Warning: Full spoilers follow for Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Those of you who caught Marvel Studios’ latest superhero triumph Spider-Man: No Way Home were either laughing exceptionally loud during one third-act scene in particular, or perhaps for a minute you were completely bemused and bewildered. Either way we have broken our backs to get you the full skinny behind one of the film’s big, fat inside jokes - of which there are many.
Is your Peter tingle tingling? Ours too; let’s do this!
There are many meta moments in director Jon Watts’ trilogy capper No Way Home, like the scene where Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock is sitting at the same kitchen table as Jon Favreau’s Happy Hogan. Favreau, of course, played Foggy Nelson in 2003’s Daredevil, and there’s no way that there wasn’t a long discussion at Kevin Feige’s HQ where they laughed about how hilarious it would be to put Favreau in the Daredevil scene.
This is not about that moment though, but rather one from the climactic battle at the newly refurbished Statue of Liberty, where the three Spider-Men played by Tom Holland, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield (you know, those two guys that were definitely not in this movie?) team up to “cure” the film’s Sinister Five of multiverse villains in order to give them a second chance. In a “calm before the storm” scene where the two multiverse Spider-Dudes are suited up and waiting for the baddies to arrive, Garfield’s Peter Parker notices that Maguire’s Peter Parker is experiencing some lower lumbar issues. They have a casual conversation about the back problems that come with being Spider-Man, and then Garfield – sympathizing – offers to give the poor guy a good cracking.
With more than a little hint of uniquely perverse/homoerotic shipping overtones, Garfield proceeds to lift Maguire from behind and pop his back, which leaves Maguire’s Peter Parker both physically comfortable and a wee bit socially uncomfortable. It’s an extended bit of comedy whose significance to younger audiences may be lost given that the real-life event it’s parodying happened nearly two decades ago.
In July of 2000, when Tobey Maguire first signed on to portray the iconic web slinger in Sam Raimi’s 2002 blockbuster Spider-Man, the then 25-year-old actor inked a lucrative pay-or-play deal in the $3- to $4-million range for that first movie. His contract also included options to really make bank on back-end deals for two planned sequels which of course did actually come to fruition in 2004 and 2007, respectively.
Cut to 2003, after the first Spider-Man took in $821 million at the worldwide box office. Columbia Pictures was so high on that movie that they reportedly greenlit the sequel a full month before the first one debuted with a $114 million opening weekend. That left Maguire and his representatives at The Gersh Agency in a prime position to negotiate a proper paycheck for his second outing as the webslinger with $17 million up front. Unfortunately, some major inside baseball issues surrounding Maguire nearly led to a seismic shakeup of the entire franchise.
After Maguire’s deal was nearly sealed around April 2003 to appear in Spider-Man 2, Variety reported that the actor drew the ire of Columbia Pictures brass when he supposedly used an old, chronic back injury, that was aggravated during the making of his 2003 film Seabiscuit, to make certain demands of the production. Sensing a lack of gratitude for what was an immense amount of money he was to make on the sequel, the studio told Maguire his services were no longer required if his back was going to be an issue. Ouch!
Maguire drew the ire of Columbia Pictures brass when he supposedly used an old, chronic back injury to make certain demands of the production.
But then there was insult to injury: Columbia immediately began replacement negotiations with actor Jake Gyllenhaal, who had auditioned to play Peter Parker in the first movie and was earning raves in indies like Donnie Darko and The Good Girl. Gyllenhaal also happened to be dating Maguire’s co-star (and ex) Kirsten Dunst at the time. Luckily the father of Maguire’s then-girlfriend (later wife, now divorced) Jennifer Meyer – CAA founder/Universal COO Ron Meyer - had his back, so to speak. His Gersh reps and Meyer collectively convinced the powers that be at the studio that Maguire as well as his back would be on their best behavior during the stunt-heavy production.
