Stuck on Spidey

LOS ANGELES - Remember Spider-Man 2? The box-office hit of 2004? Not to worry if you are drawing a blank - there is another Spider- Man 2 opening in Singapore tomorrow.

This one is called The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and one of the amazing things about it is that only 10 years have passed since director Sam Raimi made the earlier version starring Tobey Maguire, titled, simply, Spider-Man 2.

Like the 2004 film, this new iteration, directed by Marc Webb and starring Andrew Garfield in the lead role, sees a young man settling into life as a crime- fighting superhero after acquiring some nifty powers from a spider bite.

As it is the second chapter - the first being Webb's 2012 hit The Amazing Spider-Man - the film-makers say they did not have to worry about how their hero got where he is. And they are probably hoping audiences do the same and forget there was ever another Spider-Man franchise at all.

At a press event in Los Angeles, Webb and his cast - Garfield along with Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx and Dane DeHaan - promise more action and less navel-gazing in this new instalment.

Says the director, whose biggest project before this was the 2009 indie romance (500) Days Of Summer: "Making the last movie was a real adventure, but we had to dabble with the origin story. This time, we are opening up with Spider-Man not just being Spider-Man, but Spider-Man loving being Spider-Man.

"He is a virtuoso superhero. He's doing incredible, extraordinary and amazing things and having a real blast doing it. The opening of the movie is just really filled with action - that iconic Spider-Man stuff that we all love and we really worked hard to develop that quippy DNA and all that really exciting stuff that we all loved from the comics."

Garfield, the 30-year-old British-American actor who reprises his role as Peter Parker/Spider-Man, says: "I think we now all feel ownership over this new chapter that we are embarking upon. Whereas in the first instalment, we had to establish ourselves, now we have the freedom to own the character and explore, expand the character and expand the relationships... So that's a huge step for us in this franchise."

When Webb unveiled his first Spider-Man film two years ago, there was some hand-wringing in the media over Hollywood's addiction to remakes and sequels, and whether the franchise needed to be relaunched at all. After all, Raimi's trio of Spider- Man films in 2002, 2004 and 2007 were winners on all fronts, wowing critics and earning US$2.5 billion at the global box office.

But when creative differences held up production on a fourth film, the powers-that-be decided to "reboot" the franchise with a new director and star.

The result was 2012's The Amazing Spider-Man. And after much fanboy fretting, it turned out to be a big crowd-pleaser, selling US$750 million in tickets and spawning a second, separate franchise.

That is how audiences ended up with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - a sequel to a movie that was a remake of another movie, all within the space of a decade and all based on a Marvel comic-book character created by Stan Lee in the 1960s.

This time around, though, the Raimi films are a dim memory.

At the press conference, few questions even acknowledge their existence, with reporters instead grilling Webb and the actors about their faithfulness to the original comics as a 91-year-old Lee, who has gone on record to say he would have picked Garfield over Maguire for the 2002 film, looks on.

Even though The Amazing Spider-Man was a clear success, Webb, 39, says he and his team went to considerable lengths to make improvements so they would get the iconic character just right, particularly given the exacting standards of hardcore comic-book fans.

This is why they spent ages on minute details such as the design of Spider-Man's eyes, which one reporter, who is wearing a full Spider-Man costume under his clothes, compliments Webb on.

That is one happy customer right there, but Garfield says it could just as easily have gone the other way. "There are so many ways of getting it wrong and there're not many ways of getting it right - whatever that means. And that can make or break a Spider-Man fan's experience of the whole movie.

"If the eyes aren't right, but everything else is right, that person's gonna come away and go online and be like, 'The eyes sucked. The eyes sucked. The eyes sucked. The eyes sucked. I couldn't see anything else'."

Webb confesses he wanted to change the costume for the sequel because "frankly, the first time around, I don't think we nailed it".

The costume in the first film "came from a notion of seeing how a kid would build this, and I stand by that effort. But this time around, we wanted to be iconic, straight up down the middle - the Spider- Man we know and love with those big eyes".

"And it's a very difficult thing to achieve," he adds, revealing that in one of the first modifications they toyed with, "Andrew put them on and he couldn't see a thing. He was walking into walls - very inappropriate for Spider-Man".

Now that they have perfected them, "it's one of the things I'm most proud of in terms of that process".

The film-makers also tried to update the story to reflect modern concerns, for example, about violence and terror.

Says Garfield, who had multiple meetings with Lee to discuss the character: "The challenge is reinventing it in a way that is true to what Stan intended all those years ago and also necessary for the culture we have right now, or the culture we're gonna have in 10 years. So there are themes in this film that are very pertinent now."

The new movie sticks closely to the original comics, however, in its depiction of Spider-Man's trickster, jester-like sense of humour, he adds.

But lest anyone thinks the superhero is having too good of a time, Garfield assures them that deep down inside, he is still as dark and tortured as the next superhero. He says: "I think what's great about him is that he keeps it light. He tries to make fun of himself, he tries to enjoy being a superhero and he makes light of his own personal struggles."

The actor has signed on to do The Amazing Spider-Man 3, which is due out in 2016, but there are plans for the franchise to extend farther, with a 2018 release date already set for the fourth film.

Producer Avi Arad, who has been involved with the franchise since 2002, says he does not see it, or any other title in the Marvel cinematic universe, running out of steam any time soon.

He says: "I've been doing it for a long time and every year, we get asked the same questions, 'Are you worried about saturation, how long do you think this will continue?'

"I think this will continue as long as the movies are good and as long as people are inspired by heroes. With the world the way it is, we need heroes so we can admire and aspire to something."

stlife@sph.com.sg

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 opens in Singapore tomorrow and will be reviewed in Life! on Friday.

This article was published on April 30 in The Straits Times.

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