Andrew Garfield, the young man playing Peter Parker/Spider-Man in the Amazing Spider-Man movies, has a few things to say about the summer sequel that many argue was somewhat of a letdown at the box office. In an interview for The Daily Beast, Garfield says that it was perhaps the studio’s interventions that made the sequel under perform.
For me, I read the script that Alex [Kurtzman] and Bob [Orci] wrote, and I genuinely loved it. There was this thread running through it. I think what happened was, through the pre-production, production, and post-production, when you have something that works as a whole, and then you start removing portions of it—because there was even more of it than was in the final cut, and everything was related. Once you start removing things and saying, ‘No, that doesn’t work,’ then the thread is broken, and it’s hard to go with the flow of the story. Certain people at the studio had problems with certain parts of it, and ultimately the studio is the final say in those movies because they’re the tentpoles, so you have to answer to those people.
Garfield went on to say that he felt Amazing Spider-Man 2 allowed him to go a little deeper as far as characterization than most comic book movies usually allow and that he was still passionate about playing the iconic webcrawler. Expanding on that he said:
It’s a discernment thing. What are the people actually saying? What’s underneath the complaint, and how can we learn from that? We can’t go, “Oh God, we fu**** up because all these people are saying all these things. It’s sh*t.” We have to ask ourselves, “What do we believe to be true?” Is it that this is the fifth Spider-Man movie in however many years, and there’s a bit of fatigue? Is it that there was too much in there? Is it that it didn’t link? If it linked seamlessly, would that be too much? Were there tonal issues? What is it? I think all that is valuable. Constructive criticism is different from people just being dicks, and I love constructive criticism. Hopefully, we can get underneath what the criticism was about, and if we missed anything.
Now it’s no secret that 2014 has been less than spectacular at the box office. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was seen as an almost guaranteed bet given the successful reboot of the franchise but kinda fizzled when it came time to shine. Taking Garfield’s thoughts into consideration, one could speculate that what Sony did here with Spider-Man could be the opposite of James Gunn’s wildly successful Guardians of the Galaxy from Marvel Studios. With Spider-Man, Sony as investor would get to have a say in the creative process and perhaps it was the Sony team putting their hands in the mixing bowl that ultimately led to a less than fluid story, overly obvious marketing insertion, and an assertion to more “tried and true rules” for comic book movies. Whereas, with Gunn, Marvel took a less direct approach and allowed the director and script to unfold with very little interruption (except for Stan Lee’s cameo that is).
Personally, I thought that the parts with Garfield and his co-star Emma Stone where he was being more Peter Parker than Spider-Man worked a lot better as a whole. Once the CGI laced action began, everything seemed to become like a hyperactive cartoon and really didn’t function well against Garfield and Stone’s Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy story. And don’t even get me started on the absolutely horrible score and soundtrack. Or the horrific and confusing introduction of the Green Goblin.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is out now on DVD/Blu-ray if you want to see it for yourself and make up your own mind. Share your thoughts here in comments or hit me up on Google Plus.
Meanwhile (and I hate to say this) but the trailer for this movie was vastly superior the movie itself in my opinion:
[button type=”link” link=”http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/10/andrew-garfield-on-the-evils-of-capitalism-the-hacking-scandal-and-criticism-of-spider-man-2.html” variation=”btn-danger” target=”blank”]Source: The Daily Beast[/button][button type=”link” link=”http://comicbook.com/2014/09/11/andrew-garfield-blames-studios-cuts-for-hurting-the-amazing-spid/” variation=”btn-danger” target=”blank”]Source: Comicbook.com[/button]Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
