Marc Webb found filming The Amazing Spider-Man 2 “totally liberating”.
The director helms the superhero movie starring Andrew Garfield as the title character and Emma Stone as his love interest Gwen Stacy. To kick off his trilogy in the first movie two years ago, Marc recreated the original story seen in Sam Raimi’s 2002 movie Spider-Man starring Tobey Maguire.
With the second feature Marc was pleased he could move on with the storyline after setting the scene.
“I believe fundamentally, just in terms of the craft of cinema - especially in a wish-fulfilment movie where someone like Peter Parker is your emissary and the audience has to connect to him - you have to experience the A-to-B emotional arc and flow of that character in order to feel the things that you want the audience to feel,” Marc explained to screencrush.com. “And because the inflection of the character was different than what we had seen before, I thought it was actually more important to re-tell those beats. And then people, you know, they love to fling things at you for that kind of thing. But, this time around, we didn’t have that obligation.
“[It was] totally liberating. Also, you know, listen, I made mistakes the first time around. You know, about the costume and I think I shot too much at night. And this time, I was like, "I want to go back to the iconic Spider-Man.’”
When asked whether the sequel is better than the first movie Marc was quick to answer yes. However, he doesn’t put it down to the original being a bad film and simply sees the process as a learning curve.
“You just get better at it. And I think it’s the truth. You know, that doesn’t mean I don’t love parts of that. For example: The relationship between Andrew and Emma - or Peter and Gwen - and how it emerged was actually a surprise how well that worked out. And I really have a great affection for that and that’s something that I took and I wanted to build upon,” he added.
