"Hi." "My name is Alex Kurtzman." "I'm one of the writers of The Amazing Spider-Man 2." "My name is Jeff Pinkner." "I am also one of the writers of The Amazing Spider-Man 2." "I am Matt Tolmach." "I am one of the producers of The Amazing Spider-Man 2." "I'm Avi Arad." "I'm a producer on the movie." "Alex, you're also an executive producer." "I am, Matt." "Thank you for noting that." "Yeah." "You forgot." "l appreciate that." "That's my favorite logo." "You see, this is cool." "lt is a cool logo." "We made it many, many years ago when...." "l remember I took shit for actually spending some money to do it and at the time it was 80 grand." "Can you imagine?" "What was the first logo you did it on?" "It was done for X-Men." "X-Men." "That's what I thought." "Yeah." "That's it." "The first one." "Yeah." "And what was interesting that all those people..." "...were clapping to the logo." "Right." "That's what we call branding." "Louder than to the logo of X-Men." "After they saw the movie, of course, it changed." "Look. it's Richard Parker." "That's amazing." "So this is one of the things that we were sort of wrestling with coming into this movie Alex and Jeff, you guys wanted to crack in the script right away was the sort of ongoing question of what happened with Peter Parker's parents." "Yeah. I think-- ln the first movie I think it was the thing that intrigued us the most was that it was the part of Peter Parker's story that hadn't been told yet." "Questions were raised but never answered." "So when we saw the first movie, I think our first instinct was we needed the answer to those questions." "And we kind of loved the Rashomon idea of the same moment retold now through the father's point of view after having seen the opening of the first Spider-Man movie..." "...through the son's point of view." "l remember reading that first draft with that feeling like, "l've seen this but from a different point of view."" "Yeah." "Now I'm gonna see what happened from the parents' point of view." "And, of course, one of the things that has always been present in the comic books, but comic book fans feel very" "Are very split about, is whether or not the story of Peter's parents is valid..." "...to the canon." "Right." "Right." "This is more or less recapturing what you saw in movie one and then going into some of the issues that we never got to explain." "We start right here." "This is the jet I wish I had but I don't." "We-- I wish you had it too." "Yeah." "It would have made traveling to New York to shoot a lot easier." "We're gonna be fine, Mary." "What was the controversy over his parents, Jeff?" "What were you referring to?" "l think a lot of peop" "You know, in the comic book his parents are gone and it's very much the death of Uncle Ben that creates him as Spider-Man and sort of sets him on his journey." "But as would any real human being" "Well, actually the parents' story was" "Comics in the old days-- Not now, unfortunately so they're not as good." "were kind of a reflection of the times." "Right." "So the story of the parents was absolutely a by-product of the Rosenberg trial." "Right." "Exactly." "And then it was...." "Unfortunately, the Rosenbergs didn't have a good ending so they kept it like that." "But, of course, they build the Spider-Man universe into it." "And this man is a great actor." "l mean, both of them." "Yeah." "Avi, when did your personal fascination with comic books start?" "ln the '20s." "At 16 ." "But we didn't have comics until I was 16 ." "But I had total fascination of mythology and history of the world." "The Old World." "My contemporaries, like the Inquisition and, you know, stuff like that." "And back then, they really gave voice to kids in a way that other media didn't." "Not if you thought you could escape." "Richard!" "Mary!" "This set was kind of amazing because you guys built it on- lt was" "A fuse-- lt was a fuselage that we built on a-- Like a gimbal." "Yeah." "lt shook." "We called it the rotisserie." "And it rotated and.... lt's a lot of the same stuff that Kubrick did in..." "...200 1." "But now...." "Yeah." "ln 2014 ." "Yeah." "ln 2014 ." "Which we were gonna call this." "That's right." "Personally, I adore this actress." "Yes." "We all do." "Roosevelt." "So it was really hard" "Personally and professionally." "She's amazing." "Embeth." "We loved the idea too of setting up something that the mystery at the beginning of the movie that Peter would inherit later in the second half and he would find it right at the moment when he needed some guidance the most, when he was the most lost." "Yeah." "And also part of what excited us about doing a sequence like this in the opening of this movie is that Spider-Man had never" "lt-- lt's always been so contained to New York and it's always been these wonderful sequences that take place in New York." "We were really attracted to the idea of opening up the universe right away to sort of a bigger sequence." "Particularly one that didn't involve Peter which was kind of a rarity, I think..." "...making a Spider-Man movie." "Right." "This scene got a lot of publicity in the Daily Bugle and other New York papers." "That was like a big deal that these people disappeared..." "...in the plane crash." "Yeah." "And there's a quality to this action, which is more.... lt feels more like a classic action movie and not necessarily like a, you know, in quotations, "comic book movie."" "Yeah." "This is-- l totally agree, Jeff." "This is-- You know, our DP Dan Mindel did such a beautiful job of photographing this movie." "And this felt like a real departure from what we'd done before in Spider-Man movies." "I think that was-- l think a big part of our collective goal was figuring out how to open the world up and make the world bigger." "Without losing the intimacy of Spider-Man." "But also expanding the universe around him." "That's right." "And one of the first things we talked about when we sat down to make this movie to write this movie, was it's" "Peter's growing up." "We wanted to make a more mature story." "Peter's growing up." "We wanted to make a more mature story." "We wanted to tell a story about how you go from teenager to young adult." "That's exactly right." "And the idea that" "And this moment, now you understand how Spider-Man became Spider-Man." "And as we saw the" "And this may be my single..." "...favorite shot of the film." "Yeah." "This is probably the best example in this movie of tremendous move forward with the technology." "Yeah." "Yep." "This is...." "The way the suit ripples..." "...sells the reality of it." "Jerome..." "lt's a redesign of the suit..." "...and his team." "...from the last movie." "Which was by popular demand." "Yep." "The fans had said they didn't love the last one, and...." "And we want them to love everything." "We're here to please." "And this is perfect." "But more important, this cgi never looked so real." "So kudo to Sony Animation and Jerome Chen." "Just awesome." "This is Paul Giamatti who had gone on late-night television a bunch of years ago and announced that it was his dream to play the Rhino in a Spider-Man movie, so...." "We aim to please." "We-- Yeah." "Once again, we aim to please." "And here he is as Aleksei Sytsevich, the precursor to the Rhino." "Spider-Man!" "Hello, pedestrians." "Just a cool way to open the movie too because there really hadn't been a car chase of this scope either..." "Yeah." "Correct." "...in a Spider-Man movie." "Interesting, so it" "There's a law in New York that prohibits you from driving a car faster than 30 miles an hour when you're filming a car chase." "So some of this sequence, we actually" "The bigger action stuff and the driving had to be filmed in Rochester." "Which we had to double for downtown Manhattan." "The fun of this too was figuring out" "You know, whenever you're designing an action sequence you wanna figure out how you're putting these story threads setting up these big emotional ideas and the fun of building the sequence together was watching all of these different moments kind of collide you know, literally and figuratively." "And I think that part of what got us the most excited was the idea of, in the middle of all this Peter getting the phone call that he was missing graduation." "It felt definitively Spider-Man you know, to be in the middle of this moment, but then be called back to this incredibly intimate, very normal" "That's his life in a nutshell." "That's right." "I thought it was great what you guys did here." "The idea that-- ln the middle of this chase he stops to save somebody's life." "This is really the beginning of the plot with Max Dillon, the great Jamie Foxx." "But in the middle of all this, he stops to extend a hand to a citizen." "Yeah." "And that's the beginning of this story." "That he saves a guy who ends up sort of worshipping him, as a result." "And then things go terribly wrong later." "But it's sort of-- lt's all happening in this first chase sequence." "It's fun to look for the small moments that are the Spider-Man moments." "Yeah." "Like stopping to help a normal guy on the road." "That's right." "lt's" " Those are the moments that you try and build the whole scene around." "The shoot-them-up stuff is the easy part." "It's the small, intimate moments that connect you to the bigger ideas and the characters are" "And the other thing we tried to do with this sequence is what makes it uniquely Spider-Man, is his sense of humor." "Yeah." "And the idea that he's actually this awkward teen but when he puts on the suit, he can be somebody else and uses his sense of humor to disarm the bad guys." "Yeah." "Very traditionally Spider-Man in that way." "Okay." "Stop it!" "Stop it!" "And there's a quality of joy to everything he does unlike some more brooding superheroes or you're put upon" "Also get the feeling he's come a long way since the last movie." "He's really good at being Spider-Man right now." "Hey, I'm sorry, I'm running a bit late." "I got stuck in some traffic." "Your timing is terrible." "It started already." "I know, I'm sorry." "Where are you?" "There she is." "Amazing Emma Stone." "The wonderful Emma Stone." "Are those sirens?" "It's a shame that she and Andy Garfield didn't have any chemistry." "ln this film." "Right?" "Yeah." "First time I've heard you call him "Andy."" "Yeah." "The first time...." "Andy Garfield?" "Who's Andy Garfield?" "Some guy you went to camp with or is that--?" "Andy Garfield." "Andy Garfield used to beat me up at summer camp. lf you're out there listening, I'm still mad." "That is Cal McCrystal who was somebody that Andrew brought into the production who's a sort of an expert in physical comedy." "Who's Andrew?" "That's what we call the lead of the movie. l-- lt's-- He goes by a different name with you." "Good morning, esteemed faculty and families of my fellow graduates." "He's also named Dean Conway named after Gerry Conway..." "...who was the writer..." "Author of the-- ...of the Turning Point comic book that a lot of this movie..." "...was taken from." "That's correct." "And in a really strange turn Gerry Conway and I worked together for two years on Hercules:" "The Legendary Journeys." "And I had no idea he was the writer of Spider-Man." "And did you not also work for Sam Raimi doing that?" "I did." "Sam Raimi gave me my first job." "Bring it all back." "Really comes back." "So he gave me my first job but it was kind of amazing because I worked with Gerry who, at the time, was sort of like professor emeritus at the office and was such a talented writer, a wonderful guy..." "...talented writer." "So cool." "So when this came up and we, you know...." "We started digging into the comics to discover he had written it was an amazing thing, almost I don't know, 15 or 20 years later." "So we named him..." "...after Gerry." "Very cool." "Good story, Al." "Thanks." "Thanks, Matt." "You made that up now, didn't you?" "l actually have no idea who he is." "That Chinese grandfather is actually..." "...a descendant from the Hans." "Yes." "I'll take that." "That's not yours." "So Rhino tattoos and a hammer sickle" "Tat-- No." "Were these boxers..." "Boxers." "...product placement, or...?" "I'm not sure we had a deal on the boxers." "I'm sure." "l think they were actually his." "Right?" "And there she is." "Everybody's Aunt May." "Sets the muster." "Sally Field." "The spectacular Sally Field." "Stan Lee." "Hey, Stan." "Does he ever get tired of doing cameos?" "Like, "You know what guys?" "Does he ever get tired of doing cameos?" "Like, "You know what guys?" "l don't need to do another." -"Enough."" ""Enough. I've only done 300,000 cameos."" "Can't make one of these without him." "He is fun to have around." "Wait, do that again." "Do that again." "Avi, when did you--?" "When did you start working with Stan?" "When did that all begin?" "I think in...." "Working with Stan started, I think, in '89, '88." "The first comic you were working on?" "First time we met at the Bel-Air Hotel." "Yeah." "And...." "And I promised him that within his lifetime" "And he was much younger." "he's going to do two things:" "He's going to see Spider-Man on the big screen and one of these days, we are gonna do my favorite character." "He said, "lt's not Spider-Man?"" "I said, "Of course Spider-Man, but there are others."" "He said, "Which one?" And I said, "Iron Man."" "He said, "l love Iron Man."" "I said, "You love it so much that Tony Stark looks exactly like you."" "Did you ever notice it?" "No, I actually didn't." "Mustache." "l never made that connection." "Tony Stark is him." "Absolutely him." "Look at the pictures and you'll see." "It's like incredible." "That's amazing." "Because it was Howard Hughes." "Don't go too far." "lt's good to see you." "And did he--?" "Did he envision...?" "What was his take on sort of the--?" "On what lron Man became." "It's a little bit different than what it was." "Not really. I think...." "l think the difference was that iron Man at the time came in during wartime." "Yeah." "And Iron Man now came in peacetime where guns and battle, the whole theory of war and weapon and technology changed because today, the bad guys get the same weapon..." "...the good guys get." "Yeah." "So the idea in Iron Man right from the start was that his dilemma is going to come from a heartless kind of fun guy, to all of a sudden realizing that his own shrapnels almost killed him in a place in the world that he didn't think..." "...he even does business." "Right." "Stan loved it." "Stan is a great pacifist." "Just wanna interrupt this moment here..." "Yes." "...to just reference what's happening in the movie." "So that's, obviously, Denis Leary playing Captain Stacy." "And this is the moment where sort of all the reverie is interrupted by, you know, the realization that Peter has-- ls essentially faced with breaking the promise that we ended the last movie with when he promised Captain Stacy he would not put Gwen in harm's way." "And so it all seemed like it was lovely and roses and now being Spider-Man has caught up with him should we say." "And this is a beautiful scene that we shot in Chinatown outside our favorite Chinese restaurant." "Where we accidentally, one time, walked out without paying the bill." "Avi went back the next day." "Avi had to go back the next day." "So, what was it called?" "Oh, my God. lt-- l was just there." "It's the greatest