Our friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man is back this summer in his new suit and new surroundings in Spider-Man: Homecoming, but his journey into the MCU was never the “end game” but rather the product of the disappointments of the previous two rebooted episodes.
In 2012, Sony reworked their big tentpole franchise after the critical mauling that Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3 received in 2007 (still the highest grossing of the lot) and the abandoned 4th installment and hired director Marc Webb, of (500) Days of Summer fame to direct with Andrew Garfield as the titular web-slinger alongside Oscar Winner Emma Stone as Gwen Stacey. Both movies made decent money at the box office (over $1.4billion worldwide) but the sequel, in particular, was expected to make $1billion, and like Spider-Man 3, was torn apart by critics.
Now with Spidey’s return on the horizon and his new film, Gifted (ironically starring Captain America himself Chris Evans), Webb spoke to Collider about his super-hero days and how he feels looking back on his experiences. He said:
“It’s hard for me to think about it, in terms of regrets. There are so many things that I’m proud of. There was an ambition with the second movie, in particular. The idea that it’s a superhero that can’t save everybody is something that I’m really proud of. I’m really proud of the ambition of that because it’s an important message, and I believe in that. I believe in what we were after… They’re really, really difficult movies to make. They’re complex in ways that people don’t fully understand. They weren’t disasters. But in terms of regrets, I don’t think of it in those terms. I felt really, really fortunate to have that opportunity. That’s a whole other long, in-depth conversation that I probably shouldn’t have publicly. I loved everybody involved. I really did. I didn’t have an adversarial relationship with the studio, at all. There were a lot of very smart people. These are just incredibly complicated movies to make. I am proud of them, in many ways, and I stand by them. I’m certainly not a victim, in that situation.”
SEE ALSO: HeyUGuys at The Amazing Spider-Man 2 UK Premiere (exactly three years ago today!)
Indeed Webb was due to return with Garfield, Stone and co for a third movie, as well as planned spin-off’s including The Sinister Six, but with the box office disappointments and the infamous Sony hack, they never came to fruition. Webb said:
“We finished the second one and they were working on ‘Sinister Six,’ so we all took a break. And then, the Sony hack happened and everything went away. But, that’s the way Hollywood works sometimes,”
Gifted opens in UK cinemas on June 16th; Spider-Man: Homecoming swings into cinemas on July 5th.
