It was meant to expand Sony’s Spidey franchise into a fully-fledged cinematic universe, but instead The Amazing Spider-Man 2 disappointed fans and critics, as well as underperforming at the box office, becoming the lowest-grossing instalment in the series, and trailing behind Captain America: The Winter Soldier and X-Men: Days of Future Past in terms of 2014’s superhero movies (with Guardians of the Galaxy still on release, it looks likely that James Gunn’s space opera will also overtake it). So, what went wrong? Well, according to Andrew Garfield, studio interference played a big part:
“I read a lot of the reactions from people and I had to stop because I could feel I was getting away from how I actually felt about it,” Garfield tells The Daily Beast. “For me, I read the script that Alex [Kurtzman] and Bob [Orci] wrote, and I genuinely loved it. There was this thread running through it. I think what happened was, through the pre-production, production, and post-production, when you have something that works as a whole, and then you start removing portions of it—because there was even more of it than was in the final cut, and everything was related. When you have something that works as a whole, and then you start removing portions of it … saying, ‘No, that doesn’t work,’ then the thread is broken, and it’s hard to go with the flow of the story. Certain people at the studio had problems with certain parts of [the movie]. And ultimately the studio is the final say in those movies, because they’re the tentpoles, so you have to answer to those people. I got to work in deep scenes that you don’t usually see in comic book movies, and I got to explore this orphan boy — a lot of which was taken out, and which we’d explored more.”
Asked about the lessons learned from The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Garfield responded by stating that: “What’s underneath the complaint, and how can we learn from that? We have to ask ourselves, ‘What do we believe to be true?’ Is it that this is the fifth Spider-Man movie in however many years, and there’s a bit of fatigue? Is it that there was too much in there? Is it that it didn’t link? If it linked seamlessly, would that be too much? Were there tonal issues? What is it?”
As a result of The Amazing Spider-Man 2’s underperformance, Sony has pushed back The Amazing Spider-Man 3, opting instead to focus on The Sinister Six, Venom and an as-yet-unrevealed female-led spin-off in an effort to rejuvinate the franchise.
Where do you think The Amazing Spider-Man 2 went wrong? Let us know your thoughts…
Originally published September 12, 2014. Updated April 15, 2018.