restaurant." "While you think about it, I will say we sat down and talked it through with Emma.... lt" " She said that she felt that she didn't take enough power in the scene." "Peter had been doing this to her many, many times." "Right." "Right." "And we" "And, of course, she was right." "And it was her idea to-- This moment of:" ""l break up with you."" "Right." "That was her." "That was her." "You're right. "l break up with you."" "Joe's Shanghai, by the way, is the restaurant." "They were shocked when I came back to pay them." "Yeah." "lt was unbelievable." "Well, you can only pay cash there." "They only take cash, and we had somehow" "We'd eaten ourselves into oblivion and we walked out without paying..." "...and we didn't remember, so-- -l thought you paid?" "No. I was pretty sure you paid." "l'm kidding." "The thing that's tricky about this scene, though is that it's one of those weird scenes where everything seem" "There's clearly so much chemistry and love between the two of them yet they have to break up." "And the audience also has to be on their side and understand why he's doing it without disliking him or being mad at her." "So we went through many drafts of the scene because it was" " There's always like a couple scenes in a movie that you know you're gonna be rewriting 7000 times." "And this was definitely one of them." "Yes." "Yeah." "Architecture is built on the movie of-- The architecture of the movie is built on their relationship." "You have to start them in the right place." "If you don't, then it just doesn't land." "That's right." "This" " So this was a tricky scene." "The unique moment here is the first time that Gwen Stacy..." "...is breaking up with him." "Yeah." "I thought that was a very well-written moment to give Gwen the impetus to say, "l think it's over, so I'm saying goodbye now." "That's it." "You cannot keep on doing it to me."" "And it's a very strong thing." "Very different than Gwen in the books." "And she points out the dilemma of his life which is" " As she says, she loves that he's Spider-Man." "She loves that he takes care of the world and she recognizes that that may put her in jeopardy but she doesn't mind it, but she loves Peter, the boy, more." "...but she doesn't mind it, but she loves Peter, the boy, more." "And sort of that would be the dilemma if you were a superhero." "Yeah." "lt's" " How do you square your regular life with your life looking out and being responsible for everybody else?" "One of my favorite moments." "Me too." "I always thought the movie" "Yeah. lt's-- lt's really.... lt speaks to so much about what is so wonderful about Spider-Man." "But it also was one of Andrew's favorite moments." "Because he, I think, had a lot of experience being bullied as a kid." "And so one of the early things he had after our first draft in talking to him was, "Wish we could find a way to show that Spider-Man protects kids from bullies, and...."" "It was interesting timing because it became such a hot-button issue..." "...right as we were filming the movie." "Yeah." "Yeah." "But it was really wonderful because it felt very, very Spider-Man." "Yeah." "That would have been interesting to see an edit starting the movie right here." "Yeah." "Remember that fish that was from catering that day on the set." "This is a Buster Keaton gag." "Andrew and the gentleman who" "And Cal." "And Cal." "Designed that." "We all talked about how amazing Buster Keaton's physical comedy was." "And so they tried to build quite a bit of it into his-- into Spider-Man's physicality." "Hey, you're that spider guy." "This guy is great." "He's great." "Great face." "Guy is great." "Usually, I see him hanging on a wing of a plane." "I love that." "He's not the police, he's not a fireman." "What gives him the right to get involved in other people's business?" "l'll tell you one thing..." "That's awesome." "...that was-- ls really done well across these movies is the costuming for Gwen." "lt's just spectacular." "Yeah." "She really" "Deb Scott." "She's the best." "Deb Scott." "Amazingly talented." "She knows he's there." "Isn't that Emma's and Andrew's dog?" "Yes." "lt is their dog." "Yeah." "Yeah." "Peter, honey?" "Can I come in?" "I love this bit." "Peter, the final starts at 9, honey." "Good to be a star." "l wanted my dog there, but" "You got your dog there." "Your dog did fine." "Your dog was there." "Not in the shot." "Not in the shot." "Well, you could have." "You said your final was at 9, and you're gonna take my car into the shop." "No!" "You can't come in. I'm so naked." "We tried to do this gag on set, practically, with the boot." "Remember?" "Very well." "After 17 ,000 takes." "Yeah." "And then, "Okay, we're going digital." -lt became hot cost." "Yeah." "What happened to your face?" "It's filthy." "lt is?" "Yes." "Oh, yeah, yeah, I was cleaning the chimney." "We have no chimney." "This...." "This whole run about the:" ""We have no chimney"?" "Yes." "It was about the garden, doing something" "Yes. "l was gardening, I was...."" "Yeah." "Yeah." "Potatoes or something?" "Right." "It's so much fun to-- lt's the best thing ever to improvise with just like-- lt's the best." "Garfield loves that." "It just keeps everything real fresh." "Yeah." "Marc was excited to have us throw things to him." "And it gives you great options in the editing room." "l loved this idea of Marc's, by the way." "Yeah." "This kind of very, you know, surreal dreamlike flashback to his childhood." "Beautiful." "lt was really beautiful." "One of the things that I regret here and wish we had done more of was placing Peter's drive to know more about his parents a little bit more in the foreground of the first act." "Because I feel like right around here, you are starting to kind of feel like you're wanting to know what he's doing other than just maintaining." "And-- -lt's something we talked about a lot." "How do you dramatize somebody actively..." "...trying to-- -ln denial." "ln denial." "Yeah." "Trying to prove a negative." "A very tricky thing to do." "Right." "Here's the great Jamie Foxx." "And this is also one of those things where-- lt's interesting when you have an actor who's as amazing as Jamie a scene where, "You're gonna introduce your character and they're gonna talk in the mirror in this really broad sort of comical way." lt's either the best idea or the worst." "Yeah." "You know?" "And Jamie, I think brought such kind of sad humanity to the part that it felt like a really.... in his delivery of it, there's something weirdly profound..." "...about the introduction of this guy." "Yeah, it's heartbreaking." "And in a lesser actor's hands, I think it could have felt, you know, broad." "Yeah." "He grounded it." "I remember we did a table read before we set out into production and then Jamie went off and we were all talking..." "...and he came back in costume." "Yeah." "Yes." "With the gap in his teeth." "With the comb-over, and he'd just become Max." "And he started talking to us as Max." "He wouldn't break character." "That's right." "lt was amazing." "That's the other joy of working with actors like that, you know, who" "Just" " They're just" "They go into it." "They chameleon into their" "She's talking to Harvey." "Weinstein?" "Yeah." "That was Harvey." "Double shift on Thursday." "Okay, bye." "It was tricky also figuring out like how do you evolve Aunt May's character?" "There's just been so much Aunt May in all the Spider-Man movies." "So, what do we give her that's new and fresh and different..." "...in this movie?" "Yeah." "And the idea that she was trying to work two jobs trying to hide one of them from Peter." "She didn't want him to worry that she was scrounging for money..." "Yeah." "...felt like a nice evolution in her character." "And some of that came out of our" "Watch the disappearing lettuce." "Here." "Watch the lettuce." "Lettuce." "lt won't go away for a little while." "Also the idea that we wanted to introduce that she knew or had a very strong suspicion that Peter was Spider-Man." "We wanted to play that as more" "There's always that sort of fun..." "Yeah, Aunt May a little-- ...gray area." "That she looks at him like she's waiting for him to tell her." "I do, and I won't anymore." "But she's also smart enough not to confront him with it." "Here it comes." "Still lettuce." "Still lettuce." "And...." "Ready?" "Hold." "Wait for it." "And...." "No lettuce." "The lettuce is gone." "That's a very special kind of lettuce that disappears." "The disappearing lettuce." "Yeah." "Max hassled and disrespected." "Logjam." "Come on, come on, come on." "Watch it, buddy." "Hey, let's go." "Oscorp Industries is proud to announce the world's first electromagnetic power grid." "This is a fun idea too the idea that Max had submitted all of his designs to Oscorp that they just took it." "And because he was so invisible and anonymous..." "...they steal his things without..." "Take advantage." "Yeah." "...you know, without him knowing." "And without any kind of liability." "Right." "for the entire city's energy supply?" "I submitted a lot of designs for the power grid and they used a lot of them, and I noticed that...." "B.J. Novak." "Amazing." "Webb had worked with him directing an episode of The Office." "Right." "They were pals." "So he agreed to do this." "That amazing" " The brilliant" "That just plays Smythe" " What?" "That photograph." "The big photograph that was in the lobby wasn't that some special photograph?" "It was actually on loan from a gallery." "A very expensive...." "Mark Friedberg, who is our production designer..." "Right." "...did an incredible job." "He really did an incredible job." "And that was something he brought to the set that day." "Not from his personal collection." "l love this scene." "Very sweet moment." "l do too." "It's also fun, sort of, when you're kind of writing a movie where you have all these characters, to figure out how you're gonna bring them together in an organic way sort of finding the, "Wait, maybe Gwen and Max could actually--"" "Just happen into each other in the elevator and then what emerges from the scene as a result of that." "It becomes a scene about they're both talking..." "...about the same character..." "About Spider-Man." "...and he doesn't know it" "Yeah." "Then there's nice double meaning to the scene." "I love that." "I love the moment where" "They're both looking at the screen." "Yeah." "Yeah." "And it" " But it's-- lt is that kind of thing where it's like you" "You wanna try and bring it back to Spider" "That was always the studio note, was like, how is it Spider-Man?" "How is it about Spider-Man?" "What's happening with Spider-Man?" "Or Peter." "And then those kinds of questions find their way into answers like:" ""Then he appears, suddenly they're talking about him."" "What do these two have in common?" "Yeah." "Exactly." "Sixty-third floor." "It was nice to meet you, Max." "Wait." "She remembered my name." "So I think this was one of our more radical ideas in the film was to posit that Harry Osborn was the Green Goblin and not Norman." "Fortunately, we found this spectacular actor in Dane." "And we certainly knew it would be a very controversial choice to kill Norman Osborn in his introductory scene." "It's dark in there." "Your eyes will adjust." "That being said maybe he's not really dead." "We're sort of keeping the lights on." "One does not know." "Yeah." "Who knows?" "There may be a scene we didn't show anybody." "There might be." "There might be a scene." "The great Chris Cooper." "Might be a reason to see another one." "Yeah." "Will you speak a little about this day?" "And the performance that Marc got out of Chris here?" "Oh, it was incredibly powerful to see you know, such an incredible, world-class actor." "And it was really-- lt was sort of a master class between Webb and Chris Cooper." "And we were all standing there watching." "He started reading the line much more...." "Webb really-- l mean, it was sort of a beautiful collaboration between the two of them." "And, you know, getting him to a place where he's having this sort of brutally honest hate-love-filled conversation with this son who he knows he's treated poorly, but feels he's done it for a reason." "There are so many sort of layers to this scene, and...." "And one of the very fine dances that has to be taken in a superhero movie is you want the characters to be slightly larger than life." "And at the same point, you need to keep them in the reality of the film." "Yeah." "ln the world." "That was always the idea." "And you can see his-- The disease has" "Has really matured in Norman." "And Harry has no idea what his sort of, quote-unquote, "legacy" is." "And Norman calls him out." "It's the beginning of sort of the horrific chapter for Harry." "But when you find sort of a-- When you're breaking a story and, you know, everyone sort of agrees like:" ""Oh, this would be a great way to introduce the character, both characters," it becomes this incredible gift." "Because, suddenly, the challenge as writers, is to say, "Okay, we have a lot to accomplish in one scene."" "And it has to set up" "A little like we were saying with the Peter-Gwen breakup scene it has to set up the entire context for their relationship but also propel Harry forward into his drive for the movie but be loaded with all of this subtext, and...." "And...." "And at the same time, you've got, you know, a father who looks like a goblin." "That's also-- There was a larger idea about sort of you know, the sins of the fathers." "And, you know, it's a bit of a parallel to Peter's story." "Mysterious mythic father figures who" "Yeah." "Who ultimately were never there for their sons." "And the work-- And we spent a lot of time talking about how the work that these two men did both to better the world, and then in order to save Norman's life really played consequences in their sons' lives." "It defines them." "In many ways for both boys, the film is about a search for their father." "That's right." "And a search to come to terms with the legacy of their fathers." "Avi, didn't you wanna call it Sins of the Father at one point?" "Was that based on a comic book?" "We talked about calling the last movie that." "No." "That's something that we wanted to do on the last one." "We felt that as we are making a new Spider-Man we needed to...." "To be provocative." "And kind of Sins of the Father is intelligent, intellectual and thought-provoking." "And we felt that the movie will get more attention." "Oh, I see." "You wanted to do it for the first" " For the" "For the first Amazing Spider-Man." "For the last movie." "Got it." "The Sins of the Father was not a comic." "But this movie had a very specific connection to the sins of the father, of the idea." "It begins with hard work." "Change begins with persistence and commitment." "Mr. Osborn changed the world." "And now it's up to each of us to ensure that his hopes and dreams remain alive." "But not today." "In this moment, another one of the threads of the film is set up." "This idea that Gwen has an opportunity to go off to Oxford and study." "And, in fact, what became our secret name for the film was London Calling." "London Calling, that was actually the production name of the movie." "If you came to visit us on the set, the signs said London Calling." "Because you've gotta be careful not to advertise." "Designed like the