Andrew Garfield Revealed How Spider-Man Role Broke His Heart
Andrew Garfield had some interesting things to say about his time as Spider-Man and it wasn't exactly a perfect time for the actor in the role
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Andrew Garfield is one of three actors to have played Spider-Man on the big screen in the last 20 years. But donning the Spidey suit didn’t bring him as much joy as it did to Tobey Maguire and Tom Holland. In fact, he recently revealed to The Guardian that playing Marvel’s web-slinging superhero role was more heartbreaking than soul-fulfilling.
In 2017, Andrew Garfield said that playing his friendly neighborhood Spider-Man in the early 2010s reboot of the film series, The Amazing Spider-Man, broke his heart a little. In an exclusive interview with the British media outlet published last Friday, the actor elaborated that the role took away his innocence. “I went from being a naive boy to growing up. How could I ever imagine that it was going to be a pure experience?” he said. “There are millions of dollars at stake and that’s what guides the ship. It was a big awakening and it hurt.”
Andrew Garfield further explained that acting as Spider-Man placed less emphasis on the soul of the character and more on turning a profit at the box office. His disappointment at Marvel and Columbia’s goals of swimming in the giant pool of money made from The Amazing Spider-Man films a la Scrooge McDuck grew like fire, especially during geek convention season. “Comic-Con in San Diego is full of grown men and women still in touch with that pure thing the character meant to them. [But] you add in market forces and test groups and suddenly the focus is less on the soul of it and more on ensuring we make as much money as possible. And I found that — find that — heartbreaking in all matters of the culture,” Andrew Garfield said.
Columbia Pictures decided to reboot the Spider-Man film series starting with The Amazing Spider-Man after Spider-Man 4 with Tobey Maguire got canceled in 2010. They placed Marc Webb at the helm and Andrew Garfield in the Spidey suit. The film was released in 2012, just a decade after the Macguire-led, Sam Raimi-directed Spider-Man. The reboot garnered a rather positive reception, with critics giving large praise to Garfield’s performance and the visual style of the film. It grossed over $758 million at the global box office, spawning a sequel, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, in 2014. Even with all that success, Garfield wasn’t too happy about swinging around Spider-Man’s version of New York City for the sake of lining Marvel and Columbia’s pockets.
Meanwhile, unlike Andrew Garfield, Tom Holland is happy to have been web-slinging around the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Spider-Man: Homecoming trilogy in the last five years. But he said that he is now uncertain about his future with Marvel as Spider-Man after the completion of Spider-Man: No Way Home. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Holland said that he and the rest of the cast have been treating No Way Home as “the end of a franchise,” and that if he ever plays Spider-Man and Peter Parker again, the audience will likely see “a different version.” He even told Empire that for the first time since he got cast as Spider-Man that he hasn’t had a contract with Marvel. In the ever-evolving comic book movie world, things are always subject to change. And we might even get Garfield back into the Spidey suit sooner than later.
