Highlights
- Andrew Garfield reflects on his time working on Spider-Man: No Way Home and how it influenced his performance alongside Tom Holland.
- The inclusion of previous Spider-Man actors and iconic villains in No Way Home created a wave of fan attraction, resulting in the film's massive box office success.
- Garfield felt a sense of freedom and camaraderie while filming, which allowed him to explore and bring a playful and irreverent version of the character to life.
Spider-Man: No Way Home star Andrew Garfield detailed some interesting ideas about his time working on and starring in the movie, and how these experiences affected his performance alongside current franchise leading man Tom Holland.
Tom Holland's Spider-Man trilogy launched with Homecoming in 2017. The trilogy served as an origin story for the MCU's Peter Parker, which concluded with No Way Home. The third film features past Spider-Man actors Tobey McGuire and Andrew Garfield and the most iconic villains from their respective iterations, with a resultant wave of fan attraction catapulting the film to an almost $2 billion worldwide box office.
While some originally wanted McGuire in Spider-Man: No Way Home without Garfield, the second Spider-Man in the triumvirate ended up being the film's highlight of the film, with even the harshest critics praising his performance. Now, Garfield has opened up about his feelings and experience filming the movie and admitted he intentionally played Peter Parker as "messy and free and playful and silly." Garfield had much to say in the official The Art of Spider-Man: No Way Home artbook, expressing his excitement at working with the other two and how it got him thinking, ”What can we explore about these three brothers who are separated through time and space?"
Garfield also discussed how closely linked Peter Parker was to the idea of a lone crusader from the get-go and how the plot of No Way Home played off on that. "It was just suddenly mind-boggling and incredibly healing and beautiful to think, 'What if you discovered you weren't in fact alone and that someone was going through the exact same struggle that you felt like you were uniquely going through?” Garfield mused. “That feeling like you're not alone in the universe is quite a powerful thing." It was a fundamental part of the film’s dynamic that appealed to everyone who saw the film and is part of why No Way Home made Spider-Man the MCU's best trilogy.
There’s no doubt that Garfield, Maguire, and Holland formed a brotherhood on Spider-Man: No Way Home, both on-screen and off. Speaking on how this gave rise to his memorable and genuinely delightful performance, Garfield admitted, "I felt like the pressure was off, and I was given a lot of freedom to explore and be the irreverent version of the character that I always felt a connection to — to be messy and free and playful and silly. It just felt like a very free, healing experience."
While the film’s success was phenomenal and effectively proved that Marvel fatigue is a myth in the eyes of many observers, Spider-Man: No Way Home was lightning in a bottle that won’t strike twice. While the MCU is gearing up for another Spider-Man trilogy, the perfect storm of more than 2 decades of fan love, creative inspiration, and an organically formed chemistry between three well-loved actors won’t be waiting for the filmmakers working on the project. In many ways, No Way Home marks a success that Marvel Studios will never recover from.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is available for streaming on Starz in the US.
Source: The Art of Spider-Man: No Way Home (via The Direct)