London Underground?" "Correct." "I mean, Mr. Smythe." "Happy birthday." "Now, the Electro eels did come from an anim-- l think the idea was from an animated originally." "Yeah?" "Right, Avi?" "Yep." "And...." "And it just felt like kind of the perfect" "The perfect way into making him Electro." "lt's actually-- lt's good pseudoscience." "Yeah, exactly." "Especially a multitude of them." "Yeah." "I actually just watched a nature show about the hunt..." "...for this sort of mythic electric eel..." "Yeah." "...that was burning people, like literally charring their bodies." "And they showed footage of a-- This was crazy." "Of an alligator..." "...biting an enormous electric eel..." "And getting fried?" "...and getting completely fried." "Yeah." "Oh, my God." "Oh, my God." "You see his body just sort of shake." "The power of those things is unbelievable." "Did he come back to life, turn into an evil alligator?" "He turned into Electro, the alligator." "Allectro." "He became the Lizard." "Exactly." "He became the Lizard." "No." "That did not happen." "So for the record, can anyone listening to this go pitch that movie?" "No." "We own that." "We own that." "Okay." "Just to be clear." "Well, I think it just spoke to sort of the" "The horrible genetic experiments that were being run at Oscorp." "And with very little oversight." "Love this shot." "Great shot." "Remember, this was Colin on the descender rig falling." "lt's three shots cut into one, right?" "Yep, that's right." "This took a long time to build, this-- To really make it right." "And we had several conversations what" "What pushes it too far and makes it too scary." "Yeah." "We had to dial this back and forth a number of times to get it so that it was-- lt was-- lt was enough, but not too much." "System restored." "Have a nice day." "Harry Oscorp's been under intense public scrutiny in the wake of Dr. Connors' recent breach of trust." "You mean people are pissed off because he tried to turn everyone in New York City into giant lizards." "Our boy from Brazil?" "Right?" "That's right." "Given that all the animal hybrid programs he was...." ""Be that as it may...."" ""Given that...."" "This was a fun scene to write because it's always fun to put a 20-year-old kid at the head of a corporation with a bunch of attorneys and figure out how that scene is gonna go." "And it was also-- l think part of what was fun about this and necessary about it was showing that he was such a cunning guy before he becomes the Goblin." "You know, when his dad refers to his fierce intelligence, I think the idea of-- lt was" " The fun of writing this scene was finding a way to show that he could outsmart even the toughest lawyers in the room." "And, simultaneously, that he knows he's under a great deal of pressure." "Yeah." "There's a self-awareness about him that was interesting too." "He's very aware that he's probably surrounded by a bunch of people that would way rather him not be there." "Her name was not Felicia in the script." "No." "And it was like an on-the-day change somehow, right?" "What was the--?" "Was actually somebody at the studio..." "...made that suggestion." "Right." "Nod to the comic." "As a nod to the comic and an option." "Right." "And we thought it was a fun idea." "because Felicia works for me." "Would anybody like to speak up?" "Well, good." "Then you can all keep your jobs a little longer." "Sir, there's a Peter Parker here to see you." "Felicia, I wanna see every file on this list." "Every single one." "The next scene is one that we actually used to audition..." "Yeah." "Dane." "..." "Dane for" "Yeah." "Dane." "..." "Dane for" "We auditioned Harry Osborns." "And it was a scene that these two guys who had never met let alone worked together, really, really connected over." "What was cool about it too, though, was" "Matt, I remember you talking about this quite a bit too." "Because in the previous iterations..." "...of Spider-Man, he...." "Yeah." "This was a sort of re-contextualization of their relationship." "Right." "Different." "They hadn't been friends since they were children together." "When their fathers were" "A new element we were bringing in." "Right." "And it was interesting because trying to, again like, figure out a way to layer the scene with all of that..." "...and not have it feel like exposition." "Yeah." "I kind of know exactly what you're going through right now." "lf you remember a flashback" "Where they were playing chess." "The day of his parents' funeral." "lt was quite a while." "Where you actually saw him." "Yeah." "Yeah." "I think you saw him and Norman." "Yes, it was a cool scene." "The scene was-- lt was a very cool scene. lt was the-- lt was at the fu" " At the wake..." "...of Peter's parents." "Peter's parents." "And Peter was sort of this lonely child in this room of adults." "That's right." "And he snuck off to his dad's study and in walked Harry, and Harry said" "They started playing chess, and it was kind of a metaphor." "And I can't remember the exact dialogue." "But it was this kind of lovely moment of these boys connecting and finding each other." "And then in the doorway" "And their relationship had all been about going to their fathers' labs." "Watching their dads' work." "Watching their dads' experiment." "But you saw Norman..." "ln the doorway." "...watching the boys." "Right, it buttoned with they turn, and there's this sort of silhouetted man at the beginning of his degenerative disease in the doorway holding onto this cane." "And it was a pretty cool, sort of weird, creepy scene." "It was also one of those scenes that you go...." "Well...." "Do we really need this to tell the story?" "Do you really need all that back-story?" "This was the first scene shot on the High Line." "This was not actually the High Line." "No, it's not the High Line." "This is on the water in Brooklyn." "Right by DUMBO." "Yeah." "Not the first scene shot on the High Line." "The last scene shot on the High Line." "The Gwen and Peter walk-and-talk..." "...before." "There is a scene on the High Line." "lt comes later." "What's funny about that is that we went to see Andrew in New York the first time I met him." "And just to sort of talk to him and tell him about the story." "And right before I met him I took a walk on the High Line, which was pretty new." "Yeah." "Yeah." "And it's just so spectacular." "Who is she?" "Her name's Gwen." "Gwen Stacy." "Gwen Stacy." "She works for you." "Really?" "She works for me?" "She does work-study at Oscorp." "ls she a model employee?" "You know, when my father sent me away.... lt's so funny, like these are two kids from different pl" "The same neighborhood, but different planets." "The tough part about this whole section of it is just the sheer volume of information that you need to get across without having it feel...." "Expositional." "Yeah." "Exposition-y." "Like it had to be rooted in this emotional reconnection these boys were having." "Yeah." "And the idea that really held it all together was that they both had all these questions about their dad." "That they both, as you were saying earlier were very much orphaned by their fathers in different specific contexts." "That's the real link between them." "And this is a scene that even after written and shot, we went back and forth on several times." "How much information needed to be in the movie." "Andrew Garfield is one of the great rock skimmers of our time." "So that was all done practically." "That was, what, 200 skips?" "Yeah, 250." "Two-fifty." "Yeah." "I've seen you skip a rock." "l can skip it like 180, 185 times." "Yeah, Tolmach can skip a rock." "l actually can." "He's-- l know, I've seen it." "Yeah. I come from a long line of rock skippers, yeah." "That's what they did for a living?" "Your people don't skip rocks well." "My people?" "No." "You have other talents." "You're just not good at that." "No." "We sink rocks." "We don't do" "For what?" "Maybe eventually everything's gonna be all right." "Yeah, I just wish I had time for "eventually."" "Who was he?" "Maxwell Dillon." "Electrical engineer." "No associates or friends to speak of." "And the tricky part was always just, when you have all these characters..." "...how do you balance them all..." "Right." "...and keep weaving the story lines back to each other without it feeling somehow like you're on a random path?" "Right." "And so here's the two kids just trying to be kids and connect..." "...then the sinister hand of Oscorp." "Yep." "Sort of sucking them back in." "ln everybody's business." "And being told about Max, which brings you back to Max." "That's right." "Another scene that went through many versions in the edit." "Because it was really scary." "This was a much longer scene." "And a very funny comedian who was actually the...." "The morgue technician." "Yep." "Who got fried when he touched Electro." "Yeah." "He had a funny little bit at the beginning where he took a bribe from the Man in the Black Suit that you saw in the car to keep this all quiet." "But, again, it was just" "You get to that place where you need" "You need what you need." "And so that will be in the DVD extras." "Yeah." "Or it will now." "Yeah." "Yeah. I loved Marc's ideas that his skin sort of molted off him like a snake." "That's right." "Yeah." "And that he" "The outer shell was charred." "Yeah." "And I think the CG done to" "Masterfully." "Masterfully." "Hey." "This piece of music" "Oh, this is great." "Phosphorescent, I think." "Great moment." "And this music that Marc added existed..." "...in every single version of the film." "Yeah." "Had it in his head from the beginning." "This is that real (500) Days of Summer Marc Webb." ""Song for Zula."" "A language he knows very well." "We talked about this as the "Frogger" moment..." "...when he crosses the street like this." "l love that he actually clips the mirror." "l know." "And doesn't even notice." "Right." "Because all he can see is her." "By the way, it was freezing cold in Union Square when we shot this." "lt doesn't look it." "l know." "No, there's no- lf you cut away to me and Avi you would know." "We were quite miserable." "Huddled around a little heater." "You wouldn't know it with these two." "This was another one of those scenes that there's a version that goes on for four minutes more." "Right." "lt's utterly charming." "Yup." "l just love watching them." "Spontaneous is all right." "You know." "Well, I just figured it was time." "You know?" "Time that we try to be friends." "Yeah." "Friends, yeah." "That's great." "I just don't want us to be complicated." "I was just saying that to someone." "I hate complicated." "Keep it simple." "Okay, great, great." "Yeah, yeah, yeah." "All right." "Well, I mean...." "And it's" " This is one of those things where you realize the relationship between them, more than anything else in this movie is the heart and soul of the movie." "Where we know what's gonna end up happening to her..." "Amen." "...that all of these scenes became the most important." "The hardest in the editing room, ultimately the most important." "Well, given where the movie goes." "Yep." "Every one of them had to sort of fire on all cylinders." "That's right." "They all add up to a conclusion." "And they're all about Peter's sort of step into real adulthood, I think, at the end of this movie." "In a way that he had not in the previous movies." "Right." "This is also hugely important, this moment because, you know, Peter is filled with hope and, you know, Gwen has called him." "And I think he's thinking maybe possibly there's a way we could figure this out." "You know, we find out he's been following her." "And then at the end of the scene, on the High Line, Jeff..." "...which is coming up...." "On the what?" "The High Line." "They were on the High Line earlier." "No, actually they were not." "Oh, that was" "That was the waterfront." "That was the river." "She drops the big bomb on him." "Which is, you know" " Sort of becomes the motor for much of the movie which is that she's leaving." "And now he's gotta deal with that." "And figure out what he's gonna do." "While simultaneously, Electro...." "Right." "Again, it's that thing Alex was talking about earlier. lt all has to" "Ultimately, you wanna find as many opportunities in the movie as you can where his personal life and his needs and wants as a teenager are in conflict with his-- The fact that he's Spider-Man." "That's right." "That is the High Line." "Jeff, you know what that is?" "Yeah." "That's the waterfront." "Jeff's never been to New York." "lt's the Baltimore waterfront." "lt's the inner harbor." "You should go to New York, Jeff." "lt's a lovely place." "l love New York." "lf only the Yankees didn't play there." "Filled with wonderful things to do." "How do you know I love it there?" "Because...." "Because you told me." "Meatballs." "Korean meatballs." "Yep." "It was very important that the movie film in New York..." "...in its entirety as well." "Correct." "Big tax break." "Also for story it was important." "See, that was us playing our different roles there." "How often?" "Cheap is what it was." "Matt Tolmach, producer..." "..." "ladies and gentlemen." "That's right." "Doing my job, fellas." "Yeah." "Yeah." "Where are they in this moment?" "On the High Line." "Oh, boy." "Why?" "God, her performance here, man, when he tells her." "She's just so spectacular in that moment." "And...." "And what?" "And because it's the closest I can get to still being with you." "I'm moving to England." "What?" "Yeah." "I have a-- l'm up for a scholarship to Oxford." "In molecular medicine." "I think that, you know, when we decided to tell the Gwen Stacy story you know, in the previous movie, you always know that" "You know where it ends." "And you sort of try to deny it." "And it's hard to imagine with" "Working with somebody that we love as much as Emma." "It's hard to fathom even just parting company with somebody that you love working with so much." "But you know that if you're gonna do right by the story that's where you're gonna end up." "It was, you know" "Avi and I go back a long way on these Spider-Man movies." "Avi and I go back a long way on these Spider-Man movies." "And I used to be a studio executive working on them with Avi." "And we were talking about the death of Gwen Stacy, The Night Gwen Stacy Died." "How many years ago?" "Twelve?" "Fourteen?" "Twelve years ago." "Yeah." "And if I can cut in for one instant, most of the people watching this probably know that the death of Gwen Stacy was one of the more if not the most, famous story in the golden age of comic books." "Considered the gold standard." "It was the first time the hero failed..." "...and failed tragically." "That's right." "Avi, why did Turning Point become such a famous and important comic in the moment?" "At the time, it was the impression that that was his real first love, his biggest love." "And that ran for like nine months, something like that." "It became-- lt was in the early days where l think it was some" "Romance was more naive really more about love." "It wasn't about sex and drugs." "And it was really a very clean..." "...amazing relationship..." "Yeah." "...that comic book readers related to very deeply because he was this geek guy and she was this incredible-looking girl." "At the time, there was no emphasis on her wisdom and education and so on." "It was