Spider-Man: No Way Homedelivered the one thing Spider-Man fans had wanted to see for years until that point, which was all three Spider-Men swinging together in unison on the big screen. It was Marvel’s worst-kept secret that all three Spider-Man were going to appear inNo Way Home, but it wasn’t until the film hit theaters that hopes were confirmed — Marvel intentionally held bothAndrew GarfieldandTobey Maguireout of all official marketing material ahead of launch.
Collider’sSteve Weintraubrecently moderated a panel with Watts at the Mediterrane Film Festival, and he asked about how he went about ensuring that Maguire and Garfield’s returns felt organic, and not like cheap fan service. He explained, “There was a time early in the story discussions when we knew that there was going to be some multiverse stuff going on in the larger Marvel world, and we hadn’t quite figured it out yet. But the thing that I was excited about was what if we brought the three Spider-Men together? How cool would that be?” He then added:
“I always had this emotional reaction when you’d read about the movie, and people would be like, ‘Well, I like Andrew Garfield more, or I like Tobey Maguire more.’ I always felt like there was an unspoken competition of, like, ‘Well, the [Sam] Raimi ones are the best. They’re never going to be as good as the Raimi ones.‘I love all of the Spider-Man movies equally, like children.I thought, how cool would it be to tell a story, not about how one Spider-Man is better than the other one, but about how they all are Spider-Man? Somehow, if they can work together, they have this shared experience that can make them greater than they are just as individuals. That was the broad-stroke thematic idea that started the whole story process.”
Watts went on to expand on how he pieced together the idea, “I remember there was one unspoken person who was like, ‘Whatever is happening in the movie in the third act, oh no, Peter Parker’s in trouble! Thwip, where did that web come from? Thwip, where did that web come from?’ Reveal: Tobey and Andrew. They swing in, they save the day, they leave. I was like, ‘I won’t make that. I absolutely refuse to make that.’ Just a character showing up for a cameo, being like, ‘Hello! Remember me? Okay, see you later.’ I was like, ‘That’s not going to happen.'” Continuing, he said:
“So, with this broad-stroke idea about three versions of the same guy being able to learn to help each other in a really dark time, I thought that was enough of an emotional seat to build a story around. As you do that, you’re like ‘Well, why are they all here? What happened? How do you get to this situation?’ That’s how we did it. We started there.It involves taking everyone seriously as a character, making sure it’s about something real and emotional, and then building it from there.”
It’s safe to say that going intoNo Way Home, most fans were expecting a more fan service-esque moment than what came through in the final product. Not only do both previous Spider-Men show up to help long before the third act begins, but they also play an integral part in the overall narrative and the story ofTom Holland’s Peter Parker. Weintraub also asked how early in the process Watts and the team knew that both Maguire and Garfield would be reprising their roles, and what they would have done if one or both hadn’t been able to make it happen:
“We weren’t going to go write the whole movie and then have them say, ‘Sorry. We don’t want to do it.’ So, they agreed to do it based on me talking the way I’m talking now: ‘This is the kind of story I want to tell.’ So, they were in. They were on board. Then we went and wrote it and developed it.”
Watts went further into it, adding, “Circling back to your earlier question about being on a set and a scene just didn’t work, the scene of the three of them together, we had a really good, solid draft of it, but I wanted to rehearse it.So we got all the Spider-Men and Jacob and Zendaya all together on a Saturday and read through it.It was just such an amazing experience because here’s Tom Holland living through being Spider-Man with two other guys who had also lived through being Spider-Man in the movies and in the real world, and they just had so much depth and insight into what that feels like that what initially started as a rehearsal session became almost like a therapy session where everyone was talking about what this feels like.” He went on to say:
“Then it became a rewriting session where we were like, ‘Oh, maybe that thing that we just talked about in the room, maybe that could be a part of the story. What if you said this, and what if you said that? What if we change this line?’ As a team, [Chris] McKenna was hiding behind a set wall, listening to it and scribbling everything down as well, so that we could actually rewrite it properly. But we went through it and we workshopped the scene and made it into what it is now. We had a script. We were good. We’re just always trying to make it better.”
