The Amazing Spider-Man: Director Marc Webb on the Story, Andrew Garfield's Physical Acting and Shooting in 3D
Posted 02.08.12 by BrentJS
Anticipation for director Marc Webb's Spider-Man franchise reboot, The Amazing Spider-Man (ASM), is at an all-time high following the international fan event held in 13 cities earlier this week that included a live simulcast Q&A with Webb and the stars of the movie and the release of the new theatrical trailer early yesterday morning. But, the die-hard comic book movie fans who are now clamoring for the movie were not always behind the reboot. Many complained that Webb, who made his name directing music videos and short films and whose only movie prior to landing ASM was the bittersweet romantic-comedy (500) Days of Summer, was a terrible choice to direct the new exploits of Marvel Comics' most popular superhero.
Rather than try to distance ASM from his previous work, Webb admitted in a recent interview with Comic-Con Annual, the official magazine of Comic-Con International, that Peter Parker's (Andrew Garfield) "character journey isn't that far off" from that of Tom Hansen's (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) in (500) Days of Summer and that the "relatable" quality of the character is what he found so "specifically interesting" about choosing to tell his story. Webb also spoke at length about how Garfield really used his body to create a "spider-like Spider-Man" and why shooting in 3D helped to "expand" the story by "putting the audience in Spider-Man's shoes."
At the end of the day the character journey isn't that far off. [Both movies] are about young men learning how to grow up despite adversity in a sense. But I think what drew me to this was it was a story about a kid who grows up without a father. My first impulse when I had been talking about doing [The Amazing Spider-Man] with Marvel and with Columbia was there was a missing piece. There's this opportunity to explore the emotional residue of what it means to be an orphan.
But what makes Spider-Man and Peter Parker so specifically interesting is that he's an intensely relatable character, more so than I would say about 99 percent of superheroes. Peter Parker has the same problems that we do and comes from a working class family. He's very relatable and so to extend that into the cinema just seems sort of natural. We wanted to keep it more grounded, and part of that grounding is to really think about how this kid would grow up given the circumstances that he was assigned as a young kid.
Title star Andrew Garfield proved in movies like Never Let Me Go and The Social Network that he has the acting chops to portay a complex character like Peter Parker, but Webb said that Garfield was also "very, very good physically" and that he was "very focused" on making Peter Parker move like a spider.
[Andrew] wanted to invent the character that possessed the body of Spider-Man. We would do dozens of takes just to get an elbow move right, just to get the head turn and the shoulders crooked in just the right way so it felt like a legitimate, strange, spider-like creature underneath the suit.
Despite popular opinion, Webb said that Columbia never "forced" him to shoot ASM in 3D. He said that the subject matter naturally lends itself to using the technology and that watching Spider-Man swing through the air in 3D allows for the creation of a "viseral feeling" that moviegoers can't "get any other way."
We shot this all in stereo so it was native 3D. Nothing has been converted. And when you get that scope, the movie gradually expands. It starts off in a very intimate, small way and gradually expands to take advantage of that sensation. So do you have to see it in 3D? No, you'll still get the thrill of it. But those point-of-view sequences, those came very directly from a philosophy about putting the audience in Spider-Man's shoes. We wanted them to feel what he feels, and that's where those sequences came from.
The Amazing Spider-Man was written by James Vanderbilt and Alvin Sargent. The cast includes Rhys Ifans as Dr. Curt Connors, aka the Lizard, Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy, Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz as Richard and Mary Parker, Irrfan Khan as Dr. Ratha, Denis Leary as Capt. George Stacy, C. Thomas Howell as Ray, Chris Zylka as Flash Thompson, Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben, and two-time Academy Award-winner Sally Field as Aunt May.
Next Showing: The Amazing Spider-Man opens July 3