Spider-Man 2 went on to become the critical and fan favorite of director Sam Raimi’s original trilogy, grossing $789 million worldwide. Yet for a while the situation looked dire for Maguire, to the point that even after it was resolved he vacated Gersh for CAA. Raimi admitted it was a tense situation for him as well.
"I was told by someone, I don't know who, some manager or agent or representative, that his back was in such a state that if it got injured anymore, it could maybe lead to paralysis," Sam Raimi recalled to the Los Angeles Daily News. "At that moment, I said to myself, 'I can't be irresponsible. I can't make a movie about responsibility and then grab this kid and make him do stunts where he's going to be paralyzed. And I can't compromise the movie.'"
Of course much later down the line Gyllenhaal got his shot at the Spider-Man franchise, appearing as baddie Mysterio in 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home, with footage of him also utilized at the top of the new Spider-Man: No Way Home.
"The truth of the matter is, in the end, he's Spider-Man,” Gyllenhaal told Yahoo of Maguire in 2019. "There are so many roles in my career where I was up against another actor, or something happened that possibly could've happened but didn't happen but maybe it would have… Eventually my belief is when an actor's played a character, particularly in a movie, the character's theirs, and that's that. But yeah, he hurt himself and there was talk. And there was a slew of actors [possibly up for the part], and I was one of them."
But it’s important to also let Maguire himself tell his side of the story, which makes the situation sound less harsh than the press at the time made it out to be.
“First of all, this is a back condition I've had for three years or four years, on and off,” Maguire told IGN in 2004 upon the release of Spider-Man 2. “Sometimes it doesn't really bother me at all. Sometimes it bothers me a little. Sometimes it bothers me a lot. Coming off of Seabiscuit it was bugging me a lot, not because of Seabiscuit. I did not injure my back on Seabiscuit. That was a false report. But it was bugging me quite a bit. I saw the animatics and the storyboards of the stunts I was to do on this movie and I was a little concerned about it. I felt it was my responsibility to disclose my back discomfort to the studio, to the insurance company and to the filmmakers, which I did. They were understandably concerned. Any of their actions that resulted in that report did not offend me or bother me in any way. I understood that they have a multi-multi-million dollar investment that they had a start date for and an entire crew hired for, and everything was rushing towards a date five weeks away, to start this picture. We were all concerned about it.
“Then I went in with the stunt guys and worked on a few of the stunts to see how I was going to do,” the actor continued. “After I reported the stuff to them and told them about my condition, my back started getting better. I told them about it and within about a week my back got better than it had been in three years or so. So it was much ado about nothing at that point... I did the film and it didn't bother me throughout the whole filming. As a matter of fact, it was easier than Seabiscuit and it was easier than Spider-Man 1. Why? Well, I think because having had the experience of doing it before made it easier for me and the harnesses that I wore were better and the wire rigs were easier for me..."
Although the back situation ultimately resolved itself, Sam Raimi and his doctor brother Ivan Raimi (who later was credited as a co-writer on Spider-Man 3) eventually worked the controversy into the fabric of Spider-Man 2 itself.
As Raimi explained to the BBC in 2004, “My brother and I were writing this scene where we wanted to show him trying to get his powers back and leap over these buildings like he did in the first one, but this time it doesn't work because he doesn't quite have all of his powers back so he falls, grabs a laundry line, swings against this wall, falls on a car roof, and hits the ground. So my brother said, let's have him say, ‘I'm back! I'm back!’ as he leaps over the building and then when he slams on the ground, have him hold the bottom of his spine and go: ‘My back, my back!’ Well, at first I thought that was really funny and then I said, ‘You know Ivan, although I think it's funny, because we've had this problem with Tobey, maybe we'd better not do it.’ Because, I mean, he has had a back problem. And then Ivan says, ‘Oh screw it, we'll just do it anyways. For those who know about the problem with Tobey's back, it'll be an inside joke, and for those who don't, it should be funny just for what it is.’ I said to my brother that the only concern I had was telling Tobey about the joke. He might not have wanted to do it, so I was a little cautious. But I told Tobey I thought it would be funny and he said, ‘You know what? That will be funny. It's OK if they laugh at me. Let them laugh at me!’ I thought that was very brave of him.”
