Marc Webb: “Spider-Man is not Harry Potter”

In 2012, The Amazing Spider-Man was on the cover of Première, and its director recounted how he found himself succeeding Sam Raimi. Flashback, on the occasion of the rebroadcast of the Sony blockbuster on TMC tonight at 9:25 p.m.

It was Sony and Marvel's crazy bet: to reinvent the web-slinger just five years after a Spider-Man 3 disappointing. How to succeed Sam Raimi ? How to set the clocks right? That was the whole problem of The Amazing Spider-Man. An odyssey told at length, in breadth and across in the issue of First from the summer of 2012. Which we are sharing again at a time when the film is being rescheduled on television, and its main actor, Andrew Garfield, has returned to the saga: he appeared at the end of 2021 alongside two other actors playing Peter Parker, his predecessor Tobey Maguire and his successor Tom Holland, In Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Spider-Man Movies From Worst to Best

Back in July 2012. To get the machine going again, the producers first chose a new DNA. A new director. A former music video director with a tiny CV, author of a small, arty and seductive rom-com (500 Days Together), Marc Webb is the lethal weapon of this reboot, a beginner who will rub shoulders with the greatest (including Christopher Nolan who arrives with his Dark Knight Rises). Met during the Paris promo, he tells us about the challenges of his adaptation and the little pleasures he allowed himself…

Succeed to Sam Raimi
“I know a lot of people are questioning the legitimacy of this reboot, but Spider-Man is not Harry Potter. What I mean by that is that there is nothing sacrilegious about revisiting his story. He has reigned supreme in pop culture for fifty years, his adventures have been told by dozens of writers, drawn by dozens of artists… I think it's cool and pretty healthy that directors can in turn pass the torch. I admire the work Sam did, but it turns out that we have a different reading of the character. My Peter Parker can be very sarcastic when he's in his costume – look at the scene with the car thief: he tortures him, he hits him, there's a real anger in him. I wanted to explore that “roughness” of the character. The other angle of attack was to recontextualize the Spidey universe, to make it more contemporary. I want the spectators to be able to find common points between the world around them and the one they have just seen on the screen when they leave the theater.

Getting hired by Sony
“Why did the producers of the film think of me? I have no idea. I guess they're nuts… No, seriously, I think they just liked my previous film, 500 days together. They told me they found it sincere, funny, moving. Some Spider-Man fans worry that I'm not an action director, but you see, I have a bit of a career as a music video director, and some of my videos have been more of the spectacular kind…”

Finding the right actors
” Andrew Garfield And Emma Stone symbolize two totally different schools of comedy. Andrew is the highly trained and methodical Englishman, a precision monster. Emma is more casual and instinctive, she goes very quickly, she loves to improvise, the jokes are constantly flying – the Apatow school, in other words. She really managed to extract from Andrew a humor that I didn't know he had. And in return, he brought her to the realm of dramatic intensity and emotional truth. This kind of alchemy between two actors, we look for it, we can try to provoke it, but there, when Emma and Andrew started acting together, something really magical happened.

Reinventing Spidey
“A lot of our inspiration for this film comes from comics. Ultimate Spider-Man (version “modernized” Spider-Man, which began publication in 2000 – editor’s note). Brian Michael Bendis made a lot of story choices that I really like, like Spider-Man telling Gwen Stacy who he really is early on. I like that feeling you get as a teenager when you're having your first love story and you're confiding in someone for the first time in your life. The other exciting thing about Ultimate Spider-Manthese are the drawings of Mark Bagley. I wanted to create a more alive, more acrobatic Spider-Man. Ultimate had a big influence on our Spidey, on his very dry and agile look, the way he moves. Andrew also became completely obsessed with Spider-Man's body language. We decided to explore this imagery, that of a spider in motion, in depth.”

Quote Hitchcock
“Why is there a poster of Window on the courtyard in the room of Peter Parker ? Because Peter is a photographer, like Jimmy Stewart in Hitchcock… Photography is not innocent for Peter, it is part of his personality. People see him as a nerd or a geek, but in my opinion he is first and foremost an outsider. Window on the courtyard is a perfect reference to talk about this boy who spends his time observing the world and who, at a certain point, will have to decide to intervene. There are many mirrors, reflections, in the film. The camera is the symbol of Peter Parker. And Emma Stoneshe’s our Grace Kelly…”

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