The 'Social Network' actor admits studio cuts hurt the second 'Amazing Spider-Man' film as he says, 'The thread is broken, and it's hard to go with the flow of the story.'
- Sep 11, 2014
AceShowbiz - Andrew Garfield responded to the criticisms surrounding "The Amazing Spider-Man 2". In a chat with The Daily Beast, the actor who plays Peter Parker in the rebooted franchise opened up that the negative reviews and the lukewarm performance at domestic box office could have been avoided if only the top heads at Sony didn't cut the original script.
"I read a lot of the reactions from people and I had to stop because I could feel I was getting away from how I actually felt about it. 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," he explained.
"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."
Without specifying what was removed from the original script, he went on, "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."
He added, "Talking about the experience as opposed to how it was perceived, I got to work in deep scenes that you don't usually see in comic book movies, and I got to explore this orphan boy - a lot of which was taken out, and which we'd explored more. It's interesting to do a postmortem. I'm proud of a lot of it and had a good time, and was a bit taken aback by the response."
Although he was surprised by the poor reviews, he was trying to learn from them. "We can't go, 'Oh God, we [frick]ed up because all these people are saying all these things. It's s**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."
He concluded, "Constructive criticism is different from people just being d**ks, and I love constructive criticism. Hopefully, we can get underneath what the criticism was about, and if we missed anything."
The second installment was supposed to feature Mary Jane Watson, Peter Parker's love interest after Gwen Stacy's death. The redhead was originally set to be played by "Divergent" star Shailene Woodley. She had filmed her scene, but it was eventually cut off.
The franchise is expected to continue with "The Amazing Spider-Man 3" which hasn't got a release date following the disappointing result of the second movie. The Spidey saga will also be expanded with at least two spin-offs "Venom Carnage" and "The Sinister Six". It's unclear if Garfield will reprise his role in any of the future films.
