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Without a doubt Andrew Garfield's Amazing Spider-Man movies got off to a very rocky start. Coming out too close to the Toby Maguire Spider-Man Trilogy and a messy rogues gallery of villains basically set this franchise up for failure. Garfield's Spider-Man movies almost got even more complicated with a competing love story between Emma Stone's Gwen Stacy and Shailene Woodley's Mary Jane Watson. Luckily Marc Webb course corrected and Mary Jane Watson was cut from the final film.
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That isn't funny
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It is kind of funny, man. Help! Spider-Man is an enduring icon, beloved for close to 70 years
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Throughout that time, he's had a wide-reaching cast of supporting characters, villains, and rivals
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And yet, none of them have even come close to matching Mary Jane Watson, which makes it all the more
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surprising when you find out that not only were there plans to include the iconic red-headed bombshell
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in the Andrew Garfield Amazing Spider-Man films, But they literally wrote scenes for her, cast her, and shot them
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only for her to get cut out of the finished film at the last second
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Well, see ya. After the somewhat bumpy dismount of Spider-Man 3, Sony was looking to continue producing Spider-Man films
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Only question was, how? How could they give people more Spider-Man and yet distance themselves
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from the not well-received most recent version of New York's favorite orphan son
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How would they reposition Spidey to make sure he appealed to the younger demographic
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that was key to the character's success? How would they build a vehicle with enough internal momentum to escape the shadow of
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one of the most iconic superhero franchises in history? Simple. They just needed something amazing
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You are amazing. I can take it in. You are amazing. Thank you, yeah, thanks
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Will you say it? No, I kind of needed to hear that. They had a release date of November 11, 2012, before they had a script, so they had to work quickly
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The North Star given to the creative team was to make something that felt like Spider-Man
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but was tailored to a modern audience. Gone was the science nerd being picked on by Flash Thompson, Peter Parker
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Here was a hot topic outsider, Peter Parker. The film pulled in close to $757 million, making it a resounding success
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Production on a sequel was quickly initiated. Mark Webb and budding movie star Andrew Garfield were brought back
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and the script was being tailored to launch a much wider cinematic universe for Spider-Man
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A virtual army of writers were involved in the development of Amazing Spider 2 with Alex Kurtzman Robert Orsi and Jeff Pinkner being some of the key figures Simultaneously to launching this film Sony started to unfold a master plan for themselves
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attempting to compete with the rapidly expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe. They wanted to do a Wild Pack movie, a Sinister Six movie
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maybe a Venom movie, and potentially even a Black Cat movie. However, Amazing Spider-Man 2 needed
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to lay the groundwork for all of this. They had tangible proof that people
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loved this new skateboarding version of Peter Parker, so they wanted to use him as the launching pad
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for multiple franchises that Sony could make exorbitant amounts of money from
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However, there was one key hurdle that needed to be navigated. There had been some creative friction
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behind the scenes of the first movie. Sony had kept it quiet in the lead up to the film's release
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but a large portion of the film was reshot and re-edited in post
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to minimize a subplot with Peter Parker's parents being spies. While this angle was right out of the comics
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Sony execs felt that it was too far a departure from the world established by Sam Raimi and Tobey
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Maguire. Searching being multiple times in the film, that was totally believable. But his parents
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disappearing due to a botched covert secret mission? Yeah, that was a bridge too far. Sony
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had wanted a Spider-Man movie that felt like what someone would anticipate seeing if they were
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coming to see a Spider-Man movie. Sony wanted all the standard beloved characters that had appeared
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in the Raimi movies reintroduced as quickly as possible. Mary Jane, Harry Osborn, and Norman
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Osborn. This is how you get a new Green Goblin played by Dane DeHaan, a dying Norman Osborn
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played by Chris Cooper, and a new, more classically oriented version of Spidey's suit. But Sony
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didn't want a retread of these characters completely. They also wanted them presented
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in slightly new ways. They wanted the film to appear like it was offering us new things
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most of which we've also seen before. This logic is how you get a post-credits scene
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that sets up the Sinister Six that never goes anywhere. Now that Spider-Man's gone, the city will never be the same
