The summer movie season is finally behind us,
and, as far as box office receipts go, it was one
of the worst in recent memory. Kicking off the
season was The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which
earned $202.8 million domestically and $708
million worldwide, both tallies less than its
predecessor The Amazing Spider-Man 's
domestic ($262 million) and worldwide ($757.9
million) totals.
While doing press for his new drama 99 Homes
at the Toronto International Film Festival, The
Amazing Spider-Man 2 star Andrew Garfield
fired back at critics for their negative response
to the film, hinting that studio interference may
have lead to the sequel's lackluster box office
performance and its bad reaction from many
reviewers and fans alike.
"It's interesting. I read a lot of the reactions
from people 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. I think what happened was,
through the pre-production, production, and
post-production, when you have something that
works as a whole, and then you start removing
portions of it-because there was even more of it
than was in the final cut, and everything was
related. Once you start removing things and
saying, 'No, that doesn't work,' then the thread
is broken, and it's hard to go with the flow of
the story. Certain people at the studio had
problems with certain parts of it, and ultimately
the studio is the final say in those movies
because they're the tentpoles, so you have to
answer to those people. But I'll tell you this:
Talking about the experience as opposed to how
it was perceived, I got to work in deep scenes
that you don't usually see in comic book
movies, and I got to explore this orphan boy-a
lot of which was taken out, and which we'd
explored more. 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."
When asked to elaborate on the critical
response, the actor revealed he wants to learn
how they can make a better movie based on the
criticism.
"It's a discernment thing. What are the people
actually saying? What's underneath the
complaint, and how can we learn from that? We
can't go, 'Oh God, we fucked up because all
these people are saying all these things. It's
shit.' We have to ask ourselves, 'What do we
believe to be true?' 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, and I love
constructive criticism. Hopefully, we can get
underneath what the criticism was about, and if
we missed anything."
It isn't known when Andrew Garfield will be
back for The Amazing Spider-Man 3, after Sony
Pictures announced in July that the sequel is
being pushed to 2018, to make way for the
upcoming spin-off The Sinister Six, which is
slated for release on November 11, 2016.
Perhaps the "fatigue" issue is what caused Sony
to move forward with the villain-centric Sinister
Six, to give both the fans and Andrew Garfield
himself a break from the webbed wonder, for
just a few years.
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