Why Andrew Garfield’s Return In Spider-Ma...

Why Andrew Garfield’s Return In Spider-Man No Way Home Is So ICONIC

andrew garfield amazing spiderman no way home iconic scene

Ok so watching Andrew Garfield come back for Spider-man No Way Home was one of the best moments I’ve experienced in a cinema for a long time. Yeah, that might be because cinemas were closed for a good two years but beyond that, the subtext and meaning behind the scene carried much more than it being just a simple cameo.

Throughout this video, I wanna break down why Garfield’s return is so iconic and all of the factors that contributed to what’s very much seen as his rise and fall. This entire thing is pretty much an underdog story but doesn’t call it a comeback because the guy has always been excellent, we just didn’t know what we had until it was gone.

Now if you agree then please hit the thumbs up button and don’t forget to subscribe for videos like this every day. With that out the way, thank you for clicking this, now let’s get into the video.

Garfield’s Spidey

Ok, so Andrew Garfield was very much seen as the Black Sheep of the Spider-man Family. Tobey Maguire very much had one of the best comic book trilogies of all time and though his third film is often looked down upon, the first two helped to save the genre in a time when we were still reeling off Batman and Robin. Maguire was a very big part of a lot of people’s childhoods and his first film especially managed to recapture the origin story from the comics and update it in an exciting and modern way.

His fourth film was shelved and Sony ended up rebooting the character with Andrew Garfield whose first film was released just a mere five years after Spider-man 3. The creative team leaned too heavily into the gritty reboot thing which was fashionable at the time due to the Dark Knight but this didn’t really fit the character. They also had the difficult task of telling an origin story that had already been nailed and though I do think his first film has aged well over time when it was first released it very much felt like a movie nobody asked for.

Whilst all this was going on Marvel Studios had managed to build phase 1 of their characters and in the same year, they launched their film The Avengers which has pretty much completely changed the comic book movie genre. Fox had also just released X-Men First Class the year before and it just felt like Sony were trying to ride the coattails of everyone else.

Two years later we got the Amazing Spider-man 2, which, though enjoyable felt a bit overstuffed. You had the weird electro story, the green goblin one and Peter trying to solve his parent’s disappearance which made it just feel kinda middling.

It also attempted to tackle the death of Gwen Stacy and though I absolutely love this in the film, the movie disappointed a lot of fans at the time. However, the person who shone in the role was Andrew Garfield and it felt like he was just getting the wrong material rather than actually being bad. For me, Garfield felt like he was ripped right out of the Ultimate Comics and he definitely had the best costume. However, he was competing in a world where we expected comic book films to all be connected and at the time Maguire was still held up as the best of the best of the best sir.

andrew garfield amazing spiderman no way home iconic

The Amazing Spider-Mans Return

Now Sony was due to announce The Amazing Spider-man 3 at Brazil Comic-Con but after he called in sick the whole film was scrapped. It would be just another two years until Tom Holland appeared as the character in Civil War and Garfield was brushed under the rug as being the person who neither started everything nor had a connected universe.

However, the internet loves to rally for those that they think deserve a second chance and much in the same way that The Snyder Cut gained a big following, his version of Spider-man did too.

Now Garfield’s return got the biggest reaction when I was in the theatre and though that might not have been the case in every cinema, I think it was probably the biggest talking point upon leaving the film.

There are several reasons for this and I think one of the big ones is how it’s actually filmed and revealed. In the scene, we watch as Ned and MJ wish that they could find where Peter Parker is and in doing so they open a doorway to one of the versions that was brought across during the spell.

Down a dark and shadowy alleyway, we see almost the silhouette of Spider-man and he slowly jogs towards the camera. You can slightly make out his suit and on a first watch, this is done deliberately to make you look at it to see if you recognise who it is. You’re kinda squinting as he runs towards the frame and then as he jumps through the portal, you recognise the suit and then just as you have the ah-ha moment he unmasks and reveals his face.

Garfield even poses and breathes like it’s the end of either an amazing dance routine or a magic trick in which the person performing it has just pulled off the impossible. Though many of us believed he was coming back this moment was still incredible and for as much as it worked in the context of the film, it also worked really well outside of it.

The Werewolf

Now if you visited the internet at any point in 2021 then you probably saw that Andrew Garfield was shown in full costume, on set filming what was clearly his comeback. However, he denied being in the film at several opportunities and it very much became a meme where he was constantly saying he wasn’t the werewolf.

Without seeing the movie nobody could out and out disprove it and we all know deep fakes are at the point now where it would be possible to pull something off like this if you had the time to do it.

Thus people just kept hammering away at Garfield but he never budged and instead just said he was looking forward to the movie.

This definitely helped to add to the ‘oh s**t’ moment and it’s from here that MJ very much becomes the voice of the audience.

She can’t even believe it’s happening to the point that she even throws bread at him and you’re kinda stuck much like how she is almost questioning if it’s him. We wanna see him be spider-man, climb on the ceiling, do some s**t because it’s a scene that you can’t really believe is actually happening.

andrew garfield amazing spiderman no way home iconic scene

They could have brought him back in the big action scene at the statue of liberty but instead, they toned things down, put it in a home setting and brought both back. Our homes are where we very much grew up watching the characters and it’s here that we fell in love with them. I used to go around to my grandma’s house every Saturday and I’d sit and watch superhero shows whilst she made me and my sister dinner. Because of my memories like this, I massively relate to the setting and it’s almost like they’re bringing him back to the place where I fell in love with Spider-man. Neds Grandma really adds to the scene and there are several generations at this moment showing how much Spider-man has touched us all.

This was so difficult to pull off for Marvel Studios and though they have the clout to do it, there were a lot of things that they had to do to get the old cast members back. Both Garfield and Maguire were people who didn’t exactly leave the role on the best of terms but in Kevin Feige we trust.

The guy managed to get both Garfield and Tobey Maguire back and have them interact with one another in very meaningful ways. The pair could’ve both been reduced to being just cameos that pop in and leave but they had quite big roles in a movie that was very much about the Tom Holland version finally stepping into the role.

The return of Andrew is iconic because it not only rights the wrongs of the past in terms of how he left the role, but it also closes several arcs for his character.

He was someone who watched the love of his life die in front of him because of his own actions and his version of Peter getting to save MJ really means a lot.

It all comes from this scene in which he returns and I love how it all comes together from here on out.

Andrews’s return is iconic and obviously, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the scene in the comments below.

 

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