parents and Norman Osborne, and Oscorp, all that stuff… so much of the story is in and around Oscorp; Oscorp is the place from which all crazy shit emerges in this universe, and I like that idea, that simple notion that this obelisk, this Tower of Babel, is like a splinter in the side of the universe. All of the stories come out of there.
NEXT: Webb on Gwen's future, his stars' chemistry, Curt Connors and that post-credits scene
How far ahead had you and James mapped things out, and did you map out a trilogy for Gwen’s character?
Yeah, in broad terms. There were conversations early on, but we hadn’t worked out all the details. It was more about back story than anything else that will manifest itself in future films, I’m sure, if the audience demands.
Say, two sequels from now, will we then see Gwen meet her comic book fate?
Well, you’ll have to wait and see! I’m not going to give that away!
How many of these sequels do you want to come back and do yourself, given how long and taxing these projects are?
I don’t know. This took so long to make. Everybody wants to make a movie right away, and I’m 37. It’s weird to make this metaphor, but I feel like it’s asking a woman who’s just given birth if she wants to get pregnant again. I want to nurse the baby for a little while! I just don’t know, and that’s the inconvenient but absolute truth.
There’s a nice touch within Rhys’s character, Curt Connors, when the lizard’s DNA starts to make his personality more cold-blooded.
Right, the id takes him over.
Once he turns into The Lizard he begins talking to himself, but in your opinion is Curt Connors crazy at any point before the serum changes him? What’s your take on what motivates him?
Hmm. I don’t think he’s crazy initially. I think he’s really desperate. He doesn’t like being an outsider, he doesn’t like being a freak. And this stump on his arm has always made him feel like that. He’s used it as sort of an advertisement; he doesn’t want a prosthetic because it’s what motivates him. And Peter Parker has a missing piece, too — he’s missing his parents. But I think Connors’ character isn’t quite strong enough to withstand what the lizard DNA does. So I think there’s goodness in him, but there’s also a desperation, and I think that desperation corrupts him. So there is some preexisting weakness in his character.
It seems like Spider-Man villains tend to feel much more human than those in other mythologies. Why do you think that is?
I think that’s something in Marvel and in Spider-Man in particular, a lot of the villains are close to Peter and many times have pre-existing relationships with Peter. They’re often mentor figures, but they’re much more complex than evil mustache-twirling villains. Certainly there are characters who are downright bad, in the rogues’ gallery, but I think Stan Lee and Marvel were instrumental in creating villains that were more human.
Emma and Andrew have a great chemistry together. When they first tested together — and they’ve said they had a very extensive, in-costume screen test — what was it you saw in them that felt right?
Casting chemistry, you can’t just throw two actors together and hope they’ll work. You have to see how they behave together, and sometimes that’s evident in previous films, like Emily Blunt and Matt Damon had this great chemistry in The Adjustment Bureau, so you can always trust that they’re going to work together. With this, I knew it was such an important part of the dynamic of the film — what works on paper doesn’t always work on screen if you don’t have the right people. And great actors can sometimes not have great chemistry together. It was interesting, because I didn’t really expect it because Andrew comes from this very deep theatrical, highly trained theater background, British, a very sophisticated temperament. And then Emma comes from Judd Apatow movies and she does improvisational comedy. She’s super funny and really light on her feet and fast, but she’s not this really trained theater actor, she’s something else. What was interesting is the undercurrent of both of those schools is really quite similar; you have to be emotionally honest. That’s what’s most fun about grounded improvisational comedy and what’s most rewarded in highly trained acting. And even though they had very different colors, they merged very well. They were both alive, and aware, and open to the moment, and what happened was this multiplier effect, where she made him more funny, and he made her more deep, and it just — I don’t know how to analyze it beyond that. They’re just really good together. It was clear from the first moment. It was funny and charming and sweet, and a little bit awkward at times, but awkward in exactly the right way.
What did you have them do in that screen test?
The scene in the laboratory and the break-up scene at the end, so there was a little back and forth.
I found myself pulling so hard for them to come back together, which is what should happen in a romantic film.
Oh, good! That was one of the last scenes we shot in the movie, and the specter of it was hanging over us the entire time. We shot it and I was like, “Ah, this is going to be good.”
Did you toy with giving them a different ending?
Yeah. I thought about everything. But there’s something imperfect and sloppy about that that I really like — he’s a kid, he’s a teenager. What would really happen? He does these things that you understand that aren’t necessarily super heroic.
It also emphasizes the bittersweetness of what could happen with these two down the road — as if the fact that Peter and Gwen have such a deep connection is as impossible to ignore as it is dangerous.
Yes — exactly.
Lastly, what was your approach to even writing the post-credits scene? Was it always part of the arc you had planned?
Well, I wanted to acknowledge that the mystery of the parents was ongoing. That’s the long shadow that’s cast over Peter’s life. And I love Curt Connors and I love Rhys [Ifans], and I think it’s important to acknowledge that there are a lot of things going on in this universe even if we’re not aware of them or haven’t seen them in this film. There’s a bigger universe at hand.
Would you identify the shadowy figure we see visiting Connors in his jail cell?
Nope!
Is it a familiar character to the Marvel universe?
I invite your speculation. [Laughs] How can I give that away? I’m sure the internet will provide a lot of interesting ideas. You can choose which one you want.
The Amazing Spider-Man is in theaters now. Did you see it? Leave your Spidey reactions below!