SDCC: The Amazing Spider-Man Press Conference

Q: There have been many different incarnations of Spider-Man in the comics. What was your favorite and who’s your favorite Spider-Man villain?

Garfield: Yeah. I love the majority of the incarnations – actually, all the incarnations. ‘Torment’ is one of my favorites, and ‘The Fallen’ series was one of my favorites. I love ‘The Ultimate’ series. I read ‘The Ultimate’ series doing research for the film. That was a really great source for how I wanted Spidey’s body to look. I love the artwork in that and how lithe and skinny he was because I’m skinny. I don’t know if you can see it, but I am skinny. I love the idea of a skinny teenage kid beating the crap out of huge guys. That’s always been a dream of mine that I wanted to personally fulfill, and what better way to do it and give other skinny kids in the audience a sense of achievement as well.

Q: And who’s you favorite villain?

Garfield: It’s impossible to say a favorite.

Q: Marc, did the release of the trailer change at all because of Comic-Con?

Marc Webb: We released it a little bit earlier than we probably would have, but we wanted people to have a quality version of it online rather than a taped version from the back of the theater, but other than that, no. We’re just trying to stick to our plans.

Q: Marc, did you have as much fun with the romance of Peter and Gwen as you did with the film “500 Days of Summer”?

Webb: Yeah, absolutely. Romance – that’s one of the things that I think has made Spider-Man really unique in terms of the comics: there is a real tender, romantic quality to it. Certainly that’s something that’s always fascinated me about the cinema, good romance. That was something that was really fun to explore with it. Andrew and Emma had done such great work onscreen. We’d just finished shooting and I’m having so much fun putting together the scenes with Andrew and Emma. There’s such a tenderness and honesty in that, and that’s one of the reasons that I wanted to make the film, to explore that very important part of the “Spider-Man” mythology. So, yes, expect great things from them.

Garfield: Maybe don’t expect huge things.

Emma Stone: Come on.

Q: Can you talk about the first time that you saw Andrew in the costume?

Garfield: What did we do? That was camera testing, right?

Stone: Yeah. I walked in and he was in the full Spider-Man suit.

Garfield: Scratching my ass.

Stone: Scratching his ass, which was great, just to break that up. But I went in and I needed to stand next to him in the camera test and I think that I really inappropriately started touching you. He was like, “Stop touching me.” I said, “You have to realize that everyone is in the room with Spider-Man. This isn’t just about you. Everyone is around Spider-Man right now.” It had nothing to do with you at all. So, it was pretty incredible to see him in costume for the first time because you couldn’t see his face. You just saw Spider-Man.

Garfield: She was also wearing a Spider-Man costume.

Stone: Isn’t that weird? Isn’t that funny? It’s such a small world.

Garfield: She wasn’t really doing that. Emma’s natural hair color is blonde, but I’d never seen her as a blonde and that was interesting, I guess. It suits you.

Q: Emma, you’re the love interest here, but is there a superhero heroine franchise you’d like to take on for yourself?

Stone: Oh, boy. I don’t know if I could be a superhero, to be honest with you. I’d love to say yes, that there are 12 that I can name, but I don’t know if I’m your girl if you’re looking for a superhero.

Q: The trailer that we saw will that be the only thing that we see before the movie and the Spidey point of view in the trailer, will that be in the movie, as well? And the stuff from the early days of shooting that ended up online, did that mean you cracked down on the areas of shooting or how did it effect what you guys were doing?

Webb: The last part first, we tried to shoot a lot of stuff on location which exposes you to that sort of thing and that’s just the nature of the beast. And the first part?

Q: The trailer and the Spider-Man point of view…

Webb: Here’s the thing, because we were shooting this in 3D I wanted to conceive of certain things very specifically for 3D. There’s an experiential component to 3D that I think is really, really fantastic. We’re experimenting with generating that point of view so that you feel what Peter Parker feels. You feel what Spider-Man feels when he’s jumping over the buildings and over the streets and that sort of thing, but we made a very, and Andrew had to pay the price for this, conscious effort to ground the stunts. We had an incredible stunt team put together. We built this whole rig, hundreds of feet long under Riverside Drive in Harlem and we swung a man through traffic, down the street and then Andy Armstrong also built a car rig with a series of wires that was incredibly complicated and really a beautiful contraption to help do those FX practically. I felt that was something really exciting and exhilarating, not to mention an incredible level of acrobatics.

Q: Have you seen the Broadway musical of “Spider-Man” and if you have what you thought of it?

Garfield: I haven’t seen it. I want to see it.

Webb: I haven’t seen it.

Q: Is there any talk of doing a crossover with Spider-Man and other Marvel properties even though the rights are at different studios?

Arad: No. I think that obviously in the comics the team-ups and the mix-ups, they’re a way to keep the publishing going, but since Spider-Man has a huge universe of it’s own, so many foes and friends and great stuff about Peter and his parents and Gwen, it’s not something that we’re thinking about because we have so much more to tell. That’s why we made this particular movie.

Q: In the comics Spidey always has a sense of humor while fighting his adversaries, making quips during the fights. Will we see that in the film?

Tolmach: Yes.

Webb: Yes.

Garfield: They hired a comedic actor to wear the suit. He wrote some jokes.

Webb: A funny guy.

Garfield: He’s brilliant. Judd Apatow is in the suit.

Q: Andrew, did you talk to Tobey Maguire before you said yes to this film?

Garfield: I love Tobey Maguire’s interpretation of the character. It’s one of the things that rekindled for me and reminded me how much this character means to me. And when I watched that first film I lost my mind. I watched it back to back. I watched twice in a row when I first saw it. I had the wonderful fortune of meeting him after we finished shooting. I didn’t seek him out, but he sent a very, very, very nice email once it was announced to Matt, basically giving me his blessing. It meant the world to me because I respect him so much as an actor, generally, and especially with the role that I’m now assuming.

The Amazing Spider-Man opens in 3D, 2D and IMAX 3D theaters on July 3, 2012.

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