To be fair, I don’t think Andrew Garfield was a poor choice to play Peter Parker/Spider-Man in ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ franchise, after Tobey Maguire’s three turns in the role. Garfield was on quite a roll after starring in ‘The Social Network’ and ‘Never Let Me Go’ and has the charm to play the original hard-luck hero, but the two installments in which he starred as the wall-crawler weren’t well received by the public and a third film plus three planned spin-offs were scrapped.
Garfield has rebounded, garnering acclaim for his work in ‘Hacksaw Ridge’ and ‘Silence’. But he reflected back on his work on the ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ films saying:
“I had to fight really, really hard to make sure that the character was honored and that we were offering something really fun, entertaining and also moving and complex and deep for all the young boys and girls that want to see their favorite superhero.”
He does, however, lament over certain aspects of playing Peter Parker:
“So many beautiful things came out of that. I met someone that remains incredibly important to my life on that — you can fill in the blanks on who that is. But the difference between how I felt when Never Let Me Go and The Social Network were coming out and how I felt with The Amazing Spider-Man franchise was that I didn’t feel represented. I was feeling very represented by those other two films, and with The Amazing Spider-Man stuff I didn’t feel like that was my work up there, in a weird way. It felt like a semblance of it or kind of a shade of it, but ultimately I felt it was enshrouded in that filter.”
Of course, Garfield began quietly dating his co-star Emma Stone who played Gwen Stacey in the films while they were shooting the first ‘Amazing Spider-Man.’
But Garfield’s feeling that he wasn’t really allowed to shine as an actor in the role is a familiar one. Many talented actors find themselves stifled when it comes to appear in, not just comic book movies, but any sort of big budget tentpole film.
Personally, I didn’t really dislike either Garfield or Stone in their roles, but the movies were just underwhelming, too convoluted and too similar to the Sam Raimi trilogy. I’m excited to see what director Jon Watts does with the Tom Holland-starring ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’, but I don’t place the blame for the failure of the the previous films on the stars.
How do you feel? Was Andrew Garfield a decent Spider-Man or was he miscast?
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
