Screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers revealed that scenes had to be cut out of the third entry of Tom Holland's Peter Parker storyline in order to keep the focus, well, on Pete.
Over a week on from its release and 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' is shattering records left, right and centre. The third outing featuring Tom Holland as the wall-climber has already taken in over $800 (€705) million globally (including €2.37 million at the Irish box office after just five days), making it the number one Hollywood movie of the year.
With such a huge turnout at the box office, the Sony/Marvel creation has gone down as one of the most eagerly-awaited film, potentially ever. Thanks in part to the rumour mill cranking up to overdrive this year, in the end, the film ended up delivering some thoroughly worthwhile and wholesome scenes fanboys and girls never could have dreamed would happen on screen (*SPOILERS FOR 'NO WAY HOME' BELOW*).
And so, with the arrival of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield on the screen, reprising their respective previous iterations of Peter Parker, just how difficult was it to bring them back into the fold without taking away from Holland's Spidey story? It took a lot of willpower, it seems.
In an interview with Discussing Film, 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers discussed how they were able to ensure that the multiverse crossovers didn't impact negatively on the main storyline of Peter Parker. In essence, how do you include multiple villains and not have the film go the same route as Maguire's 'Spider-Man 3'?
Sommers said: "You want to give everyone their due, and just as a fan, you want to see those people as those characters and have fun with them. But at the end of the day, it’s a 'Spider-Man' movie – you have to be telling the story of Peter Parker, and everything has to be in service of that.
"So there were a lot of painful decisions made, you know, we would have loved to have done this and that and 'Oh, wouldn’t be great if these two villains could do this!' But it has to be in service of Peter’s journey, and you have to keep things moving.
"There were definitely a lot of what we call 'little darlings' – little moments and things that you really just love – but sometimes you have to let them go."
He continued, saying that as much as he and McKenna were fans of the previous films, you have to know when too much fanfare really doesn't help the film move forward. He continued: "It’s a balancing act because we love those previous movies, the Sam Raimi and Marc Webb ones, and we want to pay homage to them and make the fans happy.
"But you don’t want to just do lazy fan service for its own sake because it’ll ring false at some point. It’s a balancing act and at every point, again, you have to be thinking about the story. So if you really want to hear this villain say the line that he said in that other movie, you can’t let that drive you in terms of finding a moment for that. If you just go looking for that and you spend all this time, you’re going to end up writing some scene that maybe doesn’t even need to be in the movie.
"You just have to keep focused on telling Peter Parker’s story, and then hope that you find opportunities for those moments in there. We were working with a lot of smart and talented people, and just poring over these moments again and again, crafting things and trying to find those moments where we could include that kind of stuff in a way that felt like it was organic. We weren’t just doing it for its own sake."
