The Amazing Spider-Man 2 hit theaters earlier this year to a mixed-bag of reviews. While some were impressed with how Marc Web was able to take things to the next level, others were far less enthused.
But how does actor Andrew Garfield process this kind of feedback, when the weight of the film ultimately rests on his shoulders as Spiderman? “I read a lot of the reactions from people,” Garfield said in a recent interview “and I had to stop because I could feel I was getting away from how I actually felt about it. For me, I read the script that Alex Kurtzman and Bob Orci wrote, and I genuinely loved it. There was this thread running through it… It’s interesting to do a postmortem. I’m proud of a lot of it and had a good time, and was a bit taken aback by the response.”
As they say in Hollywood, the show must go on. The Spiderman franchise is still a cash-cow and obviously the studio has no intention of derailing future sequels just yet (who Garfield blames for tinkering a bit too much with the final cut). Moving forward, the real question becomes “…what are the people actually saying? What’s underneath the complaint, and how can we learn from that…Is it that this is the fifth Spider-Man movie in however many years, and there’s a bit of fatigue? Is it that there was too much in there? Is it that it didn’t link? If it linked seamlessly, would that be too much? Were there tonal issues? What is it? I think all that is valuable. Constructive criticism is different from people just being dicks…” asks Garfield.
It is still unknown if the young actor will be involved in either the Venom or Sinister Six spin-offs, slated for release in the coming years.