just that she was like a knockout." "And the fact that it was.... lt was totally unexpected, the death of Gwen Stacy." "It was like one of these things." "And the effect of it was, like, wild." "Like someone" "Someone real just died." "Yeah." "And...." "And I mean people made condolence notes and funeral announcements." "It was like..." "...the Jean Grey wedding." "Right." "So for whatever reason it became like one of the first" "Maybe it's still the only time that the readers had their hearts broken because it was so well-done." "The days that Stan edited the comics it was all very emotional, very clean." "And the whole world was in love with her." "It's like the movie Pretty Woman, you know." "We all fell in love with Julia Roberts." "She was real." "And that's what happened here." "So it became a seminal...." "You don't remember me?" "People who see the movie and they're like true believers who are really more from that time of comic readers probably the most impressive thing for them in the movie was seeing that the clock showed the same time that it was in the comic." "That's how emotionally involved they were with this comic." "And in movie one, when we decided to" "Basically it was- lt was the same thing." "lt was the same thing." "But it was done with Mary Jane." "With a happy ending." "Because believe it or not, at the time" "And actually, it was a good choice at the time." "Mary Jane had more of the Spider-Man lore in terms of that she was in love actually with Spider-Man." "And she didn't know who is Peter." "Peter was just someone that kind of she liked, you know." "He was a good tutor and a nice guy." "But she was madly in love with Spider-Man." "If we went with Gwen it would have been a smaller story in a way." "So" " And obviously we didn't kill her over the bridge." "Yeah." "We saved her." "So there was no outcry at all." "They loved it." "No!" "No!" "Stop!" "Max!" "So this is the sort of that" "Was designed as the kind of signature set piece." "It was-- From a production standpoint it was a colossal undertaking to actually build Times Square." "Because you obviously can't do what you're seeing on screen in the actual Times Square." "That would be bad for Times Square." "So we had to reconstruct the entire thing down to every detail both practically in Long lsland on a backlot and then in the computer." "Kind of amazing when you see it." "I think the death of" "Going back to the death of Gwen Stacy for a second." "The-- l think we were just so stunned that that's what everybody wanted to do when it was sort of presented because it was such a complicated and difficult challenge." "The movie was immediately about something really emotional and powerful and difficult." "You know, everybody who sees the first Spider-Man falls in love with Andrew and Emma because they're so wonderful." "And so you-- l think our first reaction was:" ""You wanna kill...?" "You wanna kill America's sweetheart?"" "How are you gonna do that in a big movie and have people walk out of the theater feeling good about it?" "And it seemed like an impossible challenge but I think that's part of what really intrigued us about it." "And I do think, ultimately a big part of what got us excited about it was it would make it a very different kind of Spider-Man movie." "Just by nature, it had to be." "And it was also really clear that not one thing in the movie" "Her death at the end couldn't be an accidental thing." "It needed to be that everything in the movie was kind of leading you up to that with real inevitability." "And so it was a very challenging and sort of scary compass to follow but I think one that we were excited to follow." "But also a tough needle to thread in the sense that, you know Gwen's death was always something that hung over Peter..." "...and over Spider-Man." "Yep." "Because had he not been Spider-Man had he not been involved with her in the comics had the Goblin not figured that out she wouldn't have died." "And at the same time, you guys took great pains and I think very wisely, to also make her somebody who wasn't a victim of circumstance in this movie." "That's right." "She also had her own" "Yes." "Her own agenda." "And so her death actually became a slightly more complicated balancing act." "And from the end point, the idea that Gwen was going to die there were certain narrative things." "One being the idea that the Goblin was the one responsible for her death." "And it became important to us that we tell an origin story about the Goblin." "And that he not become" "Harry not become the Goblin by the end of the first act." "That's right." "Which then led to the necessity to tell the story about Max Dillon-Electro as well." "Yeah." "And equally if not more importantly, we knew that we really wanted this movie to be a love story." "And we wanted to honor the place that they ended up at the end of the last movie." "The promise that Peter had made to Gwen's dad that he wouldn't allow her to be injured..." "...because she was in his orbit." "Right." "Mike." "Big John." "Yeah." "But, to me, the scene that made the death of Gwen Stacy work was the scene later with the box." "I think without" "At the end of the movie." "Yeah." "At the end." "Without the box scene I think it would have left..." "...a bitter taste." "Yeah." "It would have left a bitter taste with the audience and with Peter." "That was always the question, like, how do you--?" "What do you do with it?" "How do you--?" "How do you allow people to leave the theater?" "How do you move past the death of...?" "And how does he move past it?" "That allows the audience to move past it." "I don't know anybody who didn't walk out from a place with a brown box at one time or another." "Yeah." "Yeah." "Never in great circumstances." "And, as always, trying to do it with, you know, a great degree of honesty." "Yeah." "I remember once talking to...." "l can't remember who it was." "It might have been Bill Broyles or someone who was involved in Cast Away." "And at the end of Cast Away...." "The ending just didn't test well at all." "Like, in their first rounds of it, everybody loved the movie." "They just didn't like the ending." "And they really struggled over what to do because you had this very unhappy ending, you know." "And I think someone told me the story once that Zemeckis said something like:" ""Sometimes you just have to tell people what the movie is about."" "And they did some ending so I don't remember which scene specifically but they put this ending scene that kind of summarized:" "Okay, this is really painful, but this is also what life is about." "And you get to certain moments." "There's a road, you decide which path you take." "But we all end up on that road one day or another." "And it tested through the roof." "And Cast Away became Cast Away." "Because they allowed the message to be transparent." "To be clear. lt goes back to the question that challenged us in saying, "Yes, we wanted to write the movie in the first place."" "Which is, how do you get the audience to feel by the end that he's moved through the experience of this?" "You're never gonna tell them her death is okay." "lt's not." "They're never gonna feel that." "And so giving them a false, "Oh, no, it's okay, she died because she had to die, so he could become Spider-Man."" "That wouldn't play." "And so I think the box scene is really a moment where l think we kind of realized that we needed to tell the audience what the movie was about and say that these are" "As you just said, everybody ends up holding a box at some point in their life." "Having to decide what they're gonna do." "And I think it allowed us to feel that Peter was if not over it, understanding where to put it how to move on and grow from it." "It was about "take it with you."" "Right." "And-- And" "And actually that, if you looked at the audience the box scene is when they had the opportunity..." "...to let the tears out." "Yes." "lt was" "And one of the things we decided" "One of the things we decided very early on" "Because I think they all remember..." "...the moments in their lives..." "Right." "...when they had to take the box when they were fired or when they lost their lease they couldn't pay a bill clean up after loved ones that passed." "I mean, we all been there." "And I think the moment the audience got with that they understood." "They benefited, in a way, from a very tough scene." "Yeah." "And" "Also, who hasn't popped a pimple on their desk?" "Who has not done that?" "Great contribution, Matt." "Who has not popped a pimple on their desk also?" "This is one of these relatable" "That is brilliant." "The only thing I miss is the pimple flying into the screen in 3D." "I think we shot it a bunch of times." "The audience didn't like it." "Can you imagine if it came to the audience in 3D and splattered?" "John Belushi in Animal House." ""What am I now?" "I'm a zit." "That's right." "A zit."" "A really classy idea." "No, but one of the ideas that we talked about from very early on was this notion of time and how fleeting time is." "That the people that come into your life and the moments that are really valuable are partly valuable because they don't last." "And that's what makes" "That's what gives life its meaning." "That's the theme." "It's why the movie opens on a clock, on a watch." "And why she dies in a clock tower." "Yes, Jeff." "ls that why we did that?" "We're making things clear here." "But if the incoming charge exceeds the outgoing charge the battery might explode!" "Explode!" "When doing experiments like this, always wear protective gear." "You're not invincible." "We're gonna need a bigger battery." "The theme could have been pimples." "Well, we talked about it." "We talked about it." "It just, you know, didn't test as well." "We had the teenage boy audience." "Yeah." "One quad." "Big, though." "Couldn't get the acne medicine tie-in." "Didn't make sense." "This is a great moment." "l love that." "Double shot." "That's where we always get the laugh." "That's the laugh." "The second one." "The second one." "You're starting to get the laugh on the first." "But then you really get it." "Hello." "Pete." "It's me." "Hey, Harry." "What--?" "What time is it?" "That was a-- l think that was Webb's idea to" "That he naps up there." "l love that idea." "It's...." "He's a spider." "lt's such a cool thing like when your script starts to construct itself and you have such smart people around you who" "A director's so kind of focused on transitions." "Yeah." "That's always such an important thing." "I'm always amazed at how important transitions are." "How necessary for flow a really well thought out transition is." "Yeah." "ln the experience of the movie." "Takes you by the hand, makes you feel someone is in charge." "That's right." "That's right." "Because Lord knows, Jeff, you were not in charge." "No." "No." "You know what they say about Jeff:" "a fabulous writer..." "...terrible transitions." "Yeah." "Not in charge." "No." "Except maybe this." "Spider-Man." "What about him?" "He was bitten by one of those things, and it worked." "I don't know how and I don't know why but he can do everything else a spider can including self-heal." "I need to find him." "I need his blood." "You need Spider-Man's blood?" "It'll save my life." "It may not, Har." "It may not be that simple." "You saw what happened to Curt Connors, right?" "Connors was weak." "This was another scene that was reams longer..." "...than it ended up being." "Yes, there was a lot of information." "Not only was it this scene, but there was a thread in the script that started way back at the water, not the High Line about how, after Richard disappeared Norman had continued to spy on Peter and Aunt May thinking that perhaps" "Because they hadn't found evidence of Richard's death in the water." "That maybe Richard would have tried to reach out to Peter." "And it sort of kept alive this idea of the intrigue of the Osborns and of Oscorp which ultimately we found and I think correctly, wasn't really necessary..." "...to the telling of the story." "Right." "What l" "About how he gives people hope." "Come on." "What in the--?" "Just say yes." "Don't turn your back on me!" "I don't wanna end up like my father, Peter." "Please." "Peter, please." "I can't." "We did a bunch of different takes of the final beat here and in some of them it was a menacing moment that we had ended the scene on where Harry was threatening him and saying like, you know, "Find him for me."" "And there was something off-putting about it." "You felt like it didn't motivate Peter to do what he was about to do." "And so we used this take where he sort of reaches out to him." "And once again, it's these two boys just struggling to figure out who they are." "And that's what compelled Peter to go and at least try to help his friend." "Hey!" "Miss Stacy!" "It also would have robbed, I think, the elevator moment coming up where you really get the first sense that he's pretty menacing." "It lands better by having him not be menacing earlier." "Yeah." "Well, we wanted him to be torn about whether or not to help Harry." "Not repelled by him." "Definitely." "It tracks better for Peter that he's not freaked out by him..." "...in that way." "Right." "They're hiding in the Death Star." "So this sequence" "This is a great moment between the two of them." "They're so great in this one." "Such incredible chemistry." "And then this next sequence that we shot was a blast." "It was" " This was something choreographed by Cal McCrystal." "And we shot this sort of crazy, you know, Buster Keaton" "Andrew always refers to it as sort of a Bugs Bunny moment." "All in" " You know, we shot it a bunch of different times, but we did the master and what you're about to see happened in every take." "It was incredibly intricate to choreograph." "And everybody in the scene was part of Cal's sort of troop of...." "l don't wanna call them stunt men, but sort of performers and acrobats." "And as far as I know, if I give it to him, it could kill him." "lncluding" " Not including Black Suit." "No, no." "He's-- He was somebody we cast." "He was somebody we cast." "Yeah." "This scene here, which I think is among my favorite in the film actually there was a moment where it wasn't going to be in the movie." "Oh, it was out of the movie." "Yeah." "Would have been very bad." "Bad choice." "We were not willing to accept that." "I think it was out just as a matter of length and it's not-- lt's not literally necessary to tell this story but emotionally, the two of them together is the heart of the movie, and without this scene you really felt that loss." "You end up falling into this trap sometimes of cutting for plot and cutting for length." "And it's a process and, you know, you lose things that may not-- l mean, first of all, there's real storytelling in here but it may not have seemed as though it was advancing the plot but without it, the movie loses a little bit of its soul." "What you ultimately realize is the real story of the real plot of the film is the plot between the two of them." "Yeah, and that's literally the" "You know, the thing that keeps the movie going is:" "How does Peter hold this all together?" "How does he not lose this girl and yet continue to be Spider-Man?" "So it's a critical scene in that way." "And it's also the first time that these two meet." "Also