With Marvel now teaming with Sony to bring Peter Parker to the big screen (again), the latter studio can start putting “The Amazing Spider-Man” fiasco in the rear view. What was supposed to launch an entire movie universe around the webslinger evaporated after two movies, both of which underwhelmed at the box office and were met with fanboy disappointment. It couldn’t have been easy for Andrew Garfield, who had the marquee role of his young career and who likely figured it would be a stepping stone to bigger and better things. He’s certainly not lacking for work, having scored lead roles in movies from the likes of Martin Scorsese (“Silence“) and Mel Gibson (“Hacksaw Ridge“) in the same year. Yet Garfield is a bit pained things didn’t turn out differently with the franchise.
In a segment from his talk with Amy Adams for Variety‘s “Actors On Actors” series, Garfield is honest about the effect “The Amazing Spider-Man” had on him when it didn’t come together as planned, and when he realized that story and character weren’t always at the “top of the priority list.”
“There’s something about being that young in that kind of machinery which I think is really dangerous,” he said. “I was still young enough to struggle with the value system, I suppose, of corporate America. It’s a corporate enterprise mostly.”
“I found that really, really tricky. I signed up to serve the story, and to serve this incredible character that I’ve been dressing as since I was three, and then it gets compromised and it breaks your heart,” he added. “I got heartbroken a little bit to a certain degree.”
Certainly the balance between commerce and art is probably most evident in those kind of tentpole productions, but it seems that at the very least, Garfield came out with a healthy perspective.
