Spider-Man: No Way Home‘s secret stars were originally introduced another way say writers Erik Sommers and Chris McKenna. The writers of Spider-Man’s biggest ever movie to date spoke with Variety recently. However this interview and the answers does get into SPOILER territory, so if you have yet to watch Spider-Man: No Way Home best circle back to this one later.
Spider-Man: No Way Home SPOILERS Below.
Of course those secret stars we are talking about are Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire who made their returns to Spider-Man. To begin with as Sommers says, they didn’t even know for sure they’d get their men?
“Pretty much all we were hearing is, ‘Yeah, we reached out. He’s interested. He thinks that sounds neat,’” Sommers says. “We’re like, ‘Really?! Oh, great!’ But nothing was guaranteed.”
McKenna went on to explain that originally they had the two Spider-Men appear in a different way.
“They are brought by a Marvel character going, ‘Here are the saving graces and they’re going to help you through this,’” McKenna says (though he declines to say which character it was). “It was just more of a deus ex machina.”
“We were changing the story so much,” McKenna says. “We were already two months into production. And we were having to now take another whack at act three, which we hadn’t had time to because we were shooting act one and act two.”
RELATED: No Way Home Is Highest Grossing Spider-Man Film And Sony Film Of All Time Already
Worn down by the punishing schedule, constant uncertainty and brand new COVID-19 protocols, the duo were terrified of screwing up the crucial moment in the whole movie. So they holed up together over Christmas and came up with what is now in the film: Ned (Batalon), messing around with Strange’s teleporting sling ring with MJ (Zendaya), accidentally conjures a portal to Garfield’s Peter Parker while wondering where Holland’s could be, causing all three to panic (delightfully) at the total weirdness of the situation.
“It was a beam of light in darkness,” says McKenna. “Such a gift, particularly at that point in the writing process, to be writing for those two characters. It the darkest part of the year, the darkest part of production, the darkest part of the story development, and it was like, Oh! Now we get Tobey and Andrew.”
I did like the fact that the other two were there already, but just not on anyone’s radar because they caused no trouble. Ned learning his inner magical ability to find both was definitely one of the coolest moments in the movie. As for who that character could have been, who knows? Maybe Madame Web? Your guess is as good as mine.
No Way Home‘s secret stars were originally introduced another way, which do you prefer? I guess that’s tough to answer without the full context. Instead I’ll ask what you think of Sommers and McKenna’s comments? Sound off below.
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