pider-Man snared the worldwide moviegoing audience in its web with its 2002 debut, setting a new standard for movies adapted from comic books, making major stars out of leads Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst and elevating director Sam Raimi into the geek pantheon. Now the original cast and creative team return with Spider-Man 2, which picks up the story two years later and introduces a charismatic and scary new villain, Doctor Octopus, played by British actor Alfred Molina.
For such a sure thing, Spider-Man 2 stumbled before production began last year. Maguire, fresh off a starring role in Seabiscuit, raised the issue of his back, which he said had troubled him for several years and which he added suffered strain during the making of the period horse-racing drama. For his part, director Raimi worried that Maguire's health might suffer in the physically demanding role of Peter Parker/Spider-Man. Producers went so far as to consider dropping Maguire from his signature role and hiring Jake Gyllenhaal—Dunst's real-life boyfriend—in his place.
Ultimately, Maguire's doctors ruled that he was fit for duty, and the producers OK'd his return. All now deny that the dustup was about Maguire's desire to increase his salary in the sequel. (Gyllenhaal, interviewed for his own summer film, The Day After Tomorrow, said that discussions about his taking over the webslinger job never went very far and that he was happy Maguire kept the part.)
Spider-Man 2 picks up the story two years after the events of the first movie. Peter Parker is now struggling to balance job, school and his secret life as Gotham's superhero, as well as his unresolved feelings for Mary Jane Watson (Dunst). Mary Jane, meanwhile, is having some success as a stage actress and even has a new beau. Maguire, Dunst, Raimi and Molina all took a moment to speak with Science Fiction Weekly about Spider-Man 2, which opens June 30.
Tobey Maguire, can you talk a little bit about your back problem? Were you really worried that you might not be able to do the picture?
Maguire: This is, first of all, a back condition I've had for three years, or four years, on and off. Sometimes it doesn't really bother me at all, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Coming off of Seabiscuit, it was bugging me a lot. Not because of Seabiscuit—I did not injure my back on Seabiscuit. That was a false report. But it was bugging me quite a bit. I saw the animatics and the storyboards of the stunts that I was to do on [Spider-Man 2], and I was a little concerned about it. [I] felt it was my responsibility to disclose my back discomfort to the studio and to the insurance company and to the filmmakers, which I did. They were understandably concerned.
Any of their actions that resulted in that report did not offend me or bother me in any way. I understood [that] they have a ... a multimillion-dollar investment, that they had a start date ... and an entire crew hired, ... and everything was rushing toward a date five weeks away to start this picture, and we were all concerned about it. And you know, I went in with the stunt guys and worked on a few of the stunts to see how I was going to do. After I reported the stuff to them and told them ... about my condition, ... my back started getting better, and was better literally during a week. ... So it was kind of like much ado about nothing at that point, but it was what it was.
I went in and did some of the work with the stunt guys. I was fine. I felt good. I told them I felt good, and there was other stuff involved, just because there was insurance companies involved and whatnot, and then we were good to go. And I did the film, and it didn't bother me throughout the whole filming. As a matter of fact, it was easier than Seabiscuit and it was easier than Spider-Man 1. Why? Well, I think ... having had the experience of doing it before made it easier for me, and the harnesses were better that I wore, and the wire rigs were easier for me for some reason. ... And my back just wasn't bothering me.
There were reports that your back wasn't injured, but that this was a money issue, that you renegotiated your contract because you felt a producer got more money than you had, and it wasn't fair. What about those reports?
Maguire: Yeah, that stuff wasn't true. We were renegotiating, but that was settled before any of the back stuff came up. So we were done with that at that point, as far as I can remember. Yeah, we were done with all that stuff. Maybe some of the finer points of the deal, but the big issues were done. And, you know, the negotiations were fine. They were negotiations. I was asking for this, they wanted to give me that, then we finally met somewhere, you know? Normal negotiations.
Can you talk about the pleasure of doing the sequel to one of the great successes of that summer?
