A few months before The Amazing Spider-Man 2 hit theaters, it was announced that scenes featuring Shailene Woodley as Peter Parker’s future love interest, Mary Jane Watson, had been left on the cutting room floor. At the time, director Marc Webb assured fans that it wasn’t because of Woodley’s performance, but due to time constraints and to allow more of the film to focus on the relationship between Peter and Gwen Stacy.
Producers Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach have refused to include the deleted scenes on the home video release of the film, but we finally have a few details on what those scenes involved, thanks to concept artist Gregory Hill, who recently spoke with Film Sketchr. Here’s what he had to say:
“In the script MJ and her father have recently moved in next door to Peter and his Aunt… He’s run into her a few times, and seen that her father has a habit of getting drunk and treating MJ badly. If I remember right, the scene I illustrated has her dad going into the garage, and suddenly getting hoisted upside down from the rafters….where he meets Spider-Man. And gets a dressing down for how badly he treats his daughter. I think that’s about the only MJ scene which was originally in the script… no, there was one other where she and Gwen briefly meet outside Peter’s house.”
It’s a shame that scene got cut, because it sounds like it could have been a fun and touching introduction to Mary Jane, while laying the groundwork for further exploration of her character in the third film.
Hill also went on to talk about how Webb humorously decided to film the scene in a garage that had been literally been built upside down:
“There is a funny story to this too. After I finished the drawing, I had it on my desk as I moved on to something else. When I looked up there was this guy standing beside me, looking at the garage drawing, but he had it turned upside down. We exchanged “Hi’s” and he left. Later I heard a major discussion going on around the desk of the set designer who was drafting the garage, and the designer said “It’s all Greg Hill’s fault.” Turns out the guy looking at my drawing was Marc Webb, and he had asked that the garage set be built upside down.
Marc was looking at the sketch right side up first I assume…. and figuring out what would be CGI, etc. Then when he turned the drawing, he realized that he could basically shoot the scene with little or no CGI work if he built the set upside down… then Spidey could act naturally… even walk around. I never saw any footage so I don’t know how they ended up doing it however. I assume they built the set upside down… which would be a lot cheaper than adding VFX to a whole scene.”
While Mary Jane Watson may have been absent from the rebooted franchise up to this point, it’s a safe bet to assume that she’ll be making her debut in The Amazing Spider-Man 3. No word yet on whether not it will still be Woodley in the role, but we’ll be sure to keep you posted when we know for sure.