Ok so watching Andrew Garfield come back for Spider-man No Way Home was one of the
best moment I’ve experienced in a cinema for a long time.
Yeah that might be because cinemas were closed for a good two years but beyond that,
the subtext and meaning behind the scene carried much more than it being just a simple cameo.
Throughout this video I wanna breakdown why Garfields return is so iconic
and all of the factors that contributed to what’s very much seen as his rise and fall.
This entire thing is prety much an underdog story but don’t call it a comeback because
the guy has always been excellent, we just didn’t know what we had until it was gone.
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Ok so Andrew Garfield was very much seen as the Black Sheep of the Spider-man Family.
Tobey Maguire very much had one of the best comic book trilogies
of all time and though his third film is often looked down upon,
the first two helped to save the genre in a time where we were still reeling off Batman and Robin.
Maguire was a very big part of a lot of people’s childhoods and his first film especially managed
to recaptured the origin story from the comics and update it in an exciting and modern way.
His fourth film was shelved and Sony ended up rebooting the character with Andrew Garfield
who’s first film released just a mere five years after Spider-man 3. The creative team leaned too
heavily into the gritty reboot thing which was fashionable at the time due to the Dark Knight
but this didn’t really fit the character. They also had the difficult task of telling an origin
story that had already been nailed and though I do think his first film has aged well over time,
when it was first released it very much felt like a movie nobody asked for.
Whilst all this was going on Marvel Studios had managed to build the phase 1 of their characters
and in the same year they launched their film The Avengers which has pretty much completely
changed the comic book movie genre. Fox had also just released X-Men First Class the year before
and it just felt like Sony were trying to ride the coattails of everyone else.
Two years later we got the Amazing Spider-man 2, which,
though enjoyable felt a bit overstuffed. You had the weird electro story, the green goblin one and
Peter trying to solve his parents disappearance which made it just feel kinda middling.
It also attempted to tackle the death of Gwen Stacy and though I absolutely love this in the
film, the movie disappointed a lot of fans at the time. However, the person who shone in the role
was Andrew Garfield and it felt like he was just getting the wrong material rather than actually
being bad. For me Garfield felt like he was ripped right out of the Ultimate Comics and he definitely
ahd the best costume. However he was competing in a world where we expected comic book films to all
be connected and at the time Maguire was still held up as the best of the best of the best sir.
Now Sony were due to announced The Amazing Spider-man 3 at Brazil Comic Con but after
he called in sick the whole film was scrapped. It would be just another two years until Tom
Holland appeared as the character in Civil War and Garfield was brushed under the rug
as being the person who neither started everything or had a connected universe.
However, the internet loves to rally for those that they think deserve a second chance and
much in the same way that The Snyder Cut gained a big following, his version of Spider-man did too.
Now Garfields return got the biggest reaction when I was in the theatre
and though that might not have been the case in every cinema,
I think it was probably the biggest talking point upon leaving the film.
There’s several reasons for this and I think one of the big ones is how it’s actually filmed and
revealed. In the scene we watch as Ned and MJ wish that they could find where Peter Parker is and
in doing so they open a doorway to one of the versions that was brought across during the spell.
Down a dark and shadowy alleyway we see almost the silhoutte of Spider-man
and he slowly jogs towards the camera. You can slightly make out his suit and on a first watch
this is done deliberately to make you look at it to see if you recognise who it is.
You’re kinda squinting as he runs towards the frame and then as he jumps through the portal,
you recognise the suit and then just as you have the ah-ha moment he unmasks and reveals his face.
Garfield even poses and breathes like it’s the end of either an amazing dance routine or a
magic trick in which the person performing it has just pulled off the impossible.
Though many of us believed he was coming back this moment was still incredible
and for as much as it worked in the context of the film, it also worked really well outside of it.
Now if you visited the internet at any point in
2021 then you probably saw that Andrew Garfield was shown in full costume,
on set filming what was clearly his comeback. However, he denied being in the film at several
opportunity and it very much became a meme where he was constantly saying he wasn’t the werewolf.
Without seeing the movie nobody could out and out disprove it
and we all know deep fakes are at the point now
where it would be possible to pull something off like this if you had the time to do it.
Thus people just kept hammering away at Garfield but he never budged
and instead just said he was looking forward to the movie.
This definitely helped to add to the ‘oh s**t’ moment and it’s from here that MJ
very much becomes the voice of the audience.
She can’t even believe it’s happening to the point that she even throws bread at him and youre kinda
stuck much like how she is almost questioning if it’s him. We wanna see him be spider-man, climb on
the ceiling, do some s**t because its a scene that you can’t really believe is actually happening.
They could have brought him back in the big action scene at the statue of liberty
but instead they toned things down, put it in a home setting and brought both back.
Our homes are where we very much grew up watching the characters and it’s here that
we fell in love with them. I used to go around to my Grandmas house every Saturday and I’d sit
and watch superhero shows whilst she made me and my sister dinner. Because of my memories
like this I massively relate with the setting and it’s almost like they’re bringing him back
in the place that I fell in love with Spider-man. Neds Grandma really adds to the scene and there’s
several generations in this moment showing how much Spider-man has touched us all.
This was so difficult to pull off for Marvel Studios and though they have the clout to do it,
there were a lot of things that they had to do to get the old cast members back.
Both Garfield and Maguire were people who didn’t exactly leave
the role on the best of terms but in Kevin Feige we trust.
The guy managed to get both Garfield and Tobey Maguire back
and have them interact with one another in very meaningful ways. The pair could’ve both
been reduced to being just cameos that pop in and leave but they had quite big roles
in a movie that was very much about the Tom Holland version finally stepping into the role.
The return of Andrew is iconic because it not only rights the wrongs of the past in
terms of how he left the role, but it also closes several arcs for his character.
He was someone who watched the love of his life die in front of him because of his own actions
and his version of Peter getting to save MJ really means a lot.
It all comes from this scene in which he returns
and I love how it all comes together from here on out.
Andrews return is iconic and obviously I’d love
to hear your thoughts on the scene in the comments below.
We’re running a competition right now and giving away 3 copies of Spider-Man No Way Home On The
15th Of March. All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning is like the video,
make sure you subscribe with notifications on and drop a comment below with your thoughts on
the episode. We pick the comments at random at the end of the month and the winners of
the last one are on screen right now so message me @heavySpoilers if that’s you.
If you want something else to watch then make sure you check
out our breakdown of perfect scene in Spider-Man Homecoming.
We break down the entire thing so it’s definitely worth checking out if you wanna know more.
With that out the way thank you for sitting through the video,
I’ve been Paul and I’ll see you next time. Take care, Peace