Andrew Garfield recalls what made The Amazing Spider-Man 2 press tour so special to him. After director Sam Raimi capped off his Spider-Man trilogy in 2007, Sony decided to reboot the series with director Marc Webb and Andrew Garfield in the lead role as Peter Parker who, at the time, was coming off his critically acclaimed performance in The Social Network. The first of two films, The Amazing Spider-Man, was released in 2012 and saw the web-slinging superhero take on Rhy Ifans' Lizard. The film grossed $758 million at the box office, more than enough to warrant a sequel.
Two years later, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 returned many of the characters from the first film, including Garfield as Peter Parker, Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy, and Sally Field as Aunt May. The sequel attempted to ratchet up the stakes by introducing three villains in Jamie Foxx's Electro, Dane DeHaan's Green Goblin, and Paul Giamatti's Rhino, which was just one of its many shortcomings. Though Sony was reportedly setting up a Sinister Six adaptation, the series fizzled out after the sequel. Sony decided to make a deal with Disney to allow Spider-Man to join the MCU in 2016's Captain America: Civil War, portrayed by Tom Holland.
Now, in an interview with Collider promoting his latest project, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Andrew Garfield discussed his career in retrospect, including the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity he had to work on the Amazing Spider-Man films. Though he has no regrets and is grateful for the experience, Garfield also got candid about the role that franchise filmmaking plays in consumerist culture today. He tried to remedy that, though, with a "splinter press tour" for The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which allowed them to bring attention to small, philanthropic organizations. Read what Garfield had to say about the experience below:
So it's on the second press tour, we created, me and my friend, my publicist at the time, we created this, with Sony, we created this splinter press tour. So that every city we'd go to we would go and visit a small, local philanthropic organization and bring all of the energy and attention that we had from this character in this story, and the predominantly wanting to sell cinema tickets, but actually there was a way of redirecting it towards those more underdog Peter Parker organizations around the world. So that, that was the kind of remedy for me. So, it's a big learning experience, for sure.
After the Spider-Man sequel in 2014, Garfield has stayed away from big-budget blockbusters, opting more for lower-profile and independent films. This led to some of the best performances of his career, including the Mel Gibson-directed war film Hacksaw Ridge in 2016, for which Garfield received an Oscar nod. His next performance will be as the notorious televangelist Jim Bakker in The Eyes of Tammy Faye.
Despite Garfield repeatedly denying that he'll appear in the multiverse-centric threequel, Spider-Man: No Way Home, there has been much evidence indicating he will. These rumors were only bolstered by the confirmed appearances of Alfred Molina's Doc Ock and Jamie Foxx's Electro. If Garfield does end up reprising his role from The Amazing Spider-Man 2, perhaps Sony and Marvel could give him the sendoff he deserves after his series ended prematurely.
Source: Collider