The Maguire/Spider-Man 2 situation was parodied three years later in the Season 3 episode of HBO’s inside-Hollywood comedy series Entourage, “Three’s Company,” where actor Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) refuses to entertain any offers to reprise his role in an Aquaman 2 (remember when that movie was a joke?) unless his agent Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven) can secure acting work for his brother Johnny Drama (Kevin Dillon). The ploy backfires, however, when the studio calls Vincent’s bluff and recasts - you guessed it - Jake Gyllenhaal in the title role.
While the “want me to crack your back?” scene in Spider-Man: No Way Home may be an extra treat for fans of the Spidey franchise, it does beg the question of how self-referential Marvel movies can get at this point without becoming the snake that ate its own tail. We already got a wonderful little Oscar-winning animated movie a few years ago called Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse that bent over backwards to put in as many meta references as it could to the Raimi movies, including making fun of Tobey Maguire’s infamous Spider-Man 3 street dance to James Brown’s song "People Get Up and Drive Your Funky Soul."
Now this new film has taken things to a whole other level by not only making a ton of references to major story points in the Maguire and Garfield movies, but also to the movies themselves. Witness the long scene of Maguire trying to convince a bummed-out Garfield that he’s “amazing.” One can only hope that Marvel can continue making movies that are, in and of themselves, amazing without having to victory-lap old memberberries… Not that watching Andrew Garfield lift Tobey Maguire from behind isn’t a memory we’ll always treasure.
For more on the new movie, check out our Spider-Man: No Way Home ending explained, dig in on what that Venom post-credits scene means for his future in the MCU, ponder some of the biggest WTF questions about No Way Home, and consider that the Doctor Strange 2 teaser just made What If…? very important to the Marvel movies.
Continue reading...
Those of you who caught Marvel Studios’ latest superhero triumph Spider-Man: No Way Home were either laughing exceptionally loud during one third-act scene in particular, or perhaps for a minute you were completely bemused and bewildered. Either way we have broken our backs to get you the full skinny behind one of the film’s big, fat inside jokes - of which there are many.
Is your Peter tingle tingling? Ours too; let’s do this!
Throwback Scene
There are many meta moments in director Jon Watts’ trilogy capper No Way Home, like the scene where Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock is sitting at the same kitchen table as Jon Favreau’s Happy Hogan. Favreau, of course, played Foggy Nelson in 2003’s Daredevil, and there’s no way that there wasn’t a long discussion at Kevin Feige’s HQ where they laughed about how hilarious it would be to put Favreau in the Daredevil scene.
This is not about that moment though, but rather one from the climactic battle at the newly refurbished Statue of Liberty, where the three Spider-Men played by Tom Holland, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield (you know, those two guys that were definitely not in this movie?) team up to “cure” the film’s Sinister Five of multiverse villains in order to give them a second chance. In a “calm before the storm” scene where the two multiverse Spider-Dudes are suited up and waiting for the baddies to arrive, Garfield’s Peter Parker notices that Maguire’s Peter Parker is experiencing some lower lumbar issues. They have a casual conversation about the back problems that come with being Spider-Man, and then Garfield – sympathizing – offers to give the poor guy a good cracking.
With more than a little hint of uniquely perverse/homoerotic shipping overtones, Garfield proceeds to lift Maguire from behind and pop his back, which leaves Maguire’s Peter Parker both physically comfortable and a wee bit socially uncomfortable. It’s an extended bit of comedy whose significance to younger audiences may be lost given that the real-life event it’s parodying happened nearly two decades ago.
The Spider-Man 2 Controversy
In July of 2000, when Tobey Maguire first signed on to portray the iconic web slinger in Sam Raimi’s 2002 blockbuster Spider-Man, the then 25-year-old actor inked a lucrative pay-or-play deal in the $3- to $4-million range for that first movie. His contract also included options to really make bank on back-end deals for two planned sequels which of course did actually come to fruition in 2004 and 2007, respectively.