in the elevator." "A lot of important moments happen..." "ln the elevator." "...in the elevator." "Yeah." "Sometimes with a box." "That's right." "No, I'm sorry he never introduced us." "I thought you two had broken up." "Yeah." "Yes, we had." "And it's...." "lt's complicated." "Complicated." "Yeah." "I mean, it's Peter." "Everything's always complicated with Peter." "He's got the most amazing eyes." "I was just thinking, it's a shame that there aren't enough attractive people with good eyes in this film." "Exactly." "They're always a little bit wet, his eyes, as well." "He's very vulnerable." "Nice to meet you, Harry." "Yeah, it's such a pleasure, Gwen." "A scene like that is fun to write, knowing where..." "...you're going with them." "Yeah." "When did Ravencroft first appear?" "What comic?" "Venom." "lt was first Venom?" "Yeah." "Ravencroft was really..." "l should know that." "...an insane asylum." "Yeah." "And there were various versions of it but this is...." "Carnage was there for a while." "Yup." "Yup." "And Venom ended up there." "And there were other lunatics but it was a high security insane asylum." "My father is not very familiar with the comics but my family is from Baltimore." "He thought that was a shout-out to the Baltimore Ravens." "He's wrong." "Yeah." "He couldn't be less" "Heartbroken when I pointed out..." "With love." "...he was wrong." "That's right." "He was very disappointed." "Yeah, and Kafka..." "...also was a" "Yeah." "Yeah." "That's a real shout-out." "A shrink." "There was a Kafka guy, there was a Kafka girl." "Kafka was actually a target for Carnage." "Yes." "When he got out one of the first things he wanted to do was get Kafka." "I liked the Kafka woman version." "There was something more sinister, you know." "This was also another remarkable performance from Jamie." "The" " Capturing the tone of this scene." "Hundred percent." "Yeah, Marton Csokas is the actor." "He's fantastic." "And he" "He really brought this character to life." "We had so much fun watching him." "Like me." "It's one of those moments where you feel like you've won the lottery when you get a call, as we did saying that Hans Zimmer is a fan and interested in doing Spider-Man and, "Are you guys interested?"" "And it was like, "Are you kidding me?"" "He's the most brilliant composer and" "His idea was to put together this kind of dream team of musicians." "Johnny Marr and Pharrell obviously, and-- lt became a" "Sort of a combination of the classical and the very contemporary which I think, in some ways, speaks to what the movie is." "You know, it's this-- lt's this sort of iconic classical beloved character but who very much lives in today's universe." "And I think that's how Marc has always envisioned his version of Spider-Man as being very honest and very true and very real and feeling like the world that we live in today not something from years and years ago in the comics." "And I think that's what Hans brought." "And it wa-- lt's just-- lt's very, very vibrant and bold." "And, you know, there's a sequence in Times Square when you" "Literally, the music takes you inside the head of Max, of Electro." "I've never heard anything like that." "It was so personal and it was so specific." "And I just-- l just think it" "And I just-- l just think it-- l feel like it's another character in the movie honestly, the score." "I feel like it's another character in the movie honestly, the score." "What are you doing?" "There were several versions of this scene as well." "And ultimately, what led to the scene you're watching was Sally." "And her...." "Yeah." "She sat down with you, Alex, and said that the character the heart of the character for her was someone who had dedicated her life to really making this boy her boy." "And that she had spent so much of her life in service of him and that him questioning her about his parents really struck at the heart of her remorse." "Yeah." "The truth is, your parents left you here, on our doorstep." "You were this little boy whose whole world was turned upside down with no explanation." "lt's incredibly honest." "Yes." "It's like" " She's right." "She-- lt's honest." "She's right." "It's like, "l raised you. I raised you." "You're sitting here pining after your heroic image of a father that was never here."" "And I get it." "It's incredibly, incredibly real." "She's an incredible artist." "Yeah." "Just incredible." "At different times, this scene was in and out of the movie and in and out of the movie in different sort of length." "And you're dreaming about your perfect father who was never here." "No." "No, I won't tell you." "You're my boy." "One of the great gifts of working with actors who are talented and who are sort of" " Who just wanna be inside the moment as much as possible was that Sally did bring this really interesting and unique perspective to the table that felt very honest." "And I think it made-- lt gave Aunt May more depth than she's been allowed to have." "And that's really cool." "And as you say, Avi, this is something that speaks to people in the audience because it's true to so many people's lives." "Yeah." "But the way she delivered it, it's incredible." "Yeah." "And also, it spoke to this theme of growing up, her saying to him:" ""l'm gonna tell you something now, you need to hear it, it's going to hurt you."" "Yeah." "They have a very special chemistry, these two." "All right." "I'll tell you everything I know." "And I think one of the things that Marc brings to these films is this emotional authenticity." "For sure." "He really fought for this." "Yes." "He really did." "They said the genetics research that your father was doing with Norman Osborn was very valuable and that people would pay a lot for it." "And that's why he ran off with it." "They said he was a traitor." "I couldn't believe it, Peter." "They told us he betrayed his best friend, all of us for the money." "I don't" "Oh, I don't get it." "No, I don't-- This doesn't make sense." "Yes, I know. I know. I didn't believe it either. I didn't believe it." "It doesn't make any sense." "Peter, I don't know." "For so long, I would play it over and over and over in my head." "What had I missed?" "What had I missed?" "He was just this normal, unassuming guy." "He wore the same ratty lab coat for 20 years." "People were really" "You know, they were curious and a little bit frustrated." "They wanted-- They wanted to know more." "I mean, that was the impulse coming in was, "What happened?"" "You know, you sort of set the table for a mystery, but you didn't" "You didn't solve it." "So solving it was a big part of what we" "You know, there were a couple of pieces that were left on the table." "The promise that he made the issue of what happened to the parents." "All that was stuff that we knew right away we had to take on." "Mr. Osborn." "Look up." "The tricky thing about the father story, you know, to be honest, is it's past." "You know, and so you want to" "You want to resolve the mystery but you also don't wanna get caught in just telling back-story and you have to keep moving the story forward." "So that part of the balancing act was to make what happened to Peter's parents part of the forward-going story and try to connect it to where he was headed in the movie and connect it to the choice, the decisions that he makes having to do with Gwen." "To really play the consequences of the story." "Right." "Not just the discovery of things that happened 20 years ago or 10 years ago." "Not right now." "Excuse me?" "It's too dangerous." "If our blood is incompatible, you could die." "I'm already dying." "Your blood can't make me die more." "One of the tricky things in movies, superhero movies" "This is the question that my son constantly asks. --is their voice." "And would Harry recognize his friend inside--?" "You know, his friend inside that suit based on his voice." "Should Peter be archly putting on some other kind of tone and I think the choice" "The only choice is" "Like Batman." "is that you just have to accept it." "Batman." "Yeah." "lt's the Superman rule, you know." "Yes." "Yes, as soon as you put the glasses on..." "...no one recognizes you." "Yeah." "It's the best." "You're just gonna let me die." "l'm trying to protect you right now." "No." "No, you are not." "You're trying to protect yourself." "Look, we just need a bit more time..." "...to figure out something else." "l do not have time!" "I'm sorry." "You're a fraud, Spider-Man!" "Hey!" "Hi." "Hi." "Hi, I gotta talk to you for a second." "They're both very, very committed actors." "So when you're doing a scene that is tense between characters where there's a lot of conflict, they're breathing it." "You know, there's a lot to that-- To that method and so the day tends to take on a little bit the energy of the scene that you're doing." "I gotta figure out what I'm gonna do with Harry." "Of course I wanna save him." "You know?" "I wanna save him because he's my best pal." "And what if my blood works?" "But what if it doesn't?" "I don't know. I got no idea." "Oh, God." "l got nothing. I got nothing." "I love this scene." "Originally he had a whole sort of" "He came clean with her and said, "l love you." lt was a whole thing." "Yep." "And Matt...." "At some point in the process, somebody" "You said, "What if he just doesn't say it?"" "And then what was great about that..." "...was...." "We got to hold it back for later." "You hold it back, so he says it on the bridge and then it's more meaningful." "lt lets the air out of the balloon." "Right, it does." "lf you let him say it there." "lt does. lt very much does." "And this was one of those really fun scenes where what he has come to say and the place that he's found himself..." "...are in such conflict." "That's right." "It's so much about the cross purposes of what he needs for his life right now and then what he realizes she needs for her life..." "...and not wanting to step on that." "That's right." "It becomes very funny and charming and...." "Anyway, God save the queen." "l'm sorry everything's happening" "Can you wait?" "He did 30 different improvs of that moment all of which were great." "Of the Johns Hopkins bit?" "Yes." "Yeah." "Yeah." ""My fair lady, madam." -l know." ""God save the Queen."" "The thing that's also nice to see, and heartbreaking on his side of it is that he realizes that he can't" "He desperately wants to say this thing to her but he can't stop her from the thing she wants to do." "And that puts him at odds with himself, as Jeff was saying in a way that makes you kind of love him because he's...." "He's really making a choice to sacrifice what he wants to say for her happiness." "Right." "Even though..." "...it isn't gonna lead to her happiness." "Yeah." "And the two of them are such unbelievable actors that the looks, the emotion they're just conveying..." "..." "looks between them..." "Priceless." "...is phenomenal." "Yeah." "You realize in the process in this moment here, the" "There's a version of this scene which was cut against" "Which was much angrier and cut against more angry, aggressive music." "And played completely differently and it really played against what was happening here." "Pietro Scalia, who's just a master, recut this, put it to different music." "And all of a sudden, the whole entire feeling of the moment in the sequence changed." "This was a fun gag, this Roosevelt gag because it's true." "There is actually that train." "There is." "And...." "Probably right to send a shout-out to our friend, David Koepp who" "That's correct." "Years ago, we were working on a remake of The Taking of Pelham 1 23 with Tony Scott and David wrote a scene in the script where he established the Roosevelt spur which was sort of this mysterious dead-end spur that had been used" "And as you're saying, Alex, is a real place." "That was used by" "Or created by FDR so that he could get in and out of the train beneath the Waldorf Hotel without people seeing him struggle." "And so it's this sort of mysterious piece of New York lore which is very, very real and felt like the perfect setup for a location for Richard Parker's sort of mysterious off-the-grid lab." "Yeah, because you wanted it to be somewhere hidden in plain view but something that nobody would find." "That's right." "And you wanted Peter to be dri" "Asking this question, driving towards something he didn't understand." "Then when it clicks in, it clicks in hard and you get it." "And that" " Sort of finding that and then being able to root it in reality is even better." "they had the venom extracted." "What?" "What are you saying?" "That way, they could comply with the lawsuits but still keep the data in case it ever became useful." "Where is it?" "It's somewhere in the building." "It's somewhere off-books called "Special Projects."" "Special Projects." "Most recent entry:" "One hour ago." ""Approved by Harry Osborn."" "We based this on your desk." "On the computer on your de" " The" "You have that computer prototype, Matt, in your office." "And so we thought we-- lt was so cool that we would just use it for the film." "Yeah, well, that is my office." "File 71 ." "Subject:" "Dillon, Max." "The fun of this desk and the opportunity of this desk was to start building the idea of all the different things that were happening in Oscorp and Special Projects and lead to the revelation that this universe is so much bigger than just Spider-Man." "So a lot of time was spent on what the names of the files would be." "You know, knowing full well that people were gonna freeze-frame the image and take a look at every one of them, getting" "And I think-- l think in a subtle way, even going back to that disk drive the cube was the idea of Oscorp has all the money and all the most genius scientists at their behest." "That's right." "What would" " Without really-- ln an Iron Man way, without really making a story out of it but just letting the set design speak to:" "What would the coolest stuff you could imagine look like and feel like?" "That's right." "Looks to me like you're halfway in the ground already." "It's only a matter of time." "You're going to die a horrible death." "Like your father." "The difference is no one is going to miss you." "Colm is great in sort of his quiet intensity." "Just a guy you're afraid of." "He's such a-- Sort of a perfect corporate, cold...." "A-hole?" "I was gonna say "A-hole." l literally...." "l always use that word." "The fun of this moment too is sort of thinking from a story point of view that this is the moment where Harry Osborn who has everything, loses everything." "And so what does he have to do to regain it?" "And one of the big questions that I think we asked ourselves a lot was how were we gonna make the team-up of the two bad guys feel very deliberate and I think we had all felt that there were" "There had been movies made in the past that we had a bunch of bad guys on screen and you're gonna go like:" ""l don't know why they're all together, you know. lt feels random."" "And I think there's been a lot of criticism of a lot of movies that have done that." "People feel like:" ""You're throwing everyone on screen."" "So we spent a lot of time talking about what motivated them together." "One of the things that got us so excited was the idea that really both Max and Harry had been thrown away by Oscorp in different ways and both felt