Spider-Man: No Way Home's visual effects team has commented on the trailer's lizard punch mistake. The third solo movie for Tom Holland's Spider-Man set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe debuted in theaters on December 17 and has set innumerable box records not only for the pandemic era, but all time. This success can largely be attributed to the film's inclusion of multiple legacy villains and the return of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's Spider-Men. No Way Home's latest milestone was surpassing Jurassic World and The Lion King to become the sixth-highest grossing movie in history.

Throughout No Way Home's marketing campaign, Marvel and Sony went to great lengths to keep the past Spider-Man actors' return a secret, which saw Garfield flat out denying his involvement during his back-to-back press tours for The Eyes of Tammy Faye and tick, tick...BOOM! Since the studios were silent on the topic, fans carefully mined No Way Home's trailers for any evidence of their return, honing in on one specific moment from a Brazilian television spot in which Lizard is hit by an invisible punch, an apparent editing mistake that led many to suspect either Maguire or Garfield's Spider-Man were digitally removed from the shot. When the movie finally premiered in theaters, these exact suspicions were realized.

Related: Why Maguire & Garfield’s Spider-Man Universes Never Had Avengers

In a new interview with the online VFX magazine Before and Afters, No Way Home's visual effects supervisor Chris Waegner commented on the trailer's infamous editing mistake. Waegner did not seem ready to take any blame for the alleged error, as he says their job is to supply whatever works in progress the marketing team requests for trailers and TV spots, and the VFX artists don't even see the finished products until they're released to the public. Read Waegner's comments below:

As filmmakers we are often asked to deliver WIPs and other various media to the marketing teams. We pretty much give them what they’re requesting but we don’t see the final assembly until it’s released mainstream. I know the internet went crazy and there were many rumours about it.

The Lizard, Electro, and Sandman's giant face made of sand line up to fight in Spider-Man in No Way Home

No Way Home's climatic third act battle takes place on the Statue of Liberty as it is under renovation and littered with scaffolding. The scene involves all three Spider-Men and the film's multiversal villains, Green Goblin, Doc Ock, Electro, Sandman, and Lizard, which required painstaking amounts of VFX work. Since Marvel and Sony did not want the reveal the multiple Spider-Men prematurely, it was crucial that they be edited of certain shots for the trailer.

It's unfortunate this one mistake slipped through the cracks and essentially backfired since fans were able to surmise exactly what was being hidden from them. However, this didn't seem to hurt Spider-Man: No Way Home at the box office. In fact, the rumors and speculation only seemed to hype up the film even more and entice audiences out to theaters to see all three live-action versions of the webslinger side-by-side.

Next: No Way Home's Ending Brilliantly Flips Iron Man's Endgame Sacrifice

Source: Before and Afters

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