MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW for Spider-Man: No Way Home!!!
Spider-Man: No Way Home writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers have revealed that the film's story was shaped by its biggest surprises in ways that wouldn't have been possible otherwise.
Speaking to THR, McKenna and Sommers shared a ton of fascinating details on the making of Spider-Man: No Way Home and how in the Marvel Cinematic Universe they managed to celebrate and honor three generations of Spider-Man films and do the seemingly impossible - bring back Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield.
Following a few fun teases that "there's always a Kraven the Hunter pitch" for a Spider-Man film, McKenna and Sommers discussed how, as soon as Sony and Marvel were once again working together, they began exploring what they should do now that Peter Parker's identity was known to the world following the events of Far From Home.
"We started playing around with what different ways that fallout could affect our character," McKenna said. "The idea of It’s a Wonderful Life, 'What if he somehow made a wish? I guess it would have to be Doctor Strange. Is there a way to put the genie back in the bottle?' That opened up a few different story avenues we started exploring.
"I think there were certain people who were like, 'Oh, it’d be really fun if eventually we could tease these characters from the past movies.' And then I think it was one of our chief gods of our universe saying, 'What if that’s just the act break? What if that’s the end of Act I? Stop hoping for a tag that teases it. What if we just did it?' We are like, 'Oh, OK!'"
Now that this dream scenario had the potential to be a reality, the team had to find a way to get all these previous actors back to the friendly neighborhood once more. Unfortunately, it's a lot more challenging than it may sound.
"At a certain point, you have to show pages," McKenna said. "You have to live up to the concept. Getting two people there that were so crucial to act three of the movie. They had to make sure it was the right thing for them. Their coming in, it brings so much baggage to it. Their own baggage. The baggage of those series, that they just had to be sure that it wasn’t just a curtain call, that it actually was continuing their stories in a way that was meaningful to them, too. And was honoring everything that they had done and taking it a step further. Getting all the feedback from the actors was so crucial on every role. Hearing, 'Oh Willem Dafoe wants to take a walk with you and talk about his character.” I’m like ‘Holy—! OK!''"
While Dafoe's Green Goblin, Alfred Molina's Doctor Octopus, and Jamie Foxx's Electro were used in the marketing of the film and became a known quantity to the public, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's involvement was kept the most secret of secrets. As it turns out, these two previous web-slingers only got their scripts "before Christmas of last year."
"We have to get these pages to them," McKenna said. "It was so great. They were on board, but they hadn’t seen anything. They knew the idea, they trusted everyone, but we were in the middle of the war of making the movie, changing so much, but also — we were heading toward shooting them, so they had to see pages and basically see, “OK, we know there has been a pandemic. We know this thing has gone through a million changes, we know it’s been really difficult.” Luckily they read the pages and they were like, 'Oh, OK, yes! We can work with this.' (Laughs.)"
When the pages finally went into the hands of Maguire and Garfield, the magic truly began and No Way Home became something so much more than it was before.
"They had thoughts, and it was really interesting and helpful to see their thoughts," Sommers said. "No one knows the character as well as — or gives as much thought to the character — as someone who has to then embody it and sell it. It’s always valuable to hear what the actor is thinking. It definitely shaped what we did."
"They had great ideas that really elevated everything we were going for and added layers and an arc and we really actually started honing into the idea that these two guys were really helping Tom’s Peter on his journey to becoming who he ends up becoming," McKenna added. "There’s a crucial, moral moment that they help him get through in the climax of the movie. So much of that was brought by Tobey and Andrew’s ideas and shaping of what they thought their characters could bring to this story."
Speaking of story, another big question for the team was deciding how much of the lives of Garfield and Maguire's Peter Parkers they wanted to reveal after many in-universe years have passed since Sam Raimi's and Marc Webb's films.
"We were like, 'We’ve got to make them each very specific,'" McKenna said. "As writers, we kept saying, 'Where are these characters in their lives when they come into the movie?' Where is Tobey? We’re not de-agifying him. He’s a guy who is 43, who is entering this movie, and Andrew Garfield, where are they in their lives? The last time you saw Andrew Garfield, it was the death of Gwen, and that must have sent him down a dark spiral, maybe he never got out of. We don’t know, because there wasn’t a third movie that we saw. Where did he go? Maybe a really dark place.
"We wanted to be true to the characters in those movies. Really having conversations about specifying where they are, without giving away too much. Not coming in, spilling all the beans. 'Tobey’s Peter is running Peter Parker Industries!' You just wanted to have little hints of that without it being all this exposition as fan service."
For this part of the puzzle, they also discussed with Maguire and Garfield how much they actually wanted to reveal of their present circumstances all these years later. While we learn the Maguire's Peter Parker is still with MJ and that Garfield's Peter Parker when down a dark path after Gwen Stacy's death, there wasn't too much more shared.
