UPDATE: At the request of Sony Pictures Entertainment, the concept art was removed but you can still read a detailed description of the scene below!
Last week, Marc Webb revealed some extremely vague details about Shailene Woodley’s deleted scenes as Mary Jane Watson in ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’. He didn’t go into much detail about what those scenes entailed, but instead he gave us a tiny taste of what could have been. Well, a new interview has emerged with a concept artist on the film that outlines one scene in its entirety.
In an interview with Film Sketchr, artist Gregory Hill talked about the various pieces of concept art that he created for the second film in the rebooted Spidey series. You can check them all out at this site, but one in particular stood out because it happened to be one of the deleted Mary Jane scenes. You can check out the artwork above, but here’s Hill’s explanation of what’s going on:
“In the script MJ and her father have recently moved in next door to Peter and his Aunt… He’s run into her a few times, and seen that her father has a habit of getting drunk and treating MJ badly. If I remember right, the scene I illustrated has her dad going into the garage, and suddenly getting hoisted upside down from the rafters….where he meets Spider-Man. And gets a dressing down for how badly he treats his daughter. I think that’s about the only MJ scene which was originally in the script… no, there was one other where she and Gwen briefly meet outside Peter’s house.There is a funny story to this too. After I finished the drawing, I had it on my desk as I moved on to something else. When I looked up there was this guy standing beside me, looking at the garage drawing, but he had it turned upside down. We exchanged ‘Hi’s’ and he left. Later I heard a major discussion going on around the desk of the set designer who was drafting the garage, and the designer said ‘It’s all Greg Hill’s fault.’ Turns out the guy looking at my drawing was Marc Webb, and he had asked that the garage set be built upside down.
Marc was looking at the sketch right side up first I assume…. and figuring out what would be CGI, etc. Then when he turned the drawing, he realized that he could basically shoot the scene with little or no CGI work if he built the set upside down… then Spidey could act naturally… even walk around. I never saw any footage so I don’t know how they ended up doing it however. I assume they built the set upside down… which would be a lot cheaper than adding VFX to a whole scene.”
In my opinion, I’m glad that they cut this scene. As funny as it sounds, the important dynamic of ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ was between Gwen and Peter. If Peter had swooped into MJ’s life and defended her like this, it would have split his attention between the two girls. If that happened, no matter how briefly, then the film wouldn’t have packed as much of an emotional punch as it did.
What do you think of this deleted scene from ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ featuring Mary Jane Watson? Would you have liked to see those scenes that Shailene Woodley shot remain in the film? Do you hope that they at least appear on the home video release? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2′ starring Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx, Dane DeHaan, Chris Cooper, Paul Giamatti, and Sally Field is in theaters now.