The Amazing-Spider Man 2 Footage Revealed With In-Flight Action, Times Square Destruction, Vicious Villains & More

Earlier today, We Got This Covered had the privilege of joining director Marc Webb for a special presentation of The Amazing-Spider Man 2. Screened for us was a wealth of footage that rocked a ton of bold characters, visuals and action set pieces, but the stand out feature of each and every scene that was screened was that, simply put, it was loads of fun to watch. There was depth and tension, but Webb also held tight to lighter moments and the thrill of seeing such vibrant battles taking place in the heart of New York City. While we do try to steer clear of major plot spoilers, for those who’d rather avoid relatively detailed descriptions of these scenes, we’d advise that you to skip to the Q&A portion of this piece. For everyone else, read on for our complete thoughts on Marc Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Scene #1: The First 10 Minutes of the Movie The Amazing Spider-Man 2 opens with something that was noticeably missing from the first installment – the story of Peter’s parents. We meet Peter’s father, Richard (Campbell Scott), while feverishly working at his station in Oscorp. When he’s all done he tries to make his way out, but the door is locked. He manages to sneak out an alternate exit and return home to his wife, Mary (Embeth Davidtz), as well as a young Peter, Aunt May (Sally Field) and Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen). Richard and Mary pack up in haste and rush out the door, leaving Peter behind. From there we cut to Richard and Mary riding in a private jet. While Richard is busy uploading something important to “Roosevelt,” Mary uses the bathroom and that’s when all hell breaks loose. Richard is attacked by a man that has commandeered the cockpit. Ultimately, Mary finds herself in the midst of the fight, resulting in an extensive struggle going down in very close quarters. The hand-to-hand combat is all well choreographed, but the most impressive elements of the scene comes when a window is punctured and wind rips through the cabin as the plane does a nosedive. Once the sequence comes to a close, we cut to the Spider-Man logo, which is then revealed to be the back of our main man’s suit. He’s flying high above the streets of New York City when he overhears that an Oscorp truck carrying plutonium has been hijacked. Spider-Man joins the pursuit, chasing after Paul Giamatti’s Aleksei Sytsevich who’s barreling down the street in an 18-wheeler with the aforementioned Oscorp truck attached to the back. After a good deal of car crashing, mid-action quips, and Spider-Man’s rather amusing attempt at snatching up all of the vials of plutonium while they bounce around the stolen truck, the moment makes room for high school graduation with Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) as class valedictorian, and the two intercut the rest of the way through. The action of the car chase is quite exhilarating from beginning to end, but by having Peter trying to save the day while desperately attempting to make his high school graduation, it actually manages to ground the high-flying action and Giamatti’s amusingly goofy performance quite a bit. Scene #2: Times Square Destruction As prefaced by Webb, this scene comes into play after Peter and Gwen have called it quits. Even though both profess that they’re committed to being broken up and now it’s time to just be friends, there’s no shortage of romantic playfulness – that is until Gwen reveals that there’s a chance she might be going to school in London on a scholarship. Peter’s very clearly heartbroken, but before he can respond, something catches his eye in the distance. Something isn’t quite right in Times Square. Sure enough, a hooded Electro is lurking about and giving his new abilities a test run. Even though he very clearly has no intentions on hurting anyone at the start, his alarming appearance causes a panic and he can’t help but to lash out. Eventually, Spider-Man arrives to try to talk him down, but there’s no controlling the rage building inside of him and Electro unleashes everything he’s got on the city. The production values here are just through the roof. There are loads of extras, tons of very tangible and dangerous electrical currents, cars flying and billboards crumbling. Of the lot, it is worth noting the abundance of slow motion. Webb put the technique to use in the previous sequence as well, but here, there’s about 30 seconds to a minute’s worth of highly detailed action executed in this fashion, literally letting you see every web that Spider-Man slings in order to save a group of people from Electro’s destruction. Also quite notable is that even though Spider-Man is our hero, this scene bears a nice balance between his perception and Electro’s, too. There are a handful of shots from Electro’s POV, which essentially has what the average person sees, but it’s all in the shadows of electricity. The sequence also offered a taste of what’s going on inside Electro’s head. It’s abundantly clear that Electro doesn’t want to hurt anyone, but he also can’t control his rage so when the voices inside his head kick in, good intentions or not, he’s unmistakably far too unhinged and dangerous to trust. Scene #3 – Harry Osborn & Electro Even though the combat and destruction in the prior scenes were top-notch, it was great to have a somewhat quieter moment in the mix to see what Foxx and Dane DeHaan are really capable of - particularly DeHaan. The scene plays out inside the facility where Electro is being kept on lockdown, trapped in a vice of sorts. Harry arrives and attempts to negotiation with him by insisting that he can help him get Spider-Man if Electro gets him into Oscorp first. The details of the deal are somewhat familiar, but DeHaan’s vicious