See Willem Dafoe And Tobey Maguire In A Spider-Man: No Way Home Deleted Scene
The OG actors almost had a rematch!
This article is more than 2 years old
So we all know Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield came back to play their respective Spider guys for Spider-Man: No Way Home by now, right? Well, we hope so. Because they did. And now, because of a preview of some of the home release featurettes for No Way Home, we know that one of the film’s deleted scenes included an airborne reunion between Willem Dafoe as the Green Goblin and Tobey Maguire‘s Spider-Man.
The revelation comes courtesy of “Spider-Suits, Goblin Gliders and the Costumes of the Multiverse.” At a little under eight minutes long, the behind the scenes featurette focuses mainly on the movie’s costumes. At around the 05:18 mark, you can see the Willem Dafoe Green Goblin on the Goblin Glider, and it isn’t the Tom Holland Spidey he’s facing, but the Tobey Maguire version. You can watch the entire video below.
We can only hope we get to see more of whatever was going to happen between Willem Dafoe and Tobey Maguire here (we’re going to go out on a limb and say fighting was involved), hopefully in a deleted scenes feature. Unfortunately, that means hoping the deleted scene list that supposedly leaked in February wasn’t genuine. That list only mentions five deleted scenes, none of which would suggest they include a battle between Dafoe and Maguire’s characters. In fact, the existence of this featurette would suggest that list wasn’t genuine. As you can see in “leaked” list below, the featurette “Spider-Suits, Goblin Gliders and the Costumes of the Multiverse” isn’t mentioned.
If you’ve seen Spider-Man: No Way Home then you know that, sadly, Willem Dafoe and Tobey Maguire don’t spend a lot of time catching up in the flick. Norman Osborn becomes the primary antagonist of the film, and becomes more interested in ruining the life of Holland’s version of Peter Parker than that of his old enemy. Of course, he does nearly kill the OG Spidey, but doesn’t quite seal the deal.
Not long after the reveal of the Goblin/Spidey face-off that wasn’t meant to be, Willem Dafoe talks about how much more freeing it was to be able to play Green Goblin without the mask he wears in 2002’s Spider-Man. And it was a treat for fans as well. It’s been said plenty of times before, but it will always bear repeating — whether you love Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man film or hate it, it’s nothing but a shame to cast a guy with a face like Willem Dafoe and to then make him wear a mask. It would be like casting Patrick Stewart as Professor X and then making him wear a wig.
It wasn’t just having his face exposed that was important to Willem Dafoe when it came to reprising the role of Norman Osborn in No Way Home. According to an interview from a few months ago, Dafoe made it clear to the filmmakers he wanted more than a cameo, and he wanted to be involved in the physical stunts. He said that was a big part of the fun for him, that the physical action informed the rest of his performance, and that he felt taking part physically was important to “earn the right” to play Green Goblin.
