Marc Webb talks about the reinvention of Peter Parker for The Amazing Spider-Man
Posted by: Zack Bruce
I didn’t get online quick enough this morning to see the leaked bootleg trailer for THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. What’s the word on the net? It’s an understandable draw down the middle, mainly due to the quality of the trailer. Some fans are saying that a darker Spidey is not what they want. Others seem to look forward to what director Marc Webb has to offer.
What is Webb going for with this version of the webslinger? The LA Times Hero Complex has an interesting article with the helmer himself and here are a few excerpts to chew on:
Hero Complex: There’s so much history for this character, on the page and on the screen. Where do you start?
Marc Webb: I feel we have certain obligations to the iconography of Spider-Man, which is based mostly in the comics. The other thing is Spider-Man has a lot of different incarnations in the comics. While there are certain mainstays — a kid who gets bitten by a spider, he’s an outsider, the death of his Uncle Ben helps endow [him] with the mentality of a hero — those things remain the same but there’s also room for interpretation. He’s been around since the 1960s. The wealth of material here — whether it’s story or character — is really profound but I also feel it’s my responsibility to reinvent it in some ways.
Hero Complex: How will we see that reinvention manifest?
MW: Peter Parker is a science whiz. If you look back to the early Stan Lee and Steve Ditko comics, he’s a nerd with big glasses. The idea of what a nerd is has changed in 40 or 50 years. Nerds are running the world. Andrew Garfield made a movie [called “The Social Network”] about it. Nerds are no longer pariahs and knowing how to write computer code is longer a [mocked] quality. What was important in those early comics was this notion that Peter Parker is an outsider and how we define that in a contemporary context. That, I think, was one of the challenges for us — getting Peter Parker’s outsider status to be current. Peter Parker is a real kid. He’s not a billionaire. He’s not an alien. He’s a kid who gets picked on and gets shoved to the outside. The 90-pound weakling, that’s who Spider-Man is when he gets bit. So much of the DNA of the character is the fact that he was a kid when he got bit. He is imperfect, he is immature and has a bit of a punk rock instinct. In his soul he’s still a 90-pound weakling even after [the transformative bite].
Hero Complex: What other differences will we see between your film and Raimi’s trilogy?
MW: One of the things we tried to do was keep the stunts more grounded physically and that was a huge challenge because you have a character whose abilities are superhuman. How do you do that in a way that’s convincing and real? We had a really great stunt team, the Armstrongs, who were vigilant in the creation — with Andrew — of a physical language that felt grounded but also extraordinary. We spent months and months and months developing rigs so he could swing in a way that wasn’t computer-generated. Obviously there’s going to be enhancements and CG [sequences], but it’s based in a physical reality and that’s a new technique [for this film brand]. When you walk out of the theater, I want the world you see to resemble what you saw on the screen. Part of the joy of cinema [is that] you make the impossible look real. I wanted it to be more grounded and more realistic and that went for the emotion of the scenes, the physical action and wardrobe. It’s less based in Steve Ditko world and probably closer visually and more influenced by “Ultimate Spider-Man” but it is also very much a world of our own devising.
Check out the rest of the interview here.
Source: Hero Complex
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