Jon Watts and Tom Holland on the set of Spider-Man: No Way Home. (Photo: Sony Pictures) Marvel and Sony aren’t leaving any stone unturned in securing a Best Picture Oscar nomination for Spider-Man: No Way Home. To that end, they’ve put stars Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire on the press tour, speaking about the greater duty that the film has performed in trying pandemic times.
In a new interview to Variety, director Jon Watts spoke about assembling the three Spider-Man actors together on screen, and his own insecurities about making a film at a time like this. He recalled that he was 20 when the first Spider-Man film was released in the shadow of 9/11. And now his own film has arrived, as audiences deal with a pandemic that refuses to stop raging.
No Way Home unites three generations of Spider-Man actors on screen — a situation made possible after Peter Parker rips open the multiverse (and more importantly, a deal struck between Sony and Marvel that allows for an exchange of characters). The move made it possible for Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire’s versions of the Marvel superhero to enter the Marvel Cinematic Universe from alternate universes.
Watts said that before filming the first scene in which all three would be together, he arranged for a ‘therapy session’ of sorts with the three actors, as well as Zendaya and Jacob Batalon. “We sat on folding chairs in a circle and went through the script together. I had talked to everyone separately, but to have everyone together to talk about the story, how the pieces fit together and what Spider-Man meant to them — that was exciting for me. We had the only three actors to ever play Spider-Man in a film, and each had been through so much, on and off screen. It was like a Spider-Man therapy session,” he said.
He added, “Because we had done that work ahead of time, when filming that first scene with everyone, it was great to take a step back and see the crew watching, like they were watching the movie. You’re capturing something more than a scene from a movie; you’re watching a once-in-a-lifetime event.”
Maguire was the first actor to play Spider-Man on screen. He appeared in a trilogy of movies directed by Sam Raimi. Garfield played Spidey in two films directed by Marc Webb. Holland has been playing Spider-Man since 2016, and has appeared as the character in six films, with more to follow. No Way Home has broken several pandemic-era box office records. It has made $1.7 billion worldwide, including more than Rs 200 crore in India.
- The Indian Express website has been rated GREEN for its credibility and trustworthiness by Newsguard, a global service that rates news sources for their journalistic standards.
