Spider-Man. For many fans of everyone’s favorite wallcrawler, the name conjures up images of adventure and fun. It’s that last bit… fun, that makes Spider-Man so different from many of his superhero brethren. In the comic world, Spider-Man is constantly poking fun at his villains, spouting off bad puns and lame one-liners even to the point of annoying some of his teammates in both the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. But that trademark Spidey wit is a crucial element to the character and it was (mostly) lacking in Sam Raimi’s previous Spider-Man films.
Now with director Marc Webb’s upcoming ‘Amazing Spider-Man’, it seems Spider-Man may be getting a jolt of that lively humor that his comic version has always had in spades. In a recent interview with the Comic-Con Annual Magazine (via Latino Review), Webb discussed the factor of Spidey’s funny side. Here’s what Webb had to say:
There’s this trickster quality we were very keen on exploring, with that humor and that fun and that wisecracking stuff. We wanted to keep that alive, but we wanted it to be realistic. We wanted that humor to come from a real place. My aim was to create a world where you could feel all those emotions. There are certainly darker, more intense feelings in this movie. There is betrayal, there is tragedy, but there’s also humor and romance. So it’s a very complex bouquet of emotions, but what you have to tread on is what feels authentic and what feels real, and you have to earn those different emotions. There are moments of furiousness and gravity, absolutely. But are there moments of humor and levity and whimsy? Absolutely.
Andrew was really great. He used this term to describe Peter Parker in Spider-Man and Spider-Man in particular: he’s a trickster. He was like “How would Spider-Man web this guy? He’d give him a wedgie or he’d do some awful graffiti.” There’s a punk rock quality to Peter Parker that’s really irreverent and fun and that’s something that Andrew embodies in a way that we haven’t seen before. Certainly the materials that have come out have a darker sentiment or there’s a darker projection, but we’re very keen on staying loyal to the humor of Spider-Man.
So… Webb’s got Spidey’s humor on the screen. Now if he can capture the mythology and pathos of the character as well, fans may finally get the Spider-Man movie that we’ve all been waiting for.
Find out with ‘Amazing Spider-Man’, directed by Webb and starring Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Martin Sheen, Sally Field, and Dennis Leary comes to theaters in 2D, 3D, IMAX, and IMAX 3D on July 3, 2012.