"Tobey wanted to be very minimal about how much you know," McKenna explained. "Very, very minimal. Andrew really loved the idea of he’s still tortured over what happened in Amazing Spider-Man 2 and where that left him, and how they could bring that to Tom. 'We can empathize with you. We do know what you are going through. If anyone in the world knows what you’re going through, it’s us.' But also, 'We can be beacons.'
"Tobey especially has come through that darkness. We thought it was cool that Andrew’s Peter was still in the midst of that darkness. They weren’t just here to go, 'Two awesome Jedi knight heroes who show up and are going to help you take down the bad guys.' They are going through their own things. We were trying to write up to the characters that they did such a great job of creating and really being true to those characters and those stories and those worlds so that it didn’t feel like we were doing curtain call, fan-service.
McKenna ended the discussion about Maguire and Garfield by talking about how the last third of the movie was his favorite and that there was a lot of fun improv and reworks for that rooftop scene that saw three Spider-Men from different universes fighting alongside each other.
"Andrew really leaned into the lonely, middle brother," McKenna said. "That’s one of the things we started saying. 'He is the middle brother!' You have the elder brother, Tobey, who is the wise one. The middle sibling thing, he feels like he’s not getting the attention of the other two. It works so great for that character.
"Andrew leaned into middle brother syndrome. 'The baby one is getting all the attention! What about me?' (Laughs.) He’s obviously hurting. I think he has so many great flourishes. So does Tobey. I think that dynamic of brothers, that’s why it’s so great when Andrew says, 'God, I always wanted to have brothers.' While simplistic, it is a great paradigm for the three of them coming together and you want it to feel like, 'Oh, it’s not just doppelgangers.' They are different. They are not the same person. They are born of the same experience and the same spider-bite.
"They are like brothers. No one knows the heaven and hell of what it is to be in an experience quite like your sibling. No one knows what this family is like. At least they got a sense of, 'You’re not alone. There’s a community. You guys have each suffered in your own way.' And then to get help heal each other, it was wonderful to be a part of getting there."
THR's interview with McKenna and Sommers also goes into detail on how the "with great power..." line came to be and why No Way Home was the right place for it to appear.
Sommers shared that, for Holland's Spider-Man, Aunt May was "going to be Peter's Uncle Ben" and that it was only right that she said it since we've never known the MCU's version of Uncle Ben. As for the three Spider-Men, the line helped "crystalize it for these three guys that they are the same, that they are brothers. And that they are bound in a cosmic way by something and having them share those words in common seemed like the thing to do."
For more, check out our look at how No Way Home saved Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man, who the IGN audience thinks is the best version of Spider-Man, and our explainer of the film's ending and post-credits scenes.
Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].
Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
Continue reading...
Spider-Man: No Way Home writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers have revealed that the film's story was shaped by its biggest surprises in ways that wouldn't have been possible otherwise.
Speaking to THR, McKenna and Sommers shared a ton of fascinating details on the making of Spider-Man: No Way Home and how in the Marvel Cinematic Universe they managed to celebrate and honor three generations of Spider-Man films and do the seemingly impossible - bring back Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield.
Following a few fun teases that "there's always a Kraven the Hunter pitch" for a Spider-Man film, McKenna and Sommers discussed how, as soon as Sony and Marvel were once again working together, they began exploring what they should do now that Peter Parker's identity was known to the world following the events of Far From Home.
"We started playing around with what different ways that fallout could affect our character," McKenna said. "The idea of It’s a Wonderful Life, 'What if he somehow made a wish? I guess it would have to be Doctor Strange. Is there a way to put the genie back in the bottle?' That opened up a few different story avenues we started exploring.
"I think there were certain people who were like, 'Oh, it’d be really fun if eventually we could tease these characters from the past movies.' And then I think it was one of our chief gods of our universe saying, 'What if that’s just the act break? What if that’s the end of Act I? Stop hoping for a tag that teases it. What if we just did it?' We are like, 'Oh, OK!'"
Now that this dream scenario had the potential to be a reality, the team had to find a way to get all these previous actors back to the friendly neighborhood once more. Unfortunately, it's a lot more challenging than it may sound.
"At a certain point, you have to show pages," McKenna said. "You have to live up to the concept. Getting two people there that were so crucial to act three of the movie. They had to make sure it was the right thing for them. Their coming in, it brings so much baggage to it. Their own baggage. The baggage of those series, that they just had to be sure that it wasn’t just a curtain call, that it actually was continuing their stories in a way that was meaningful to them, too. And was honoring everything that they had done and taking it a step further. Getting all the feedback from the actors was so crucial on every role. Hearing, 'Oh Willem Dafoe wants to take a walk with you and talk about his character.” I’m like ‘Holy—! OK!''"
While Dafoe's Green Goblin, Alfred Molina's Doctor Octopus, and Jamie Foxx's Electro were used in the marketing of the film and became a known quantity to the public, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's involvement was kept the most secret of secrets. As it turns out, these two previous web-slingers only got their scripts "before Christmas of last year."