utterly betrayed by Spider-Man." "So strangely, there were two people who had the exact same agendas...." "Which also mirrors Peter and Harry..." "That's right." "...who earlier speaking at the river .were talking about how they had each been thrown away by their dads." "But they came out on a much different end of the equation." "Yeah." "Yeah." "Exactly right." "Yeah, we kept talking about that great quote in Capote, you know:" ""lt's like we were born in the same house but I went out the front and he went out the back."" "It was very much that sort of dynamic between the two of them." "Yeah." "Yeah." "And every scene kind of reflected that." "Marc had this amazing idea to-- l don't think the actual train is built like that..." "...under the track." "There was no train there." "No, there is." "The train" " Yeah." "Yeah." "The train right here, there's nothing." "Now there's a-- Then when you cut to it, there's a train." "Right." "Right." "That was all done by Imageworks." "Yeah, yeah, but the" " But the...." "The idea that the train was hidden under the track was this cool build Marc wanted." "You know what?" "To be honest with you, this was a" "This was an idea that Webb had..." "Yeah." "...for a long time." "One of those things that as a producer, you're sort of" "You know, you walk that line between wanting to fight for your director's vision and also sometimes not knowing what the hell he's talking about." "And this was" "This was honestly one of those where it was like, "What?" "The train?" And it always felt...." "He got this kind of gli-- You know, glint in his eye..." "...when he talked about it." "Yeah." "And lo and behold there's a kind of magical realism to it..." "Yes." "...that I think is really spectacular." "And also, another thing that you sort of haven't seen in this universe..." "...know what I mean?" "For sure." "And I really-- l love that idea." "And very definitely did not" "Did not get it when he first started talking about it." "And it's interesting too, because as screenwriters the challenge of big sequences like this where you have" "This is a big, big-- Another big section of all this exposition and all of this back-story and so there's two things that you want to try and filter it through:" "One, you wanna try and find a way to make it emotional." "First and foremost." "First and foremost is how do you make it emotional so that it isn't just a lot of science and gobbledygook." "But then visually, how do you drum-roll the reveal?" "Or, you know..." "That's right." "...as we design the sequence, you know, as an intercut where you're paralleling Peter and his revelation with Harry heading toward where he's going so that it felt like you were, you know, really guiding the audience toward:" ""Okay, there's these two trains, no pun intended they're on colliding paths, and they're about to hit each other and...."" "And these moments are really speaking to each other." "It's Peter finally understanding the truth about his father." "Yes." "While Harry's sort of descending." "Yeah." "And there was a longer section we cut, I think correctly about the nature of the science the nature of the virus that Richard's fa" "Richard had, you know, syn" "Basically locked the blood work to his DNA and that some of the tests that he had done enhanced the disease the diseased cells in people who had the disease." "Also enhanced healthy cells in people who were healthy which explained one of them was gonna become a goblin and one of them was gonna become Spider-Man." "And it was just one of those things that we didn't really need to tell the story." "It was interesting because we went back and forth and back and forth about how much information for plot's sake you needed and what the scene really needed to be about." "What the scene needed to be about for Peter Parker was the revelation, "My father loved me."" "He wasn't a spy." "That's right and that" "That's what he was haunted by." "There are smaller pieces of information that are vital in terms of you know, what happened that day in the lab and all of that." "But really the big takeaway that pushes Peter out the door and to Gwen Stacy, is that, "l was loved."" "Yes." "And the story that I was telling myself actually wasn't true." "There's another piece of the puzzle there which is, "My father was at this particular crossroads and he made a choice, and it ended up costing him his life." "And his son." "And his son." "If he could go back, he would have made" "He says he would make a different choice."" "And Peter is literally at that same crossroads." "And, you know, it is what propels him toward Gwen as a result of not wanting to repeat his father's mistakes." "The great irony becoming that the result ends up..." "...being the same." "Yeah." "Also one of the things I think about the Spider-Man universe that is very uniquely Spider-Man is that it really does embrace the tragedy of the circumstances..." "...of Peter's life." "That's right." "That's right." "And by extension how lost most teenagers feel and how powerless." "And how you realize it's the first time in your life that the choices you make..." "...have real potential consequences." "That's right." "So this scene became" " And one of the late additions to this scene when we were in rehearsals with all the actors was the "l need you" of it all." "That was something that felt wonderful, is that you had this character who, you know, so desperately needed to be seen and to be loved and to be cared for, in Max Dillon." "And you needed" "You had a character in Harry who, for the first time in his life really needed somebody's help and was begging for it." "And so it felt like" "Was vulnerable enough to admit it." "So you have these two-- These two bad guys whose motivation is utterly relatable but, you know, ultimately super, super not good." "I think for us, that tends to make the best kind of villains." "Yeah." "I love sort of the button to this scene." ""l had a friend once." -"l had a friend."" ""lt didn't work out." Like the elevator scene where they're talking" " Same." "They're talking about Spider-Man...." "How?" "lt is all the power in the city, Max and it's right at your fingertips." "Other thing I love about Dane's look as the movie progresses is that he starts to look more like a goblin even before he gets" " He gets sick." "He" "Before he injects himself." "This was a personal concern of mine." "What would Electro be wearing?" "Right." "This was" " This was a lot of topic of conversations." "I mean, he" " They probably wouldn't put clothes on him in this scene." "And yet, you know, this is a PG-13 movie and we don't need to see more than we need to see." "And yet when you have a full body shot of him in the rig and later when he comes out, we had to have him clothed in something so it became a question, what would he be in?" "And so he-- On the day we were shooting he was actually wearing sort of like spandex or Lycra, you know, bike shorts." "And then I became obsessed in the edit, like:" "Why would he be in bike shorts?" "And so the lmageworks guys actually added a digital component to the...." "To the" " To the shorts so that they looked like they have a little bit of tech on them." "Right." "So that you mind doesn't say:" ""He's this high-tech guy wearing bike shorts" which just seemed surreal to me." "Well, of course, now my mind goes to:" "What's the tech that's necessary on his bike shorts?" "You can't." "By the way, it's one of those:" "Don't go down that road because there isn't any." "The alternative would have been Watchmen..." "...where you have a giant blue...." "Right." "Right." "Right." "That's right." "That was the alternative." "That was the" " Yeah." "Giant blue what?" "Where were you going with that?" "Sorry." "A giant blue electric" "Yeah." "Tech." "No!" "I love that in the background..." "..." "Kafka's just being lowered." "That's right." "And gets his comeuppance." "See the tech on the shorts?" ""l had a friend once."" "Yeah." "Me too." "Then let's go catch a spider." "And Marc also had the very, I think, wise idea to place that sort of battery reader on Jamie's temple to set up the fact that he could be overloaded." "It was tricky. lt was like, okay, you know, back building from" "That's right." "All right, we have to" "We have to overload a battery." "So how do we--?" "How do we sell that idea throughout the course of the movie to give, you know, a credible death to how they take out Electro?" "This was actually a scene that we shot after we had wrapped and cut the movie and decided we wanted Peter to discover" "Actually, in the original cut of the movie you actually saw Gwen go home go to Peter's home looking for him before she got in this cab to say to him, "l'm leaving."" "And there she met Aunt May and Aunt May said, "Peter's out doing whatever Peter does."" "And it just-- lt felt-- lt was a lovely scene between the two of them but it felt like shoe leather." "Then, of course, Peter" "And we wanted to be on Peter..." "Yes." "...and following him as he came out of the subway." "And again, coming out of the subway feeling he had discovered something new about the truth about his past the first thing he wanted to do was find out where Gwen is." "He calls her and he finds out she's already on her way out of town." "It gave the movie a momentum that we needed to go into the third act." "Remember me?" "A lot of question too about what Electro's outfit was going to be once he fully-- Full tilt boogied into Electro." "Because the outfit, the green and yellow was so iconic in the comic book." "But I think everybody felt, understandably that it wasn't gonna translate in the movie version." "That being said, his cake at the beginning of the movie when you first meet him are exactly the Electro colors." "And so that was at least a tip of the hat to the original design." "Right." "lt's one of the things that we spent and will continue to spend a long time talking about it." "We all are doing this because of how much we love the comic books and yet there's a certain license that you feel that you need to take." "We've already seen that story literally told and I don't think any of us want to just retell exactly the story that was told in the comic books, put it on the screen." "You have the books for that, so we all spend a lot of time and don't take lightly the fact that when we make changes when Harry becomes the Green Goblin instead of Norman we treat these things" "We try to treat them with as much reverence as they're due." "No, you can't make those choices without really thinking through how it will pay off in the rest of the movie because they're sort of big and they're bold and people will either love you or hate you for them very immediately." "And...." "Oftentimes both." "Right." "By the way, I just wanna interject." "There was a moment there where, when we were shooting, Dane..." "...started doing the Jeopardy theme." "Right." "And then someone very quickly pointed out there's actually a real cost to that and we would have to pay for it." "And Marc said:" ""Okay, we won't do it." "We'll come up with something else."" "And then in good director form, he had no intention of doing something else because he loved it and we ended up paying for it with Jeopardy." "And I'm glad we did but" "But doesn't Sony own Jeopardy?" "Yeah, but it's still a company. lt's still a business." "You have to pay." "Yeah." "It's funny." "People forget that." "It's like, you can't sing "Happy Birthday" in a movie." "Right." "Without having to pay for the right to do it." "Who--?" "Doesn't--?" "Paul McCartney owns "Happy Birthday"?" "No, it's two-- lt's" " For a long time, it was these two old ladies." "Yeah, I think it still is." "Yeah." "You've actually already run human trials." "You're just too stupid to know it." "Do it." "Now." "The prop design in this movie is fairly remarkable." "Yeah, it is." "lt all feels very organic and real." "There was a whole sequence that we ended up cutting out of the movie again, for the momentum of it all where the Goblin, like, blew up the base" "The base" " First the basement, and then the ground floor of Oscorp." "And it was an awesome sequence." "It was super cool." "And it was one of those things that you have to measure out." "There's so much happening in the third act and there's so much action in it that at a certain point, I think we all are sensitive to where" "When does the audience begin to turn off to too much happening?" "That's right." "And so we ended up cutting it but it was a great sequence." "There's a shot coming up here.... lt was actually the first appearance of him on the glider." "Right, as the Goblin, yeah." "And the truth is, it slightly stepped on" "More than slightly stepped on..." "...the reveal of him later." "Yeah." "And we felt very strongly that you didn't wanna" "You didn't wanna telegraph that." "You know what I mean?" "Even though you see it here you don't quite know that he becomes the Goblin on a glider until that sort of tragic moment later on when he comes for Gwen." "This was also one of those scenes that had to be modulated a lot." "When we first saw it, it was really pretty horrific." "Yeah, it was." "And terrifying and beautiful the way Marc had designed it." "But it was, you know, the stuff of nightmares." "But it was, you know, the stuff of nightmares." "And so we had to dial it back to-- You know, and experiment with it." "Stop the cab." "Lady, I ain't even moving." "This always makes me sort of smile." "Also makes me sort of annoyed." "The day we showed up to shoot this the bridge there, right below "l love you" all of that was shrouded in a tarp." "And it was, like, fantastic." "What?" "They were doing some kind of construction and the whole thing was draped in, like, some kind of a cloth." "So we had to digitally remove it at fairly significant expense." "More expensive than the Jeopardy theme?" "Much more." "And for those familiar with The Night Gwen Stacy Died comic book she's wearing the exact outfit which was leaked in a photograph while we were shooting and then thus began an Internet fervor about what was actually gonna be her fate." "And one of the things that we talked about a lot in the sort of construction of this whole third act sequence was playing with the audience and setting up the expectation." "She's gonna die on the bridge because that's where she died in the comics in that outfit." "And then subverting that and thinking she's gonna die again at another place." "And then subverting that and then finally doing it in the clock tower." "We knew the minute she got out of the car that day when we were shooting..." "...that that was gonna be-- -lt was an emotional day." "It was a very emotional day for Emma." "For all of us, but for her to put on that outfit which, you know, signaled obviously what was gonna happen in the story but also the end of her run in these movies which was obviously, you know, a big deal for her and for all of us." "It was-- lt was very emotional, Jeff." "And at the same time, there was a certain degree of feeling the weight of the comic books and of telling the story and of trying to really tell it with the" "You know, the reverence it was due." "That's right." "That's right." "We felt an enormous sort of debt of gratitude and respect for the books." "And also, you know, as Alex said as soon as the first