Cut to 2003, after the first Spider-Man took in $821 million at the worldwide box office. Columbia Pictures was so high on that movie that they reportedly greenlit the sequel a full month before the first one debuted with a $114 million opening weekend. That left Maguire and his representatives at The Gersh Agency in a prime position to negotiate a proper paycheck for his second outing as the webslinger with $17 million up front. Unfortunately, some major inside baseball issues surrounding Maguire nearly led to a seismic shakeup of the entire franchise.
After Maguire’s deal was nearly sealed around April 2003 to appear in Spider-Man 2, Variety reported that the actor drew the ire of Columbia Pictures brass when he supposedly used an old, chronic back injury, that was aggravated during the making of his 2003 film Seabiscuit, to make certain demands of the production. Sensing a lack of gratitude for what was an immense amount of money he was to make on the sequel, the studio told Maguire his services were no longer required if his back was going to be an issue. Ouch!
Maguire drew the ire of Columbia Pictures brass when he supposedly used an old, chronic back injury to make certain demands of the production.
But then there was insult to injury: Columbia immediately began replacement negotiations with actor Jake Gyllenhaal, who had auditioned to play Peter Parker in the first movie and was earning raves in indies like Donnie Darko and The Good Girl. Gyllenhaal also happened to be dating Maguire’s co-star (and ex) Kirsten Dunst at the time. Luckily the father of Maguire’s then-girlfriend (later wife, now divorced) Jennifer Meyer – CAA founder/Universal COO Ron Meyer - had his back, so to speak. His Gersh reps and Meyer collectively convinced the powers that be at the studio that Maguire as well as his back would be on their best behavior during the stunt-heavy production.
Spider-Man 2 went on to become the critical and fan favorite of director Sam Raimi’s original trilogy, grossing $789 million worldwide. Yet for a while the situation looked dire for Maguire, to the point that even after it was resolved he vacated Gersh for CAA. Raimi admitted it was a tense situation for him as well.
"I was told by someone, I don't know who, some manager or agent or representative, that his back was in such a state that if it got injured anymore, it could maybe lead to paralysis," Sam Raimi recalled to the Los Angeles Daily News. "At that moment, I said to myself, 'I can't be irresponsible. I can't make a movie about responsibility and then grab this kid and make him do stunts where he's going to be paralyzed. And I can't compromise the movie.'"
Of course much later down the line Gyllenhaal got his shot at the Spider-Man franchise, appearing as baddie Mysterio in 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home, with footage of him also utilized at the top of the new Spider-Man: No Way Home.
"The truth of the matter is, in the end, he's Spider-Man,” Gyllenhaal told Yahoo of Maguire in 2019. "There are so many roles in my career where I was up against another actor, or something happened that possibly could've happened but didn't happen but maybe it would have… Eventually my belief is when an actor's played a character, particularly in a movie, the character's theirs, and that's that. But yeah, he hurt himself and there was talk. And there was a slew of actors [possibly up for the part], and I was one of them."
But it’s important to also let Maguire himself tell his side of the story, which makes the situation sound less harsh than the press at the time made it out to be.
“First of all, this is a back condition I've had for three years or four years, on and off,” Maguire told IGN in 2004 upon the release of Spider-Man 2. “Sometimes it doesn't really bother me at all. Sometimes it bothers me a little. Sometimes it bothers me a lot. Coming off of Seabiscuit it was bugging me a lot, not because of Seabiscuit. I did not injure my back on Seabiscuit. That was a false report. But it was bugging me quite a bit. I saw the animatics and the storyboards of the stunts I was to do on this movie and I was a little concerned about it. I felt it was my responsibility to disclose my back discomfort to the studio, to the insurance company and to the filmmakers, which I did. They were understandably concerned. Any of their actions that resulted in that report did not offend me or bother me in any way. I understood that they have a multi-multi-million dollar investment that they had a start date for and an entire crew hired for, and everything was rushing towards a date five weeks away, to start this picture. We were all concerned about it.