"We have to get these pages to them," McKenna said. "It was so great. They were on board, but they hadn’t seen anything. They knew the idea, they trusted everyone, but we were in the middle of the war of making the movie, changing so much, but also — we were heading toward shooting them, so they had to see pages and basically see, “OK, we know there has been a pandemic. We know this thing has gone through a million changes, we know it’s been really difficult.” Luckily they read the pages and they were like, 'Oh, OK, yes! We can work with this.' (Laughs.)"
When the pages finally went into the hands of Maguire and Garfield, the magic truly began and No Way Home became something so much more than it was before.
"They had thoughts, and it was really interesting and helpful to see their thoughts," Sommers said. "No one knows the character as well as — or gives as much thought to the character — as someone who has to then embody it and sell it. It’s always valuable to hear what the actor is thinking. It definitely shaped what we did."
"They had great ideas that really elevated everything we were going for and added layers and an arc and we really actually started honing into the idea that these two guys were really helping Tom’s Peter on his journey to becoming who he ends up becoming," McKenna added. "There’s a crucial, moral moment that they help him get through in the climax of the movie. So much of that was brought by Tobey and Andrew’s ideas and shaping of what they thought their characters could bring to this story."
Speaking of story, another big question for the team was deciding how much of the lives of Garfield and Maguire's Peter Parkers they wanted to reveal after many in-universe years have passed since Sam Raimi's and Marc Webb's films.
"We were like, 'We’ve got to make them each very specific,'" McKenna said. "As writers, we kept saying, 'Where are these characters in their lives when they come into the movie?' Where is Tobey? We’re not de-agifying him. He’s a guy who is 43, who is entering this movie, and Andrew Garfield, where are they in their lives? The last time you saw Andrew Garfield, it was the death of Gwen, and that must have sent him down a dark spiral, maybe he never got out of. We don’t know, because there wasn’t a third movie that we saw. Where did he go? Maybe a really dark place.
"We wanted to be true to the characters in those movies. Really having conversations about specifying where they are, without giving away too much. Not coming in, spilling all the beans. 'Tobey’s Peter is running Peter Parker Industries!' You just wanted to have little hints of that without it being all this exposition as fan service."
For this part of the puzzle, they also discussed with Maguire and Garfield how much they actually wanted to reveal of their present circumstances all these years later. While we learn the Maguire's Peter Parker is still with MJ and that Garfield's Peter Parker when down a dark path after Gwen Stacy's death, there wasn't too much more shared.
"Tobey wanted to be very minimal about how much you know," McKenna explained. "Very, very minimal. Andrew really loved the idea of he’s still tortured over what happened in Amazing Spider-Man 2 and where that left him, and how they could bring that to Tom. 'We can empathize with you. We do know what you are going through. If anyone in the world knows what you’re going through, it’s us.' But also, 'We can be beacons.'
"Tobey especially has come through that darkness. We thought it was cool that Andrew’s Peter was still in the midst of that darkness. They weren’t just here to go, 'Two awesome Jedi knight heroes who show up and are going to help you take down the bad guys.' They are going through their own things. We were trying to write up to the characters that they did such a great job of creating and really being true to those characters and those stories and those worlds so that it didn’t feel like we were doing curtain call, fan-service.
McKenna ended the discussion about Maguire and Garfield by talking about how the last third of the movie was his favorite and that there was a lot of fun improv and reworks for that rooftop scene that saw three Spider-Men from different universes fighting alongside each other.
"Andrew really leaned into the lonely, middle brother," McKenna said. "That’s one of the things we started saying. 'He is the middle brother!' You have the elder brother, Tobey, who is the wise one. The middle sibling thing, he feels like he’s not getting the attention of the other two. It works so great for that character.
"Andrew leaned into middle brother syndrome. 'The baby one is getting all the attention! What about me?' (Laughs.) He’s obviously hurting. I think he has so many great flourishes. So does Tobey. I think that dynamic of brothers, that’s why it’s so great when Andrew says, 'God, I always wanted to have brothers.' While simplistic, it is a great paradigm for the three of them coming together and you want it to feel like, 'Oh, it’s not just doppelgangers.' They are different. They are not the same person. They are born of the same experience and the same spider-bite.
"They are like brothers. No one knows the heaven and hell of what it is to be in an experience quite like your sibling. No one knows what this family is like. At least they got a sense of, 'You’re not alone. There’s a community. You guys have each suffered in your own way.' And then to get help heal each other, it was wonderful to be a part of getting there."
THR's interview with McKenna and Sommers also goes into detail on how the "with great power..." line came to be and why No Way Home was the right place for it to appear.
Sommers shared that, for Holland's Spider-Man, Aunt May was "going to be Peter's Uncle Ben" and that it was only right that she said it since we've never known the MCU's version of Uncle Ben. As for the three Spider-Men, the line helped "crystalize it for these three guys that they are the same, that they are brothers. And that they are bound in a cosmic way by something and having them share those words in common seemed like the thing to do."
For more, check out our look at how No Way Home saved Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man, who the IGN audience thinks is the best version of Spider-Man, and our explainer of the film's ending and post-credits scenes.
Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].
Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
Continue reading...