paparazzi, paparatz...." "What's the singular version of--?" "Photographed her, it was" "Cat was out of the bag." "We knew that was gonna happen." "And this had been this secret that we had held onto for years since you guys started writing the script." "This was the day that, you know, the rest of the world figured it out." "Although I think a lot of people also speculated that we wouldn't go through with it." "That was a lot of the chatter at the time." "Just" "Alex was speaking to that." "When things like that leak there's always a bit of that conspiracy theory we let it leak on purpose so that" "And also, you know, Sam-- Like Avi was saying earlier." "You know, Raimi took it on and decided to give it a happy ending in movie one." "And I think people just assumed, you know, they'll never do it." "I think people would have revolted if we hadn't done it." "It would have just felt like a total cop-out on every level." "lt just would've been dishonest." "Yep." "they're never gonna get this back up." "How will I stop him?" "Every time I get close, he fries my web shooters." "Have you tried grounding them?" "Tried everything." "There were days though on the set where we looked at each other like:" ""Really, are we gonna do this?" "l know." "Are we really sure?"" "Whose idea was that?" "l think every step of the way we all expected somebody to step in, say, "Stop this," right?" "Right." "Right." "They're not gonna let us do this." "New York Approach." "This is Pan National 273 on approach." "How do you hear?" "Approach, do you copy?" "Radio's working. lt's not us." "This is another sequence that at one point we took out of the movie." "The air" " What was happening with the airplanes." "And I think we all felt as soon as you saw it without it felt like we were missing something." "And I think it specifically spoke to sort of the scope of, you know, what was at stake..." "...for the city and for Peter." "Yep." "That's something we always-- ln developing these movies, we always talk about is what's at stake here, and, you know, how...." "When you have to balance the scales of, you know, Peter's obligation to protect the city versus his own...." "You know, his own well-being or those" "You know, those of his loved ones." "He always" " He's always in a sort of-- An impossible dilemma." "And so we decided to really raise the stakes here and have so many different things going wrong that he had to put back together." "l'm coming with you!" "You need me!" "Okay, shut up." "You're coming with me!" "Shut the thing." "Sorry. I love you." "Don't hate me." "Peter!" "Her blurting "Peter" is fantastic." "You know, that was an accident." "Yeah." "And she literally did it and did it by accident on the night." "And when she puts her hand over her face as if to sort of shut herself up she actually did that as if to say, "l can't believe I just said that."" "And it was one of those happy accidents." "lt's such an inspired moment." "Yeah." "A happy accident, but also speaks to when you're really inside of something." "And it just becomes authentic." "She was" " She was Gwen Stacy." "This also is a moment designed by Marc visually." "He drew this." "Yep." "This was" " Yeah." "This was a picture he had on his" " On his editing room wall." "From the beginning." "Long before it existed." "Tower, we're experiencing some kind of electrical disturbance." "Instruments are going haywire." "Radar is down." "We're flying blind out here." "Do you copy?" "Just" " The process of shooting in 3D this time...." "l mean, we didn't shoot the movie in 3D." "We-- You know, whereas last time, we had." "And this time, we converted it." "You know, the whole art of 3D has evolved sort of exponentially since we made the la" "And by the last one, I mean the first Amazing where we shot with a 3D rig which, you know, kind of, by definition, is not nimble." "I mean, you're basically shooting with two cameras." "And it really limits what you can do and how fluidly you can move." "But at the time, conversion was not-- Was not a great option." "The film just looked much better when you shot it in 3D." "By the time we set up for this one, the world had changed and conversion had become every bit as good and better in some ways in terms of what you could do after." "And when we hired our DP, Dan Mindel...." "Part of the reason Marc fell in love with him" "And I think, Alex, you introduced them." "Yeah." "was because of the sort of fluidity of his camera moves and his ability to capture scope." "And Dan was in no way open to shooting with 3D rigs." "So it was an easy conversation." "But I think-- l think you feel...." "The movie just feels bigger and the 3D feels more alive because of what we were able to do with the camera." "Dan-- l made a bunch of movies with Dan." "And he is-- You know, he is as good as they get." "And he...." "He brings an incredible sort of fluidity to it and a balance of camera movement to sort of still" " A lot of people move the camera all over the place." "You cannot tell what's happening." "Yeah." "And he always finds a way to help his directors choreograph scenes so that the camera moves beautifully but it's never distracting and it gives you a constant sense of energy." "And...." "But not just for energy's sake." "No." "lt's sort of very authentic and" "Yes, and scope." "And he lights like-- l mean, his lighting is just from heaven." "He's just an incredibly gifted DP." "And there's always a bit of.... lt's-- One of the things that's so impressive about his cinematography, it's-- lt's not just the big sequences, but just the moments where people are talking quietly in rooms." "There's always a bit of a halo around them and the frames themselves..." "...are so mesmerizing." "Yeah." "And it" " Again, I think it speaks to what Matt says which is he gives you a real sense of scope and depth to everything." "You know, nothing is ever flat." "And we shot this movie the same way we shot Star Trek." "You know, it's a weird process because you do the scenes choreograph them with actors, move the camera around the actors step out of the frame, and then the camera moves again..." "Yeah." "...in the exact same...." "With the exact same move, exact same timing so that the 3D can be converted with the information it needs from both shots, and it's a whole process." "But it is much better because moving around those 3D rigs is so tough." "lt's just-- lt's so limiting." "Yeah." "This, by the way" "What you just saw Peter and Gwen...." "Actually, this right here and the moment preceding it was something we picked up" "We had shot the scene but we sort of went back and picked up a bit more of it because we wanted to underscore the idea that Peter knew that the arrival of Gwen there was a disaster." "This was sort of the beginning of his worst nightmare that, you know, having broken the promise and all of that now he had put Gwen, once again, directly in harm's way." "We felt we needed to hit that harder." "And also hit harder her...." "Choice." "Yeah." "The idea that she was" "She was very, very clear that this" " This isn't your call." "This is my call. I'm here because I make my own choices." "And so we went and shot that little piece at the end." "So all these little choices that add up to her death in a way that sort of the math is right of it." "Yeah." "And that's what's so hard about it is lining up the emotional math so that the audience is primed to deal and accept" " Deal with and accept something that is just...." "Everything in your body and heart does not want to accept." "It's the first time that Peter's Spidey sense has sort of a psychic take to it as well." "He can...." "That's right." "Well-- But you and I would know that." "Correct." "You know, it's like, "Oh, no, you can't be here."" "The universe just tells you it's a bad choice." "It's like when somebody throws you a surprise party and you realize you don't wanna have all these people in the same room at the same time." "It's funny." "From the first draft of the script through all the subsequent drafts, this really did" "The structure really did remain." "Yeah, it did. lt absolutely did." "Which was interesting that just the-- Sort of the" "All these different" " The intercutting of all these different pieces of action all coming down to whether or not Spider-Man was gonna defeat him." "That's right." "And then the balance I think of trying to figure out a way that the audience didn't necessarily feel like:" ""l just went through so much." "The movie's over now." "I can't wait for it to end."" "Because we still have a Harry component to it which is a more important piece of it." "So figuring out a way to take it just to the line hopefully..." "...where you still want more." "Yeah." "Yes!" "All right, people, back to work." "Let's land these planes." "I'll be back in a minute." "Oh, thank God." "All right!" "All right, we're back." "Everyone, let's go." "There was a lot of debate about how we were gonna portray Aunt May in the third act, in terms of what she was doing." "Remember how--?" "How, like, the power outage had affected her?" "A lot of people commented on how nice it was to see her in a hospital doing something." "You just hadn't seen May doing anything like that before." "That's right." "I love Oscorp Power." "Such a smart idea." "I think we can still make your flight." "Gwen, stay there." "This was something that Marc did sort of in consort with Deb Scott and with" " And with people at Weta." "Weta actually came in and built the Goblin suit." "And the idea was you know, for it to be completely tech you know, in that way." "But also to serve...." "You know, and sort of-- l think Alex referenced Electro's suit." "That the suit had to actually have some logical, you know, bearing in reality." "We had a whole thing in the script, remember?" "And you shot the scene." "We shot it." "The suit was designed..." "...to actually heal...." "Yeah." "War field injury." "lnjur-- Yeah." "And so it was...." "And then fly them out to safety." "That's right." "So while it was also, you know, an awesome piece of armor it served a function for somebody who actually needed it and empowered them, literally." "Giving it a practical purpose, it suddenly felt like it validated the whole idea of how" "You know, we needed to ground it in something." "You know, before it was, you know, Willem Dafoe in a mask..." "...which was a very different" "That was" "Some of the hurdle is how to get around the mask." "Yeah, exactly." "We wanted" "You wanted to be able to see his face." "But we had this scene, actually-- lt was the scene in the midpoint at Oscorp when Peter goes to see Harry and Harry tells him about his father." "The scene originally opened with Peter getting out of the elevator at Oscorp and the Man in the Suit sort of walks past and they'd just been showing Harry" "Harry sort of boasts to Peter about the tech of the suit." "Right." "Yeah, and he explained in that scene:" ""Oh, the suit is designed for, you know-- lf soldiers are injured in the field." "You know, it's a nano--"" "I think we said" " At one point, said it was a nano-tech suit." "Yeah." "We went away from that, but...." "And we liked this idea very much from the beginning that science is neutral." "And Oscorp had..." "Perverted it." "...scientists like Richard Parker... lt depends whose hands it falls into." "...doing work that, you know, was meant for good but ultimately could cause great evil." "l love this shot." "l do think that this is" "The whole sequence is just so spectacularly choreographed." "I think Marc did such an amazing job putting this together..." "...you know, sort of...." "And Pietro as well." "Yeah." "And Jerome." "And" "God knows, Jerome." "Yeah." "Now, this was a tough day on set." "Because, well, my God, this was" "The emotional-- You just were walking on eggshells." "We all were, because it was...." "Particularly the latter part of it." "So, Matt, speak to what of this is set and what of this is digitally...." "Well, we had a physical set which was, you know, this interior of the clock tower with enormous practical gears." "Obviously there's limitations in terms of what you can do with that." "So everything was also digitally rendered." "But what you're looking at, you know, for instance...." "You're actually looking at her dangling from a set on a wire." "So, you know, we had-- There was" "There was a practical one and a digital version of it." "lt was an extraordinary set." "Yeah, it was an amazing set." "One of the most beautiful sets I've seen." "This again, you know, the hands of time and somebody was talking about the...." "And Avi referenced it earlier. lt was" "The moment that she dies was also the number of the...." "Comic book." "Of the comic book." "And this was all Marc." "You know, Marc had choreographed all this." "It was an interesting process because he did a great job of preplanning it but then he really did rebuild it several times in post." "And had all these really inspired ideas for" "You know, even from things like this idea that there was sort of like a hand reaching in the web." "That was sort of a late addition to it and...." "He really spent so much meticulous time going through the sequence and paying attention to the cause-effect of every little detail..." "...which was so wonderful." "That's right." "And this was a really tough thing because" "Well, this was" " We really worked over and over and over again how to-- How to portray her fall and...." "We showed it-- We actually showed it to people in a very early iteration of it and it wasn't clear why she had died, whether she had died." "ln the aftermath of- lt's a fine line because you don't want it to be sort of a gruesome snap of the neck." "In the aftermath of the comic coming out there was actually debate as to what had caused her back to snap." "Well, there always has been." "There always has been." "Hey." "We had to be clear that in fact she was dead." "Hey, Gwen." "Hey." "Hey." "You're okay." "Well, it also was the question of like how brutal do you wanna go, you know?" "Exactly right." "Because it's- lt could've been so much worse, but" "That's right." "And the comic is pretty brutal, you know." "But I don't think anybody wants that." "And so figuring out how to sort of do it-- l think Marc measured it out quite perfectly at the end of the day." "Gwen!" "And watching this as many times as we did...." "Watching it for the first time with an audience stunned me." "The power of the sequence and...." "Yeah." "You know, at the screening in New York the premier in New York, people were screaming." "Gasping." "Yeah." "I mean, they literally couldn't believe we had done this." "It's also worth noting that Andrew is just the most unbelievably dedicated...." "He sent me a picture of himself the day he was shooting it." "Yeah." "And the" " With the text, "l hate you."" "Because he was so" "Yeah." "He was so wrecked from it." "He fully lives it." "But he lives it. I mean, that is the great gift of working with Andrew is that he, like" "He just goes in heart and soul and dives in there as deeply as you would ever hope any actor would..." "Yeah." "...and just invites you to be a total collaborator." "And it's the" "Again, like another just great gift of these amazing actors is it becomes this kind of family and a process that we all share together and build on together." "This was another