“Then I went in with the stunt guys and worked on a few of the stunts to see how I was going to do,” the actor continued. “After I reported the stuff to them and told them about my condition, my back started getting better. I told them about it and within about a week my back got better than it had been in three years or so. So it was much ado about nothing at that point... I did the film and it didn't bother me throughout the whole filming. As a matter of fact, it was easier than Seabiscuit and it was easier than Spider-Man 1. Why? Well, I think because having had the experience of doing it before made it easier for me and the harnesses that I wore were better and the wire rigs were easier for me..."
Art Imitates Life
Although the back situation ultimately resolved itself, Sam Raimi and his doctor brother Ivan Raimi (who later was credited as a co-writer on Spider-Man 3) eventually worked the controversy into the fabric of Spider-Man 2 itself.
As Raimi explained to the BBC in 2004, “My brother and I were writing this scene where we wanted to show him trying to get his powers back and leap over these buildings like he did in the first one, but this time it doesn't work because he doesn't quite have all of his powers back so he falls, grabs a laundry line, swings against this wall, falls on a car roof, and hits the ground. So my brother said, let's have him say, ‘I'm back! I'm back!’ as he leaps over the building and then when he slams on the ground, have him hold the bottom of his spine and go: ‘My back, my back!’ Well, at first I thought that was really funny and then I said, ‘You know Ivan, although I think it's funny, because we've had this problem with Tobey, maybe we'd better not do it.’ Because, I mean, he has had a back problem. And then Ivan says, ‘Oh screw it, we'll just do it anyways. For those who know about the problem with Tobey's back, it'll be an inside joke, and for those who don't, it should be funny just for what it is.’ I said to my brother that the only concern I had was telling Tobey about the joke. He might not have wanted to do it, so I was a little cautious. But I told Tobey I thought it would be funny and he said, ‘You know what? That will be funny. It's OK if they laugh at me. Let them laugh at me!’ I thought that was very brave of him.”
The Maguire/Spider-Man 2 situation was parodied three years later in the Season 3 episode of HBO’s inside-Hollywood comedy series Entourage, “Three’s Company,” where actor Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) refuses to entertain any offers to reprise his role in an Aquaman 2 (remember when that movie was a joke?) unless his agent Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven) can secure acting work for his brother Johnny Drama (Kevin Dillon). The ploy backfires, however, when the studio calls Vincent’s bluff and recasts - you guessed it - Jake Gyllenhaal in the title role.
Into the Metaverse
While the “want me to crack your back?” scene in Spider-Man: No Way Home may be an extra treat for fans of the Spidey franchise, it does beg the question of how self-referential Marvel movies can get at this point without becoming the snake that ate its own tail. We already got a wonderful little Oscar-winning animated movie a few years ago called Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse that bent over backwards to put in as many meta references as it could to the Raimi movies, including making fun of Tobey Maguire’s infamous Spider-Man 3 street dance to James Brown’s song "People Get Up and Drive Your Funky Soul."
Now this new film has taken things to a whole other level by not only making a ton of references to major story points in the Maguire and Garfield movies, but also to the movies themselves. Witness the long scene of Maguire trying to convince a bummed-out Garfield that he’s “amazing.” One can only hope that Marvel can continue making movies that are, in and of themselves, amazing without having to victory-lap old memberberries… Not that watching Andrew Garfield lift Tobey Maguire from behind isn’t a memory we’ll always treasure.
For more on the new movie, check out our Spider-Man: No Way Home ending explained, dig in on what that Venom post-credits scene means for his future in the MCU, ponder some of the biggest WTF questions about No Way Home, and consider that the Doctor Strange 2 teaser just made What If…? very important to the Marvel movies.
Continue reading...