Spider-Man 3 star Tobey Maguire recently spoke with iFMagazine about bringing a darker tone to the character of Peter Parker/Spider-Man for the third film. “This is something [director] Sam [Raimi] and I worked a lot on, because we don’t want to lose the audience caring for the character, but we do want to push it,” says Maguire. ”We don’t want to make it too scary, we want it to be dark, but still have some humor and some fun with it. So we’re constantly working on the exact tone of it. I had a lot of fun doing it as an actor. There’s a different side of Peter Parker…I had a good time doing that. It was more of an internal battle. Building his story arc was fun in terms of the villains outside of myself, I think they are all so different and I appreciate them for what they are. Sandman was a villain from the comic books that I always wanted to see in a Spider-Man movie. I was really excited about that. I think we tied him into Peter’s story line very well. Harry Osborn - that was the cliffhanger from the second movie. That one was probably the most emotional.”
As for the possibility of a fourth film, Maguire says, “I’ve had a great time doing them, I’ve enjoyed it and I’m glad I’ve done all three movies. We may make more of them or a fourth one, if there’s a story worth telling and a right team of actors and Sam is on board, then I would consider doing a fourth one.”
Sony Pictures has announced that Spider-Man 3 will be released in Japan on May 1st, three days before the film hits U.S. theaters. In addition to Japan, several markets in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America will get a chance to see the webslinger in action before U.S. audiences. The film will have its world premiere on April 16th in Tokyo with several of the stars of the film and director Sam Raimi expected to attend.
Avi Arad conducted a Q&A following a screening of the exclusive 7 1/2 minute footage available on NBC.com. Check out the transcripts below:
Q: How do you make this one better than the first two movies?
AA: Opportunity. Well, I think when you have the same team, same cast, same director, producers and the same writer, it gives you an opportunity to dig deeper. Everybody can dig deeper. From the story, from content, CGI. We have this something at the end of every movie, although these movies were incredibly successful, we sit around and we think, “What can we do better?” And, as you can see, we are getting there. The opportunities are just to make a more complex - beating up Peter Parker harder, that’s the whole idea, to see if he can take it, if he is indeed a superhero. This movie is to test every bone, every emotion, every intellectual thing in his head, I think we really have something that surpasses 1 and 2. For us at least. Some of us feel this is the biggest of them all.
Q: The trailer revealed that Sandman was the real killer of Uncle Ben, how does that change or alter Peter’s motivation for what he is doing since it was all this guilt, he didn’t catch his Uncle’s killer, if he didn’t actually play a direct role in what happened to his uncle, does that alter why he is Spider-Man? If he still wants to be? He’s kind of purged of that.
AA: I think that, if you look at movies 1 and 2, you will see that what defined Peter’s life was the death of Uncle Ben, and his own reaction to powers as a kid, about stopping the robber, about making some dough to get a car and get Mary Jane. Which is normal, that’s what makes Peter Parker so accessible and so lovable, he’s a kid like all kids. He stopped his life when he was taken and it defined the rest of his life. Remember, he tried to stop the man and the man fell to his death, which was another tough moment in his life realizing that once you take the law into your own hands, there are always consequences to everything you do. Sandman is a fascinating villain for us and actually Sam made him far more fascinating than the books, he’s an interesting effect, he’s a goon. We pride ourselves on connecting our hero to our villain and we find a way to do it. In this story, again, without going too far into it, because everything I say will end up somewhere, we gave Sandman a real good story and made him an interesting villain. Like all our villains, their circumstances - the theme, you can sense is about Peter dealing with the dark side and the dark side comes out of issues. Sandman is one of the issues. He really was the guy, the accomplice, if he didn’t chase him, it really would have been different, this is when one examines one’s life - on the other hand when we look at someone like Sandman, it’s an open opportunity for this guy that just left the room [visual effects supervisor Scott Stokdyk] to create a whole new opening - it took a lot of time to create a wave of fire [in the first one during the final battle between Green Goblin and Spidey] and is a very new effect for Sony and SPI, and we can really ask them to go the extra distance. Literally designing an algorithm for a grain of sand and then you have to learn how to manipulate it. So we knew that we had something that the world’s never seen before.
Q: Do you see this as a fitting conclusion to the franchise or do you hope for more?
AA: There are never conclusions, this story has been growing for a long time and will continue growing. There are some issues that will, not come to an end, but will come to a conclusion. But, Peter Parker’s story will continue on, he’s still young. The love story will always be the ruling thing in his life, it’s always about the girl. So, no, it’s number 3.
Q: Can you give us an idea how far along in the movie this footage is? First act? First 15 minutes?
AA: That would be kind of the thing that I would rather not get into. There will be people out there that will try and reconstruct the story from that, we’ve worked really hard to%u2026I think it is the most complex on one hand and probably the most amazing love story yet. It’s full of adversaries that all have agendas. They are really connected to Peter and to Mary Jane. So what you’ve seen gives you, sort of, the issues of the movie. Where they are and what part of the movie they are.
Q: Do you have any idea how long the movie will be?
AA: Over 2 hours.
Q: Are you astonished at how far CGI has come? Have you seen a leap in the technology?
