The new film Spider-Man: No Way Home is certainly not short on fan service, but we could have gotten several more surprises. Featuring a storyline with Tom Holland’s Spider-Man and Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange fracturing the multiverse, the film allows for characters to come in from alternate movie universes. This might seem obvious by this point in the story, but before we move along, be warned that MAJOR SPOILERS are ahead for Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Ahead of the film’s release, it had been promoted that the multiverse would bring back Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock, Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin, and Jamie Foxx’s Electro, among other supervillains. There was still speculation over whether or not Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield would also come into the fray as their own incarnations of Peter Parker. That was the rumor, but none of us really knew for sure until the film premiered this month. Even if most fans were expecting it, it still made for an incredible surprise to see both actors indeed appear in the sequel.
At one point during the screenwriting process, there were other legacy characters from the past Spider-Man film franchises that almost made it in. Writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers opened up about the script in a new interview with Variety and noted how their plan was to “write the script that is the kitchen sink” with the idea they’ll be able to get everybody they want. McKenna says that “like Peter’s wish, it became a nightmare, and it required very, very talented people to help us not die at the end.”
Three legacy characters named that were initially planned to come in are Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane Watson and Sally Field’s Aunt May from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy along with Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy from The Amazing Spider-Man films. Ultimately, the early scripts just wound up with way too many characters that there wasn’t a way to do them all justice. Sommers suggested they may have “bit off more than we could chew” with the idea and trimmed down the cameos. If someone didn’t fit into the story in a way that made sense, they were axed.
“We went down different roads with different characters that just didn’t fit,” McKenna said. “We can’t get into the details of that because it might be the kind of thing where they’ll find a way to explore those ideas. So I’d hate to spoil anything, because I think we had a lot of fun.”
He added: “The most important thing is this wasn’t just going to be a bunch of fan service. It wasn’t going to be just curtain calls for everybody. We had to figure out a way that this [movie] told the story of this Peter Parker right now, organically coming off of where we left the last movie. That was always our north star. Yeah, it’s a big fun idea. Let’s not forget Peter. You can’t get lost in the mix. It has to be his emotional journey.”
Spider-Man: No Way Home is currently playing in movie theaters everywhere.
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