From the very beginning, The Amazing Spider-Man franchise was viewed with skepticism, because the announcement came less than three years after Sam Raimi’s trilogy had ended. It looked like a cynical way for Sony to continue milking its most lucrative cash cow by rebooting the web-slinger in record time, which isn’t far from the truth.
The movie was initially pitched as a lower-budgeted affair that would be made for under $100 million, foregoing the excess that blighted Raimi’s Spider-Man 3. Instead, by the time The Amazing Spider-Man hit the big screen, it came armed with production costs of $230 million, with the creative team opting to go bigger and double down on the CGI fuckery.
One thing the film definitely had working in its favor was Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, who provided sparkling chemistry as Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy. Their rapport and performances helping to paper over the substantial cracks in the narrative. The sequel was nothing short of a clusterfuck of its own though, and in a new interview shared by The Direct, Garfield admitted he regularly fought with Sony exec Amy Pascal.
“It was only beautiful. I got to meet Emma Stone and work with her and Sally Field. I had karma with Amy Pascal, who was a mother figure, and we would fight, but ultimately, we loved each other on a deep level. We tried to meet as much in the middle as we could in terms of why I wanted to do this role, and what her needs were as the head of the studio.”
The Amazing Spider-Man 3 and 4 already had release dates locked in before the studio pulled the plug on a second Spidey franchise, and Garfield has been open in how frustrated he was at not being able to do justice to a character he’d loved since he was a kid. Maybe he’ll be able to atone for that in December’s No Way Home, if he’s even in it.
