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The Amazing Spider-Man director, Marc Webb, has been doing some interviews recently in which he's discussed his awesome looking new film.
We normally don't see our superheroes as bullys, but did you see that recent clip of Spider-Man messing around with a mugger? He was kind of being a dick to him wasn't he? Well, that's because this Spider-Man has a little bit of a bully attitude. This was intentional, and Webb explains why...
I think it comes down to everything having to emerge from a real place. The reason why Spider-Man is being so playful in that moment is that as a character, he's feeling drunk on his power. He's having a really good time. He's becoming a bit of a bully there. He's not being deeply altruistic, and that's something you'll learn more about when you see the movie. It's a reflection of his attitude: He puts that mask on and the shy kid is gone. He's now this really empowered superhero. That means having fun, sometimes at other people's expense ... You get to see and do whatever you want without any personal consequences. There's a danger to that ... but there's a thrill to it too.
I can relate to that as a blogger. I think most bloggers can relate to that for the fact we can be a little bit more bold if we want to poke fun at someone like, lets say... Brett Ratner. It's just a little bit more fun doing it behind a mask. There's also the possibility that if Ratner wanted to hunt me down and TRY to beat the hell of me, he could. So there's the dangerous thriller aspect of it. So it kind of makes sense that a shy kid like Peter Parker would take advantage of his new found power. Webb continues to discuss why this character is relatable,
[W]hat stayed with me and haunted me was the idea that this character is so intensely relatable: He's a superhero who's just a kid. He's not a billionaire, not an alien. His normal identity is so ordinary in so many ways, and so relatable, and that's something about Marvel that I always liked. They made the teenagers the superheroes: the X-Men and Spider-Man, whereas [teens] were just the sidekicks in DC Comics. I think it was at a time in your life when you're starting to access these stories and mythologies that make the wish-fulfillment component much more intense. I know I have a 17-year-old boy trapped inside of me forever, and that's something with an instant appeal.
Yeah, I completely agree with Webb on how most of us will be able to relate to this character. Do you think Webb's version of Parker sounds more relatable than Raimi's version of Parker?
In a seperate interview with Yahoo! Movies Webb discussed some more aspects of the film. I've included a few excerpts below, but you can read the full interview here.
On Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone’s chemistry:
We screen tested them together, and she's very funny and really quick and snappy. I remember the first time we screen tested them -- I don't think they'd met before, really -- and it took a minute for him to get back up to speed with her because she was so funny. And then they really brought out really great parts of the other's performance. Of course, it was there, and that's why we cast that dynamic. It was really great to watch it on screen.
On Parker being in High School:
There's an adolescent quality to a lot of the "Spider-Man" [comics] that I liked, that is really important in terms of the DNA of the character. He's like an imperfect guy. You know what [I] mean? He is a kid, and he's always kind of making mistakes, and he is not so sure about himself all the time. I felt like the authentic place to start that was in high school. And I think there's something about the way you feel about the world at that age that makes things much more raw, and I thought that was really fun to explore more cinematically.
Here he discusses the trickiest element of Spider-Man's world from the comics to capture on screen:
To create something that's funny and whimsical, but also has real emotional stakes. That's the real tricky part is to make it all feel grounded even though he is doing something, even though he's swinging through the streets and he can do things that no other human can do. But still give him a hard time when he's relating to his aunt or his girlfriend, and all those dumb little things that we all have to deal with when you don't have that mask on. I think reconciling those two universes was tricky, but I think that people really react to it.
On creating the identity for Spider-Man:
Well, Andrew went to Queens to sort of study how kids behave, act, dress, and he was very specific about the choices he made in terms of costumes and stuff. It was about trying to find how a kid acts these days given the background that he has. Meaning, he was abandoned as a child -- and irrespective of the parents' motives, or the conditions that surrounded that -- you can't help but feel a little bummed out by that. And cheated, and a little distrustful of the world.
There is an attitude, but again that manifests itself [by Peter being] an outsider by choice. He has a skateboard. He can be a little bit surly, but there's a goodness to him that is sometimes misguided and sometimes not, but there's an attitude. But I think it's really specific to this Peter Parker that you haven't seen before.
The Amazing Spider-Man opens in theaters on July 3rd, 2012. What do you think about what Webb is doing with this iconic character?
