What compelled you to sign on to this Spider-Man franchise reboot?
Director Marc Webb: When they brought it to me, the 17-year-old kid in myself was excited. I was hesitant at first, but I thought there was so much stuff from the Spider-Man canon that hadn't been explored yet. The Gwen Stacy saga is a really famous and at times controversial storyline in Spider-Man, and I'd always wondered about Peter's parents, and the Lizard is a great villain we hadn't seen before.
How does the tone of your film differ from Sam Raimi's trilogy?
I think what Sam Raimi did was pretty brilliant and loyal to the Stan Lee/Steve Ditko comics from the early days. I went back to the moment where Peter Parker was left behind by his parents, which made him look at the world with a little chip on his shoulder. He's less trusting and more sarcastic than what we've seen before. Tonally, I was trying to do something different, where it felt like a more contemporary world and to treat it in a less stylized fashion.
I heard that Bridesmaids director Paul Feig came onboard to help out with some dialogue?
Paul came in and did a little bit of a favor. He gave us some humor and created a couple of characters for us in a few high-school scenes. Paul's a friend and a really talented observer of character.
The casting search for Spider-Man and Gwen Stacy was pretty exhaustive. Why did you choose Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone?
Andrew is a master of looks, shrugs, pauses, and the moments in between talking. He's also incredibly charming and a little tortured. Plus, he's just f--kin' funny. Everyone knows how funny Emma is. She has everybody on their heels because she's so quick and alive in a scene, and, putting them together, I just realized how good Andrew was at humor. You can't just throw actors together. You have to cast a dynamic and a chemistry. They, as actors, worked really well off each other. There's some multiplier effect when they're together.
Your film appears to be more about a love story than the original Spider-Man trilogy.
Everyone understands how it feels to like a girl—that sense of attraction and what's at stake. I like the dynamic in movies of lovers as rivals, like the old Spencer Tracy/Katherine Hepburn dynamic in Adam's Rib, where they're equally smart and the banter is really funny.
One of the iconic scenes in Raimi's first Spider-Man film is the upside-down kiss. Did you try to one-up that?
You can't one-up the kissing scene. We have our own language and we're trying to do our own things. I can't compete with that!
The Amazing Spider-Man is in theaters July 3.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