interesting thing." "Marc had really designed this in his mind from the beginning." "Really right from the first draft he kind of knew how he wanted to cut..." "Seasons." "...the seasons." "And he had a really.... lt was another-- A bit like you described with the train where he was so specific about it and...." "l couldn't-- l couldn't quite tell if it was, like, the most inspired idea ever or I don't know what, but it turned out to be so..." "Beautiful." "...beautiful." "And kind of poetic" "And in 3D..." "...there's a depth and a scope." "Oh, yeah, it's amazing." "lt's amazing." "Yeah." "lt's amazing." "Yeah." "This was something we added too." "Matt, you wanna talk about this?" "Yeah." "This was something we decided...." "You know, there was this" " There's this idea throughout the movie that terrible things are coming out of Oscorp." "And that Oscorp is the birthplace of...." "As I think Jeff said, of pure science but also a place where science..." "...gets distorted and corrupted." "Corrupted." "And originally, we had shot the movie and cut the movie and there was no...." "You never saw Harry again after the scene in the clock tower." "Some people wondered whether he had died..." "...or whether he had gotten away." "And it was sort of-- lt was a loose end and it also felt like a missed opportunity." "And, you know we haven't been shy about, you know, the idea that there are movies like Sinister Six and Venom coming and the idea that things are gonna emerge from this place." "So if you look in the background there you see the Ock tentacles and you see the Vulture's wings and you see Rhino's rhino suit." "And it seemed like the perfect moment to sort of set up the beginning...." "Some sort of a team-up." "And so we decided that we should go back to Harry and put him sort of at the center of it and the beginning of something to come." "And so then this speaks to...." "We've talked about it earlier, honoring her death and then not wanting the movie to end there." "How do you move past that?" "And one of the real consequences of Gwen dying and then Peter reacting to it is that the city has lost Spider-Man." "And it was very much a thread of the first movie, was how does the mo" "How does the city feel about Spider-Man?" "And in the background, we've been allowing the city in this film to treat him much more as a hero, and now he's gone." "You know, it's a tall order." "I think you pulled it off masterfully." "But it's a tall order to ask an audience to endure the death of the most beloved character." "Yeah, it's crazy." "And then 10 minutes later walk out of the theater smiling." "How do you do that math?" "And the answer is Sally Field." "And this-- lt's true." "And this-- And this incredible dialogue that speaks to a kind of a universal experience we all-- That we all go through, which is loss and how you get through it and how you survive it and where do you put that, and where you put the people you lose." "And I think it allowed the character to go through this pain and come out the other side." "And it also allowed the audience to transition into what becomes sort of a big almost fun scene at the very end of the movie." "There was a very interesting moment for me personally." "We did" "You know, as you do, we did a test screening with an audience that had been invited to see the film and they didn't" "They had nothing at stake." "They had no investment in the film." "Afterwards, you ask them questions." "And one of the questions was, "To the moms in the crowd would you take your kids to see this movie?"" "It's an important question." "And a woman raised her hand and she said:" ""l would absolutely take my kids because they are going to lose people in their life and I think this movie very honestly dealt with the consequences of that."" "And it was really incredibly...." "Yeah, I remember." "l remember." "We had no choice." "I mean, if we didn't make it a movie about that, then we would have" "Then Gwen's death would have been kind of for nothing." "It wouldn't have had any resonance." "It just would've been a plot point." "And I think at the end of the day, really, what we" "What we wanted to achieve was Peter to understand that in order to pick up the mantle again and be Spider-Man he had to accept that part of being Spider-Man was about living with loss." "Living with the loss of his parents, living with the loss of Gwen." "But that" "As is the case for all of us even though they're gone, you keep them with you in your heart and you fight on for them..." "...and that's what makes you a hero." "That's right." "At the end of the day, thank God we have Andrew Garfield to convey all of that in this scene because his performance..." "...in this piece is remarkable." "You saw it." "lt's amazing." "Spectacular how he sort of goes..." "...through all of that..." "Simultaneously." "...without saying a word." "Yep." "Marc took me to this place after we finished the movie and I didn't even realize that it was the same one from the movie." "Yeah, it's right on the edge of SoHo." "Yes, exactly." "And he loves it there." "Yeah." "Let's go!" "Move it." "It really is true that it's so tricky." "You've got this movie that's about sort of death." "And then you've got a giant mechanical rhinoceros running around New York." "How do you connect those dots?" "How do you get from one to the next?" "Sally Field, Andrew Garfield." "And that's why it's an interesting and very unique universe the Spider-Man universe, because all of those things..." "...have to live in the same space." "That was always Spider-Man." "Yup, always." "Incredible joy, incredible you know, larger-than-life characters and action and genuine human..." "Pathos." "...pathos and tragedy." "It's one of the things that you go back and you look at the comics and you forget how much time was spent in the comic books..." "...when Peter was not in the suit." "That's right." "Just telling stories about this awkward teenager dealing with growing up." "I think that's part of what I loved so much about the first Amazing Spider-Man was I was" "As much as I love Spider-Man, because I always loved Spider-Man I was so compelled..." "...by Peter and Gwen." "That's right." "It was always more interesting to me, that story because it was so human and wonderful and...." "Look at this shot, you guys." "I love" " Not to interrupt you." "I just-- l love this shot so much." "Which one?" "This one?" "Yeah." "Oh, yeah, it's amazing." "One of my friends after seeing the film, said we made a rom-com where the female lead dies..." "Exactly." "...and you still go out smiling." "Yeah. I just love this shot." "lt's amazing." "I remember the first time we saw it cut together." "Oh, yeah." "And the reveal." "It was so brilliant." "Hats off to Mr. Webb." "Perfectly done." "And to Andrew, who really fought for this moment, from the beginning." "I knew you'd come back." "Yeah." "Thanks for stepping up for me." "You're the bravest kid I've ever seen." "You're kind of speaking to every kid in the audience with this." "And, you know-- But this was the first movie, actually that I could take my son to see that I had made." "And he could not have connected to it more." "And I think there's a big part of-- A big part of him that relates to that kid." "I think my son is sort of secretly curious as to why he wasn't that kid." "He was there that day." "We shot it and Jackson was there." "And he kept looking at me like, "Really?"" "Yeah. "Who's this guy?"" "Right." ""You want me to put on the suit now?"" "Yeah." "He was giving notes." "Yeah." "We shot this on Madison Avenue." "With a real rhinoceros." "Yeah." "No, that was all practical." "Yeah." "No." "And this was something that Marc had always envisioned with the guys from Blur Studios as being a tease for the Sinister Six." "Yep." "Embedded in the credits was a sense of what was to come..." "...which I think is brilliant." "Yeah, it's very cool." "Well, this was-- l think if there's one enormous challenge that we faced having already made the movie it was the math of the ending and how to get Peter-- That's what we've been talking about." "How to get Peter from utter, you know, rock bottom having lost the love of his life to a place where he can come back and be Spider-Man." "Because we always knew we were gonna" "We had to end this movie with him putting the suit on again." "It was-- lt would be devastating and it wouldn't be Spider-Man it would send the wrong message if he gave up." "So how do you restore faith?" "How do you restore hope?" "Who is--?" "And I remember having conversations with Jeff and Alex in the very, very beginning." "What is the one thing that could actually buoy him and give him some hope that life is worth living after losing everything?" "And it was one of those things where it was like, literally, "What is it?"" "Well, it would have to be...." "l mean, his father would literally have to come back from the dead or from wherever we thought he was." "And the power of that was something we all really fell in love with." "That he'd be probably the only person in his life who could pick him up off the ground." "And so they-- These guys wrote that scene." "And we shot it." "And it was one of the most spectacular days I've ever been around on a set in terms of the pure, very raw intensity." "And I remember Andrew and Campbell Scott who obviously plays his father, and who's a brilliant actor did not rehearse the scene once." "...did not rehearse the scene once." "They felt that...." "And Andrew really felt this..." "And Andrew really felt this you know, as embodying Peter Parker that he wanted-- He wanted in that moment" "When Richard Parker appears he wanted it to be something he had never felt before as in real sort of Method acting in its purest sense." "And so it was sort of a beautiful snowy day in New York and we shot this scene where Peter is standing over Gwen's grave and you've been through the seasons, and it's snowing and all of a sudden, he hears this voice behind him saying:" ""Peter." And he turns and it's Richard." "And at first, he's incredulous." "He can't fathom what-- That this could be real." "And there's this incredible sort of father-son moment where Richard apologizes and Peter just screams at him, you know:" ""Where have you been?" "Where have you been?" "Who are you?"" "And finally, Richard just embraces him and you see Peter sort of melt into the arms of his father." "And then we transition to a scene of them walking to a bench and sitting there." "And Richard describes to Peter that he can't fathom a world in which death and the death of people like Gwen and the death of people like his wife Mary where death is meaningless." "And that, in fact, Peter is here for some higher reason." "And that there must be a reason." "And that in fact" "And he delivers the "with great power comes great responsibility" line and it lands on Peter." "And it was beautiful and very, very impactful and powerful." "Also finally in that speech, he said to Peter that he had always thought it was his legacy..." "Yeah." "...to make the world a better place." "And then finally realized that, no, it was Peter who had taken on this ability of Spider-Man and that now that he had it, he couldn't turn his back on it which was really empowering, but I think when the audience saw it they used the logic, they voiced the logic of:" ""Well, where was he?" "How is he hiding for so long?"" "And we had carefully set it up throughout the movie." "There was a moment on the plane where Mary said to Richard, "At some point, that boy is gonna need us." "And you have to promise me that we'll be there for him."" "And the whole spy investigation had really tried to subtly feather in this idea that Richard's body had never been found, perhaps." "But the audience used the logic of "well, where was he" to really cover the emotion of:" ""How dare any father stay away from his son for that long?"" "People just on a visceral level couldn't accept that." "And I think the other thing that Alex very wisely pointed out was in a movie that was about somebody growing up it also, in a way, slightly infantilized Peter in that it took his father to help him get over Gwen's death." "The movie finally really allows Peter to overcome his loss himself as opposed to needing the help of a parent." "It's so tricky, because you're trying to-- You're trying to measure everything and balance everything against what it means to have Gwen die." "And when we started talking about the story the first thought was, "Well, the only thing," as Matt just said "you know, that could get you to feel better would be that the death begets a resurrection so that he at least gets his father back."" "And that makes a lot of sense." "But the problem is that the audience has already gone through the trauma of watching her die and having to process that." "And in a weird way, as much as we fought for it and fought for the ending and shot the ending the first time I saw it my thought was, "This is never going to work because you can't ask the audience to go through, in a weird way, another trauma."" "Yes." "And then as Matt said the math of like, "Wait, so you weren't there, why didn't you show up?"" "One of those weird things where you can't intellectualize it." "Like, you as a viewer, go:" "Yeah." ""l hate you for not showing up and making your son suffer through everything he suffered." "It doesn't matter why. I don't care."" "Like, there is a sort of blinding just truth to:" ""You are the worst father ever." "And in fact, rather than being happy about your return, I hate you." "And I feel worse for Peter."" "And we even tried to write to that a lot." "In anticipation of that problem, we had Richard say things like:" ""l stayed away to keep you safe." "They were looking for me." "If I'd come back--" None of it mattered." "And as much as he said that up front, you" "Andrew was right to yell and scream at his father when he showed up because it's the only rational reaction to a moment like that." "And so I think at the end of the day, it really just sort of-- ln looking at it, it was like:" ""We have made a movie about the death of Gwen Stacy." "It needs to remain very simply a movie about the death of Gwen Stacy." "And it needs to use the character who has really become his parent in the movie to deliver the message correctly."" "And we entertained the, like:" ""Does Gwen come back as a ghost?" "Does his father come back as a ghost?"" "We talked about it." "And Marc wisely said:" ""That's bullshit." "Like, that's a lot of fakeness." "And we can't do that." "And that's, like, not a" "You know, that's not a real ending." "And it has to be" "We have to watch Peter pull himself out of the mud."" "He was totally right and I think an old screenwriting adage is that the simplest answer is always the right one." "And I think it's true." "I think this just needed to follow a much, much simpler line." "It was just too emotionally complicated." "Thanks for listening, and we put a lot of love and care into this movie because we know how much people love Spider-Man, love this universe and have been loving this character for 50 years." "And hopefully, the experience was a good one for everybody who came out and saw it and who is watching this now." "I couldn't have said it better myself." "Thanks for listening and watching, everybody." "Thank you, all."