How Andrew Garfield redeemed himself as the best Spider-Man in No Way Home
Spider-Man: No Way Home returns to UK cinemas from Friday, 20 September
Everyone has a favourite Spider-Man and that's ok. Each choice is valid and you can like who you like. But only if you pick Andrew Garfield. And that's because he's the best Spidey, beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Despite appearing in two of the least successful Spider-Man films, both financially and critically speaking, Garfield nailed the character in ways neither Tobey Maguire nor Tom Holland could ever quite manage. That's not to say they did a bad job, both bring something special to the character.
But while Maguire's Peter is a tad too nervy and Holland's Spidey is less witty than I'd like, Garfield balances this dual role with the best blend of both, embodying that unique mix of angsty and quippy that makes Spider-Man so loveable. Plus he's hot.
Yet it's commonly agreed that The Amazing Spider-Man and its 2014 sequel did Garfield dirty with muddled scripting and the franchise's worst villains by far, including a CGI Lizard, Paul Giamatti's mechanical Rhino Transformer and Jamie Foxx doing Smurf cosplay.
It also didn't help that Garfield's proposed trilogy was cut short at the end of the second film, leaving us hanging like Gwen Stacy's broken neck. With our hero left broken too, blaming himself for the death of his girlfriend, Garfield's Spider-Man was never given the proper ending he deserved, the chance to come back from his despair and fight on as Spidey always does.
Except that ending did come, eventually, and in the most unexpected way.
With Marvel's new focus on Multiverse shenanigans, rumours began to suggest earlier versions of Spidey might show up somehow in No Way Home. Andrew Garfield, on two press tours that year for The Eyes of Tammy Faye and Tick, Tick... Boom!, shouldered the brunt of these rumours, endlessly denying his involvement in Holland's third Spider-Man film.
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But as we now know, Garfield was giving another Oscar-worthy performance in each of these interviews, because he did indeed pull the spandex back on again for No Way Home. And not just for a brief, lip service cameo either.
After Andrew's Peter meets the other Spider-Bros for the first time, he opens up about Gwen's death and how he's still unable to forgive himself, all these years later. This Spider-Man is a shell of his former self. A Spider-Shell, if you will, and we continue to see that as he battles depression and low self-esteem throughout the rest of the film, his quippy banter now replaced with self-deprecating jokes at his own expense.
This culminates with Peter describing himself as "lame" compared to the other two Spider-Men, which is wild when words like "cute" and "sexy" would have been far more appropriate. If only he could have heard the cheers that erupted in my cinema when he first stepped through that portal.
Maguire's Spidey hates to see Peter like this so he calls him out on all the unkind things he's been saying to himself up until that point.
"I appreciate that," replies Peter. "I'm not saying I'm lame…" but Maguire doesn't believe him.
"You're amazing," says the OG Spider-Man. "Just take it in for a minute. You are amazing. You are amazing."
Watch a clip from Spider-Man: No Way Home:
Garfield's always been the "Amazing Spider-Man", technically speaking. It's in the name of his movies, after all. But after failing Gwen, his Peter felt anything but amazing. And the same could possibly be said for Garfield himself as well. Despite regularly being cited as the best thing in those films by far, the fact they didn't fare as well as the others must have stung regardless. So when Garfield's character thanks Maguire ("I needed that"), it feels a bit more real than usual.
What's really amazing though is the redemption that comes later when Peter realises Zendaya's MJ is about to die the same way Gwen did. As she falls, Garfield's Spidey jumps down after her but is careful to avoid using his webs. Because we all know how that went last time.
After Peter catches MJ, tears well up in his eyes. He looks at her in disbelief and checks that she's ok, overcome with emotion. Sensing something deeper is going on, MJ turns the question back around and asks if he's ok. And he is. He really is. Because after all these years of suffering and blaming himself, Peter's finally done right by Gwen, or at least the MJ version of her. And with that, he can begin to move on.
It's a smaller, condensed version of the ending that was taken from us all those years ago when Garfield's third proposed movie was cancelled. Yet it's much better than nothing, which is almost what we got originally because it turns out Garfield's Spider-Man wasn't always the one who was supposed to save MJ.
According to Phil Saunders, a concept designer who worked on No Way Home, MJ was instead rescued by Dr. Strange's Cloak in an earlier script. The idea was that MJ would finally get to experience flying for herself, but luckily, that was scrapped in favour of this much more emotional scene with Garfield that was essentially 8 years in the making.
In fact, Garfield might not have even joined the film at all if not for this moment. "It kind of sold me on the whole thing," he told Variety. So thank goodness they kept it in, because it helped prove what we already knew. That Andrew Garfield is the best Spider-Man. He just needed the right film to prove it.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is back in UK cinemas from Friday, 20 September.