AA: Yes. I think it’s more than just technology. I think you have a team here and also I think Sam who are into this world of technology but this movie, unlike movies that, you’ve CGI doing them, physical effects, special effects, CGI - there are so many processes in this particular battle that you just saw. It’s not one thing. At the same time, again, it’s very fortunate to us that Sony and SPI is one company and there is a lot of confidence in this franchise, as it should be. So everybody here is pushing themselves. There’s no great artists in effects, physical effects, miniatures, you name it, who doesn’t want to work on this movie. And these people pride themselves on pushing the envelope and doing it better than they did it before or when new people came on board, as you know, animators today - they are just amazing what they have in their hands and we are the beneficiaries.
Q: Variety reported that David Koepp was in talks to write Spidey 4, can you tell us how far along those talks are? Is he definitely going to be writing it?
AA: I think it would be great if he does but it’s too early to make any announcements.
Q: Spider-Man from the comic books is a bit of a jokster, is that a trait we will start to see as he matures on the big screen?
AA: Well, I thought that was a funny line, “I hate those things.” There are a lot of these quips throughout the movie. One of the things that blew me away is how funny Tobey can be. This movie, unlike the others, this movie has physical comedy and I think Tobey is really good at improv. He’s a really funny guy. The humor has to come out of emotional situations where he’s cornered into a place. It’s really easy to do quips where you write them and it doesn’t matter if it hits at the right place. But when you have a whole scene, a complex scene, a line like that, is a lot. And you’ll see other scenes that I cannot give away, but, all of it is, you know, Sam is a really funny guy. He doesn’t look it but (laughter) he is a funny guy. You’ll see scenes where, they put in such high drama and such a great love story, you need every so often to just break down and you’ll see right from the start of the movie that the humor is sophisticated. It’s, only Peter Parker, only an ubergeek like him could say certain things and you will see how people around him will just shake their head like, yeah, he’s the only guy that could say that. And we have more of this in this movie.
Before you watch the NBC exclusive footage, check out the introduction from Sam Raimi. Sony invited journalists to Sony Studios to screen the footage before making it available to the public and here is what Raimi had to say:
“The studio has decided to take the unusual step of showing some of the movie as a preview. So I wanted you guys to see this picture on the screen versus on the small screen. Sometimes they see, everyone sees, advanced pieces of the movie on TV or on the internet and eventually this will be seen by a lot of people, but I just wanted somebody to see it on the big screen so I really appreciate you guys coming out here, just the people who work on the movie have seen this and a few of the Sony executives, no one else yet.
It’s just some selected bits from the picture, it’s not even entire scenes, like, you will see a scene with Mary Jane and Peter — parts have been shortened for this little preview you are going to see. Same with, uh, you will see a scene with Peter and Aunt May, that’s not the entire scene either, but Sony wanted to give a flavor of some of the scenes to the potential audience and press so, but they didn’t want to incorporate a lot of things that may not be relevant. They wanted to just give you the flavor of it. So, that’s what this is and there are about three, then there’s an action scene with Peter Parker and James Franco’s character, Harry Osbourne, but then there’s some trailer bits, new type trailer cutting at the end, but why am I spoiling the show for you? I don’t know why. I don’t know why I am saying all that.
This isn’t the movie, it doesn’t exactly flow in this order, even though you are seeing six minutes, but it’s a sampling, there’s a lot more to come. These are just some of the characters — obviously, there are plenty of characters and plenty of surprises coming your way with this picture. But, here’s a sequence we just finished, in fact, not even finished, the effects are not all done which we are about to see, some of them are temporary. This isn’t really the mix right now, nor is the, some of the music is final, but not all of it and it’s a temporary mix for this situation. Nor is it really based on the, it’s not the finished mix of voice dubs or music, but basically it’s a temporary piece, it’s on it’s way to being done, but I gotta hurry ’cause the movie is opening in 8 weeks!
But that’s what we’re doing, we’re racing to, I was just working on the effects with the effects team in the other room, in the backstage theater here and I’m gonna go loop with Stan Lee actually, although we’ll see if he’s on time. I’ll probably have to leave here right after this.
Avi Arad, one of our producers, obviously he’s a big shot at Marvel or was the big shot, now he’s the big shot that makes Marvel pictures. Will be here to answer all your questions, actually, there he is right there.
Ok, so um, I invited some of the effects guys, are you here Scott Stokdyk? That’s our visual effects supervisor Scott Stokdyk, he hasn’t even seen this thing with sound yet or all put together like this, in fact, this isn’t the whole scene. The epic action scene you are going to see is one of the big action scenes has been cut down for this show.
But anyways, I want you to enjoy yourselves and, uh, I hope you like it!”
Viewers of Heroes not only got the pleasure of watching one of the best shows on television, but also were given the opportunity to see some exclusive clips from one of the best film franchises. The preview focused on Peter Parker deciding to propose to long time love Mary Jane and running into New Goblin (aka Harry Osborn) who is set on revenge for the death of his father. At the end of the preview was an announcement of an additional seven and a half minutes of an exclusive HD available for twenty-four hours on NBC.com.
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
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