fervor is truly unnerving. Electro proves to be quite the threat himself when security finally catches the two conspiring and Electro essentially evaporates, reappears and then fries everyone in the room. But even then, it’s DeHaan’s maniac desperation that makes Harry the more striking component. Following the clips, Webb took part in a brief Q&A with the audience. Check out some highlights from the conversation on the next page... What is it about Spider-Man that you think warrants multiple villains? Marc Webb: You’re always trying to dig up ways to challenge and put obstacles in the path of your hero and different parts of the character are challenged by different villains - different adversaries. Villain is sort of a simple word, you know? All the great things about the Marvel Universe is the complexity of the villains and often there’s a pre-existing domestic relationship, as the case is with Harry Osborn, that makes those conflicts more emotional. What did you learn on the first film that you brought to bear on this one? Marc Webb: I think that the learning curve on the first one was huge, just in terms of the scope of the visual effects. I had never carried something through with that scope and particularly the animation of Spider-Man and the Lizard, trying to create a kind of realism that was tricky and I didn’t know how it was gonna – I just hadn’t had that kind of experience before, but now having gone through that I was able to think about how the eventualities and the obstacles and things that kind of get in your way. I mean, there’s other things like, obvious things like the suit, for example. The first movie I was really committed to thinking about, ‘How does this kid make this suit?’ And that’s why the eyes were made out of glasses and in some ways, that was a mistake because I think hardcore fans have such a connection to the specificity of the suit that I sensed that and I was like, ‘You know, I’m gonna go back to the iconic version of the suit,’ which is a little bit more on the Ultimate side than it was The Amazing Spider-Man. That’s just a couple things. But scope and just the degree of the effects and then, you know, I learned about what Andrew and Emma were capable of. We know each other very well now. We really, when we were developing the script, thought about just how funny Andrew is and how good at delivering that stuff he can be and how committed he is to that. That was great, and how wonderful an actor Emma is. She’s not just funny; she really has a lot of depth and that was something that we really exploited this time around. Electro was always a second banana among Spider-Man adversaries. Did that liberate you to do more with him creatively? Marc Webb: The original version of Electro had, you know, this star on his face, he was green and yellow, but the cinematic possibilities of that character I just thought were extraordinary. I was just like, ‘I have to be able to explore that,’ because there was just something really fun about playing with that. But in thinking about his character and, ‘What is the nature of this villain,’ it’s like, well, kind of thinking about how to make it explosive and interesting visually, but emotionally as well. There was a natural quality about him that is bright and is huge, and so this idea of a character that wants to be seen and where does that come from? In order to understand Electro, you have to understand Max Dillon, and Jamie sort of invented this version of Max, which I think is extraordinary. an intense pathos for the character, but there’s also a madness there, too. There a seed of like, this guy is psychotic. He’s dangerous. He was an outcast. He was ignored by the people that should have loved him, which is the same story as Peter Parker. Villains are often foils of that character. It’s just how they react to their situations that defines their character and for Electro, we sort of backed into that story a little bit. Where in New York did you shoot and, by chance, did you shoot on Long Island? Marc Webb: We did shoot on Long Island. We built a massive version of Times Square in Long Island in a parking lot. And so we shot part of that in Times Square and then we shot a lot of that stuff in Long Island. We shot at stages in Long Island, we shot in Brooklyn, Harry Osborn’s house was down on Wall Street, we converted an old bank, we shot all over. Everything was shot in New York State. Part of the car chase we shot in Rochester. Can you talk about the combination of music and the voices inside Electro’s head? Marc Webb: There’s a story behind that, particularly the voices inside of his head. So, Pharrell came in and I showed him the movie and we were trying to really enhance the balance between Max Dillon’s psychosis and his pathos, right? And so Pharrell was trying to think of how to make that happen and how to hit that mark, and he came up with the idea of these voices inside of his head and there was a part in Times Square when I knew I needed to have Electro switch against Spider-Man and those voices became a cause of that. I think it helped signal that in a way. But the voices start much earlier in the film. Pharrell spent hours writing down all these – it was like the notebooks in Se7en, like all these little lyrics that just go on and on and on, and then we condensed them and sped them up. A guy named Dom did the recording of those. It was an interesting thing because the music became part of the character - I mean, literally part of the character. Those voices are a way to connect the audience to the thought process of the character and that was something that helped me with the narrative later on. That concludes the special presentation but we'd like to thank Webb and Sony for taking the time to show off their new film. Be sure to catch The Amazing Spider-Man 2 when it swings into theatres on May 2nd!