Spider-Man: No Way Homewas a hit among critics and audiences, and not just due to the multiversal Spider-Man aspect of the film.No Way Homeestablishes stakes with the death of characters like Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), and it features strong villain performances from Electro (Jamie Foxx), Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), and Doc Ock (Alfred Molina). The film is also one of the most profitable MCU movies of all time, grossing $1.9 billion against a $200 million budget.
How Did Marvel Keep Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire’s Involvement Under Wraps?
Rumors of Garfield and Maguire’s involvement were rampantly swirling in the months leading up to release, with fans speculating and theorizing about how they could fit into the film. Weintraub also asked Watts how they were able to keep things a secret as well as they did, and not only did he credit the pandemic for the secrecy, but he also revealed how a Reddit thread changedthe other Spider-Men’s introduction. “It was in the middle of the pandemic,” he explained. “So it was actually much easier to keep things a secret because we couldn’t really leave the stage because that was the only place where we were approved to shoot. So, we shot so much of it on stages, and the world was so isolated. It was actually pretty easy to keep it a secret for us. In terms of leaks and things like that getting out, you do the best you can, but inevitably, something is going to be revealed.” He went on, further explaining:
“What I found more compelling, the scene that you just saw, that’s when we first revealed the other two Spider-Men. There had been rumors that Tobey and Andrew were going to be in the movie, and this is while we’re shooting. It’s another example of how you may have a script that’s working, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. You can keep making it better.We were writing the script, and we were working on where we wanted to reveal the guys, and it always seemed like Peter’s going to be sad because Aunt May has just died, and that the portals are going to open, and the two Spider-Men are going to step out.
It’s probably a rooftop somewhere. It’s all sort of hazy. You’re still trying to figure it out. Then I was on Reddit, and I was looking at people who had already made fan art of, ‘This is probably what it’s going to be like when the two Spider-Men get revealed.’ It was on a rooftop. It was sad, two Doctor Strange portals were open and two Spider-Men are stepping out. I was like, ‘Well, we can’t do that. If that’s exactly what everyone thinks we’re going to do, we absolutely can’t do that.’
Watts then went into detail about how he settled on having them come in through a portal created by Ned (Jacob Batalon) in the middle of his grandmother’s house, something that there were surely no Reddit threads about. He also confirmed that Ned’s Lola (Mary Rivera) is not an actor, but someone they had to fly in at the last minute due to issues brought on by the pandemic:
“It reminds me of a Buster Keaton quote. He said, ‘I like the audience to think that they’ve outguessed me, and then I double-cross them.’ I love that approach to storytelling, where you trust that the audience is smart, and they can see the moves, and they know and understand the genre, and they’re looking for you to surprise them. So, after I saw all this fan art, and I’ve decided, ‘We absolutely can’t do just exactly what everyone thinks we’re going to do,’ I was like, ‘What does no one expect that we’re going to do? What’s something that no one’s going to see coming?’ I was like, ‘Probably having the two Spider-Men appear at Ned’s Filipino grandma’s house in Queens. I don’t think anyone was doing fan art of that on Reddit.‘It made perfect sense in the story because it’s kind of the first time we leave Peter’s narrative.
We don’t know what’s happened to him. We’re with Ned, we’re with MJ. They have to lay low. Where are they going to go? Ned’s grandma’s house. So, we built this whole scene around that. So as soon as you add his grandma, who is not an actor… It was the middle of the pandemic, so we had to find a lady and fly her from Hawaii to Atlanta to shoot all of this. So, as soon as you put her in that scene and change the location, now I feel like I’ve double-crossed the audience in the best way, where they’re seeing everything that they were hoping that they would see in a way that they were never expecting they were going to.”
Ultimately, all the threads came together at the right time to deliver what many consider the perfectSpider-Manmovie. It’s unclear if the other Spider-Men will return in a future project, but fans will always have the gift ofSpider-Man: No Way Hometo cling to if they don’t.
Spider-Man: No Way Homeis currently streaming onStarz. Stay tuned to Collider for more MCU updates and coverage.