Maguire: It was a pleasure for me ... [but] none of my feelings had to do with the success of the first movie. ... I really love working with Sam Raimi. He is a lot of fun. ... He's a funny guy. I just get along with him very well. ... His sense of humor and mine kind of work together, and also he's very collaborative and very open to me contributing my ideas, which I love. It makes me feel like a greater part of the filmmaking process. I like working with all the other people on this show, too. Like Kirsten and James [Franco, who plays Harry Osborn], and Rosemary [Harris, who plays Aunt May], and [producers] Laura [Ziskin] and Avi [Arad]. ... It's a good show, and it feels like, you know, a family situation. There's not like six of us or nine of us all have the same tattoo or whatever, but I really like working with these people.
How has Peter Parker changed in this movie?
Maguire: Peter Parker's just in a different place in his life. ... It's wearing on him, ... being Spider-Man and not having a life of his own. And I always thought it was peculiar to me how this kid couldn't see how he could just have a little balance in his life and things would be a little better for him. But there are complications to that, which I understand. He doesn't want to put his loved ones in danger, and ... just being honest with people ... causes him pain. Just being around Aunt May at first is a painful experience, because he's constantly wracked with guilt and feelings of responsibility for all the bad things that happened. ... He wants to have a life of his own, he wants to have some balance in his life, but he also has these gifts and wants to use them responsibly.
At one point, it seems like Peter may lose his Spidey powers. What's your take on why?
Maguire: I think it's psychological, and I think ... it starts to happen because he really doesn't want it anymore. His system's rejecting it. It's causing him so much personal and inner turmoil and pain that his system is rejecting it. And then I think it becomes a conscious choice, and when it becomes a conscious choice, the powers really start to go away.
Kirsten has said that she doesn't want to do a fourth movie. Are you definitely against doing a fourth movie at this point? [Spider-Man 3 is already moving into preproduction.]
Maguire: Well, I don't know that I would make a statement like that, but I don't anticipate doing a fourth movie. ... I mean, look, I think that three's probably enough for me, but you never know. If they sent me a script that was better than any other script I've ever read and offered me a piece of Sony Corp.—never say never. Sony's a big company.
Can you talk a little about Alfred Molina as a foe for Spider-Man and as an actor?
Maguire: I thought Alfred did such a great job. I think that the character of Doc Ock is a more interesting character cinematically than Green Goblin was. I love Willem [Dafoe, who played the Green Goblin in the first Spider-Man]. I thought he did a great job. But I actually think Doc Ock is one of the best movie villains ever, and Alfred got to play that, which is cool, and he did it extremely well. You never know really what to expect from an actor, I think. I'm a fan of his, and I've seen him in some movies and stuff, and I think he's a terrific actor. But it's a very different kind of thing, and I think that he did it very well. [He] gives you those delicious kind of one-liners perfectly, and has the right humor and the right kind of sinister thing going on. And he's also very human, and you care about him, and I think the character's also written that way. And then cinematically, I think Doc Ock is just way cooler than the Green Goblin.
This seems more of a Sam Raimi movie, more of a throwback to the ones he did before the first Spider-Man movie. What was your sense of him on the second film?
Maguire: I think that he got to have the experience of making the first picture, which, even though he did a lot of crazy camera stuff in the Evil Dead movies and very complicated, dramatic stuff in A Simple Plan ... this was a different film than he had ever done. ... And to take Spiderman and animate him and try to get into his movements and try to perfect all that stuff, I thought [the first movie] was a learning experience. And ... to use his learning experience from the first picture [and] apply it to this one, [and] also having more freedom, ... when I saw this picture, my first reaction ... was just, "Whew! Sam is a genius!" ... I told Sam this after I saw the film, which of course, he just shrugs off or whatever. But I said, "Not only is this better than the first movie, I think this is the best movie you've ever made."
Spider-Man 2 has some very complicated action scenes, where you're doing a lot of physical stuff. Do you recall one of the most complex, complicated, physically difficult scenes for you?
Maguire: Well, the whole train sequence was pretty difficult [in which Spider-Man fights Dock Ock on top of and inside a runaway elevated train]. The process of shooting that, and I don't even know how they put it together exactly, but I know they started in Chicago, shooting plate shots of the train, and that was a few months before we even started shooting the picture. ... And then when we finally got to it, we shot for—I mean, I don't even know how long we shot the train sequence for. It just seemed like forever. ... [We were] on top of a train that was in a soundstage. And [there was] green screen all around us, and ... the train was on some kind of hydraulics so it would rock, and [there was a] wind machine, all that kind of stuff. And some of it was wire work and stunts and all that kind of stuff, and some of it was [computer-animated]. ... It was difficult, mainly because it took so long, and it ... each little piece of the ... would last ... probably one, two, three seconds of screen time for each shot. So, for however long the sequence was, it just took us forever to shoot it.