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But also Sony's list of demands couldn't end there. The film needed to build off of the Gwynn and Peter romance from the first movie And it needed its own new villain we hadn seen before Electro Honestly this film was given such a tall order it a miracle it even had a story considering
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how much pressure Sony was putting on it. This was a lot to squeeze into one two-hour story
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but they went for it. Shailene Woodley, the future star of Divergent
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and The Fault in Our Stars, was cast as this new version of Mary Jane
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a fresh-faced star with a material energy and an emotional resonance that looked
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to be the big breakout star of the movie. However, with the overstuffed film practically bursting at the seams
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there wasn't much room for a significant Mary Jane story within the film
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She played a more supporting role, setting MJ up for the next Amazing Spider-Man film
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Shailene Woodley only shot for a few days on the film. Mary Jane was in four scenes, four scenes in the whole film, and it didn't make sense
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They're introducing so many new characters. It really didn't make sense to introduce such a vital character to the comic books
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Mary Jane was employed as a coffee shop barista during the film. Ultimately, Mary Jane was not kept in the finished product
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Sony and director Mark Webb have said previously that having Mary Jane in the film
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distracted from the swan song story for Emma Stone's Gwen Stacy. Webb told the LA Times
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Is this the whole story
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Honestly, probably not. The fact that Sony was deeply concerned with setting up the Sinister Six
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and other rogues gallery for films that would ultimately never materialize was their number one priority
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If Webb and company had wanted to cut something that linked directly to that out of the movie
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you bet there would have been a pushback. In this case, Sony was happy to wait for Mary Jane
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if it meant that they could get their Tarantula and his amazing friend's theme park ride off the ground
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Shailene Woodley is quoted as having said, Of course, I'm bummed, but I am a firm believer in everything happening for a specific reason
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Based on the proposed plot, I completely understand the need for holding off on introducing Mary Jane until the next film
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Unfortunately Amazing Spider 2 would be the death knell for Sony interconnected Amazing Spider universe Amazing 2 pulled in close to million at the box office off of a budget of It was also critically lambasted
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receiving negative feedback about the film's tone, simplicity, and retreads of villains and
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concepts previously explored in prior Spider-Man films. We all know what happened from here. Kevin
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Feige came a-knocking, Amy Pascal said, okay, let's share Spider-Man, and Tom Holland became
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a generational definition of the friendly neighborhood wall crawler. What's up, guys
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You forgot your PIN number? When you're trying to build a franchise, it's important to evaluate the topography of your choices appropriately
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Sony wanted to run before they learned how to crawl, and an overstuffed, poorly thought-out second installment
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caused them to have no option but to partner with Marvel. All those spinoff movies they were planning, well, they went nowhere
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Until off the back of the MCU Spider-Man, they decided to greenlight Venom, Venom 2, Morbius, and Craven
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And we don't even need to discuss what an ongoing train wreck those films are
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As far as Mary Jane goes, was taking her out of Amazing Spider-Man the appropriate move
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Yeah, it really seems like it was. The one thing that genuinely works about Amazing Spider-Man 2
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aside from the Todd McFarlane-influenced suit, is the chemistry between at-the-time real-life couple Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield
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Their comedic timing is electric. This is the most cliched hiding place you could have chosen
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This is the stupidest hiding place. Take us to the Bahamas of hiding places
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Their obvious infatuation and attraction for each other lights up on the screen
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However, introducing a version of Mary Jane as a competitor to this would be hard to swallow
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as an audience. Like Webb previously stated, it's hard to really be emotionally invested in Parker's
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trauma over losing Gwen when he's one foot out the door and interested in this new coffee
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shop employee. If anything, this seems like it ended in a completely amicable way. Shailene
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Woodley still has quite the impressive career. The movie's failure might have haunted Garfield
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for a while, but now, thanks to No Way Home, he's gotten his own swan song. So, really
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all's well that ends well
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