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. [There’s] 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!