Sam Raimi, how worried were you that Tobey wouldn't come back because of his back problems?
Raimi: I was so worried about Tobey's back that I didn't think we could make the movie with him. ... I was told that if he was injured, his back was in such a state ... that if it got injured any more, it may lead to paralysis. So at that moment I said to myself, "Well, I can't be irresponsible. I can't make a movie about responsibility and then have this kid do these stunts where he's going to be paralyzed." And I can't compromise the movie, either, because this whole movie that I had been working with the writers on was all about Peter Parker. He's got to be on wires. He's got to be jerked up into the air superfast. He's got to tackle people. He's got to jump. He's got to take falls. He's got to run. Just a tremendous amount of physical stunts that Tobey would have to do.
So I couldn't ask him to do something that would endanger him, nor did I want to be in a position where I kept shorting the movie, because I was afraid to ask him to do it. Because I have a great responsibility toward the picture. So at that point I realized, we have to recast the role. As much as I love Tobey, as much as I had to fight for him in the first film, I didn't think it was any longer feasible, period, to work with him. ... And then [the] doctors came to us and said, "Look, he is OK. Yes, he can damage his back more, but it's more about pain. He won't be paralyzed."
But I like causing actors pain. So if it wasn't about the paralysis, that became a whole different issue. So at that point I thought that Tobey was responsible enough to take the choice onto himself. And I felt OK with that. If he's just going to cause back pain, not paralysis, he can have the part.
What was the added challenge you had in doing the second film?
Raimi: The challenge was in trying to figure out what the audience wanted to see in part two, because I really wanted to please the audience, and there were a lot of different directions the story could have taken in the second Spider-Man. So I tried to think about what they ... must have been attracted to in the first one, and I think I came up with the answer: that they were probably most attracted to the characters and the stories of Mary Jane Watson and Peter Parker, ... versus the bigger, extravaganza type of effects or visuals or making it louder or bigger. So I tried to concentrate the story and the writers on focusing on the relationships between Tobey McGuire's character and Kirsten Dunst's character and James Franco's character and Peter's relationship with his aunt. These are the things I thought the audience would be interested in most, so that's what I pursued. But the biggest challenge was in trying to figure out what the audience would want to see. Not what they expect to see, necessarily, but what they really were connecting to. That's what I wanted to give them.
I'm just trying to concentrate on the things that I loved about Stan Lee's great creation, Spider-Man, and ... I've been given so much help, along with the writers being helped by all of the Marvel comic-book writers that had gone before. They had been writing Spider-Man for 40 years now, so ... in making this movie, we could stand on the shoulders of these giants. You know, have these great stories and visuals all at our disposal to pull upon. So I think the advantage I had maybe over some other motion-picture makers is I had this great wealth of material—great stories, great writers, great characters—that I had at my disposal, and I already loved the stories. They already worked. So ... it was a great help to have this material to build the movie from.
There are sequences in Spider-Man 2 that seem more violent than the previous film, particularly when Doc Ock attacks doctors and nurses in an operating theater.
Raimi: Yeah, in the surgery room. Yeah, you know, I was wondering if that was going to be too violent. Wow, I hope it's not too violent. ... Maybe it is. I didn't really make a conscious choice to make it more violent, although I don't disagree with you, and I think what happened was, I was trying to establish in the minds of the audience that ... these tentacles [and] this man, Dr. Octavius, had become this monster, and as this monster, he had killed, or these tentacles had killed. And so he was going to be on the lam and hunted. ... But perhaps it's more violent than it needed to be. I didn't mean to make it more violent, I just wanted to show that he was a character to be frightened of, you know?
This film seems much more like a "Sam Raimi" film than the first one. I'm just wondering, the first one out of the way, is successful, very commercial. Did you feel like you had more freedom to make this one a more typical Sam Raimi film?
