While preparing for the final of The Amazing Spider Man 2Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone went to great lengths to fully capture the heartache of Gwen Stacy’s tragic death. Despite Garfield’s time in the iconic suit across the street The Amazing Spider-Man and the sequel is met with mixed reviews, there is still a lot of love for the projects among the Marvel fan base. Much of this affection is due to Garfield himself, who remains as popular a star in the role as Tom Holland and Tobey Maguire.
Capping off the warm reception Garfield received from fans after his first performance as Spidey was his amazing chemistry with Stone, who played Peter Parker’s love interest Gwen Stacy. The two colleagues, who had a relationship during the filming of… The Amazing Spider-Man, were instantly loved by fans for their natural, heartfelt connection to the screen. How perfectly they brought two iconic Marvel characters to life on the big screen made Gwen’s death (at the hands of Peter’s corrupt best friend Harry Osborn, no less) utterly devastating to most viewers.
utilities, The Amazing Spider Man 2 VFX supervisor Jerome ChenIn reveals the methods both Garfield and Stone used to properly capture the disturbing sequence in Sean O’Connell’s new book, With Great Power: How Spider-Man Conquered Hollywood During the Golden Age of Comic Book Blockbusters (through CBR). To fully translate the excruciating pain Peter felt from Garfield over the catastrophic loss, both he and Stone agreed not to see each other for a week before shooting. Watch the passage from the book below:
I remember when they were filming that scene, Andrew and… [Gwen Stacy actor] Emma [Stone] have deliberately not seen each other for a week. Andrew said, ‘I don’t want to see you! When you get into that scene, pretend you’re dead to me.’ It was very quiet. The sets were almost always very quiet. [Director] Marc [Webb] likes to work very concentrated. So it was very quiet, a totally closed set. And I just remember Andrew came in and just cried uncontrollably. It was hours of that. That was grueling but powerful.
How Gwen’s Death Would Have Affected The Amazing Spider-Man 3
Despite Garfield’s enormous efforts in the titular role, The Amazing Spider Man 2 never got a sequel to wrap up a potential trilogy. This left the more immediate effects of Gwen’s death on Garfield’s Spidey somewhat ambiguous, with the film’s final scene emphasizing that he would return to crime-fighting without completely giving away the psychological scars that may remain from his loss. From not only the scene of Gwen’s fatal fall itself, but also from the descriptions of Garfield’s intense emotion during its creation, it’s plausible that a much more damaged Spider-Man could have appeared in The Amazing Spider Man 3.
Returning to the role last year for the absolute triumph of the MCU Spider-Man: No Way HomeGarfield’s Spidey teamed up with both Holland’s and Maguire’s variations of the web-swinging hero, which did offer a suggestion of where his character might have gone The Amazing Spider Man 3. Garfield’s Peter almost explained to his younger self that a vengeful Holland was looking for Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin for the murder of Aunt May, admitting that he had fallen into bitterness and violence against his enemies after Gwen’s death. While it may have been darkly intriguing to see a version of Spider-Man not taking his punches, it may have also felt somewhat at odds with what makes the hero so special to fans. Spidey was and still is a vision to choose the righteous path, regardless of the adversities that marred his life; Garfield saving MJ as redemption for the loss of Gwen was a much more fitting conclusion to his character’s story than an act of desperation. On the other hand, with how popular Garfield’s Spider-Man remains, always capable of powerful moments like in The Amazing Spider Man 2fans might get to see a continuation of his arc yet.
Source: With Great Power: How Spider-Man Conquered Hollywood During the Golden Age of Comic Book Blockbusters (via CBR)