Raimi: I had a tremendous amount of freedom. A little bit unearned on the first movie, but I didn't want to say anything. You know, when I got the job, I really thought the studio clamps were going to come down. "Oh, you've got to make it like this. We work like this." But they really let me have anything I wanted, which was really surprising and fantastic. So I just kept my mouth shut and enjoyed myself and tried to make the best picture I could. But, yes, I even had more freedom on this picture, if that's possible: to construct the story, to create any visuals I wanted, to really do anything I wanted.
There's an episode where Tobey talks about his back being sore. Was that a conscious effort to deal with the casting issues?
Raimi: Yes, there's a joke in the picture where Tobey is trying to get his powers back. He jumps through the air and says, "I'm back! I'm back!" But he doesn't really have his powers completely back, and he falls, hurts his back, and then he says, "My back! My back!" And ... what happened was my brother wrote that gag, and then after writing it, we said, "Oh, my God. Maybe we shouldn't do that, because of the problems with Tobey's back. And then we said, "No, it'll be really funny if we did do that. It'd be fun for the people who do know about that problem, and because it was thought up independently, it might be fun for people who don't." I hope it's fun.
Will Spider-Man 3 be the last one you'll direct?
Raimi: I can't imagine that I'd have the strength to direct another one after the third one.
What will you be doing in the third movie?
Raimi: I really want to take Peter Parker to the next step in his journey. I'm very curious about him myself. What will happen? ... I have some things I think might happen, and I really think I know the character very well. I don't know everything about him, but I know him really well, like a good friend, and maybe closer than a good friend, since I've spent so much time getting into his head, wondering how I might react here and there, you know, pretending to be Peter Parker, like any writer or director. Only pretending that I'm a little nobler and kinder person than I am. What would I do if I was nobler now? What would I do if I were a little braver and ... doing the right thing meant more to me than anything? ... That's how I can write or direct Peter Parker. ...
I'm just going to work on the character and his journey. ... I'm really curious about him, and try to tell the best story I can.
Spider-Man 2 sets up a few things for a possible third movie. Did you know you were going to do a third one when you made this one?
Raimi: I did know there was going to be a third movie when I was making the second movie. Like the first movie, I was trying to put things in the picture that would have pending outcome, like a serial, like a comic book, you know? So you'd have to keep turning the pages and wanted to read the next issue. In fact, the quality of ending a comic book and needing to see that damn next issue, that's what I was trying to get into this picture. I wanted the audience to have that feeling. So I definitely knew there was a third one. I was trying to create anticipation, a desire for it. Because I really like that feeling when I read a comic book. "To be continued ..." That's where it comes from. ...
But I wasn't worried about it being some connecting piece, because I was always interested in telling this unique story about Peter Parker, ... [who's] on a journey to a responsibility, and a story of a life out of balance, how it starts one-sided, how he tries to find the other, lopsided way of life, and how by the end of the piece he might find a balance, a way of going down this road that he thinks is a miserable, lonely road. Yes, he does have to take the journey down this road to responsibility, but he learns by the end that he doesn't have to take it alone. So I felt that I had a very complete story and a place where the character had come to some greater understanding of life, even though he's just a kid and has so much more to learn. I felt that he had learned something, something that gave him an end to his suffering, at least for now, a certain amount of his suffering. And so I thought it was complete. And then kind of, as a secondary idea, put in elements that needed the audience to see the continuing story.
Will the third movie feature a new Green Goblin?
Raimi: I think so ... This will not be your grandfather's Green Goblin. This is going to be a brand-new creation.
Can you talk a little bit about Alfred Molina?
Raimi: He's really a wonderful person, Alfred Molina. I'm so lucky to have had him in the role of Doctor Octavius, and I was looking for somebody who could perform the part. ... Why he was chosen was because I needed a really solid actor, someone who could stand across from Tobey McGuire and Kirsten Dunst and be as top-caliber as I consider them to be, and also someone who could create a real person, who had the ability to project real warmth, so that Peter could connect with him as a human being, so we could identify with him as someone who is worthy of following, someone who became tragic because of what they had lost as a human being, and someone who could become noble by the end, by finding it again. So, to be able to do that, I think somebody's got to be a good soul. They've got to be a good actor, and they've got to have a good soul. Otherwise, ... the audience can see right through somebody that is trying to do that, but doesn't. ...
And he had to have a physical element to him, because this character in the comics was always illustrated as a large man. And after working with Neil Spisak, [the] production designer, James Acheson, [the] costume designer, and John Dykstra, [the] visual effects designer, I realized I needed a large man to put these arms on. Because otherwise they may dwarf a smaller man. They had to have a visual symmetry. It had to work as a visual, I mean. So, he was a larger man, great actor, seemed to be a good person, had a great sense of humor, and my wife said so.
Kirsten Dunst, what kind of conversations did you have with Jake when it looked like he might do the film?
Dunst: That was really a complicated time, of course, and you know, I'm just so thankful that Tobey ended up doing the movie, because he is Spider-Man. ... I think it wouldn't have been good. I think Jake can do any movie, because I think he's one of the best young actors, and he probably would have done an amazing job. But Tobey is Spider-Man. And so I'm just happy that it all worked out, and he could do the stunts and they worked it out.
Would it have been weird for you to do it with Jake?
Dunst: Um, of course, yeah, it would have been—I mean, I would like to work with him, and I'm happy it wasn't this, because I would rather do a more intimate movie with him, where I could actually have many scenes with him. ... If we had done this, we could have never have done another movie together, probably, and I would rather do something else with him than this movie.
Your character has another upside-down kiss in Spider-Man 2?
Dunst: Yeah, ... but we didn't put pressure on ourselves. ... You can't top that kiss [in the first movie]. And we didn't try. And we have other things that are topped in this one, so I think that, if we try to outdo that kiss we're just setting ourselves up for a disaster anyway.
Is three films enough for you?
Dunst: Three's enough. I think, don't wear out a good thing too much. ... I mean, I'm only contracted for three, and I don't see me signing on for a fourth and a fifth, you know? ... It would actually be really interesting, I think, if Spider-Man died, because, really, why doesn't the superhero ever die? It would be so sad and beautiful, but he's so human, too, and I think that if Mary Jane was, like, alone and pregnant, and he died, you know, she could give birth to a spider-baby and carry on the series with another young boy or something like that. Because I doubt Tobey would come back for a fourth or a fifth, either. ...
I just think three's a good number, you know? ... I think Mary Jane is a huge, important piece of this film. It's all about the love story. But how many movies can you really make about it?... You want to stop it while it's still great. You don't want to keep going. ... Sam wants to move on, too. His whole life has been this movie for so long now. ... You've got to refresh, and you can't do it too much, I don't think.
Alfred Molina, you now have an action figure. How does that feel?
Molina: Well, it's strange, because it looks nothing like me. I mean, facially, they've been very flattering. They've given me cheekbones, which I don't have. They've got my nose. They've given me a slightly higher brow, which I don't have. And also, they've given me pecs, which I've never had in my life. You know, I've got middle-aged man tits.
What were the constraints about wearing Doc Ock's tentacles?
Molina: Well, it's only tough in the sense that it is constricting, but what you have to do is kind of find a way of dealing with it. I very quickly discovered I couldn't bend and turn and shift my weight and twist in quite the same way.
What about learning to interact with the puppet arms?
Molina: It was a mixture of practical puppeteers, the arms, [computer-generated effects] and animation. Well, we had a fantastic team of puppeteers, 16, 15 guys and one woman, and a wonderful choreographer ... who sort of essentially designed the movement, in a way. And the puppeteers and myself, we worked together very closely over a series of weeks to try and develop a sort of—how can I put it?—a sort of vocabulary of movement, a sort of language, if you like, so we could do great big things, like push a hole through a building, but at the same time do delicate things, like taking off a pair of glasses or lighting a cigar. Or even one shot we did—which I don't think we ever used it—but we actually had one ... of the tentacles actually came out and wiped away a tear. So we had a really wide range of possibility.
We had a lot of fun, actually. ...We got very close, because we were working with each other every day. We actually gave the tentacles names. ... Let me see if I can remember. The two big ones, the two down here, were very kind of male. They were the ones that kind of broke through things. There was Harry, Larry, Flo and Moe.
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