The web shooter returns

“’The learning curve on the first one was huge, just in terms of the scope of the visual effects,” Webb says. “I’d never carried something through with that scope, particularly the animation of Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield) and the Lizard (Rhys Ifans). Trying to create a kind of realism, that was tricky. Now, having gone through that, I was able to think about the eventualities and obstacles that kind of get in your way.”

“There are other things, obvious things, like the (Spider-Man) suit,” Webb continues. “The first movie, I was really committed to thinking about, ‘How does this kid make this suit?’ That’s why the eyes were made out of glass, and in some ways that was a mistake, because I think hard-core fans have such a connection to the specificity of the suit that I sensed that and I was like, ‘You know, I’m going to go back to the iconic version of the suit’.”

There’s more, of course.

“I’d learned about scope and just the degree of the effects, and I learned about what Andrew and Emma (Stone) were capable of,” Webb says. “We know each other very well now. We really, when we were developing the script, thought about just how funny Andrew is and how good at delivering that stuff he can be, and how committed he is to that. That was great.

“And we thought about how wonderful an actor Emma is,” Webb adds. “She’s not just funny. She really has a lot of depth, and that was something we really exploited this time around.”

Webb’s sequel opens with Peter Parker perfectly happy with life. He loves being Spider-Man and adores his girlfriend, Gwen Stacy (Stone). Such happiness can last only so long, however. Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx), an average guy who is actually a major Spider-Man fan, emerges as the power-sucking, extremely dangerous Electro, while old Parker pal Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) transforms into the monstrous Green Goblin. Soon everything and everyone Parker holds dear is threatened.

Fans of Marvel’s Spider-Man comic books know that Electro, created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko back in the early 1960s, never has been more than a second banana among Spider-Man’s adversaries. That liberated Webb to do more with him creatively. It also didn’t hurt that he’d hired the versatile, inventive Foxx to play the part.

“The original version of Electro had this star on his face, and he was green and yellow,” Webb says, “but the cinematic possibilities of that character I just thought were extraordinary.

“But in thinking about his character and what is the nature of this villain,” he says, “I was also thinking about how to make it explosive and interesting visually, but emotionally as well. There was a natural quality about him that is bright and huge, and so there’s this idea of a character that wants to be seen, and where does that come from?”

In order to understand Electro, Webb asserts, one must understand Max Dillon. Foxx invented this version of Dillon, a nerdy, shy man whose post-transformation anger boils over into rage when Spider-Man doesn’t remember him following a brief chance encounter.

“There’s an intense pathos for the character, but also a madness there,” Webb says. “There’s a seed of, ‘This guy is psychotic, he’s dangerous’. He was an outcast. He was ignored by the people that should have loved him, which is the same story as Peter Parker.”

“Villains are often foils of that central character,” the director adds. “It’s how they react to their situations that defines their character and, for Electro, we sort of backed into that story a little bit.”

Webb believes that The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will deliver the goods, and Columbia already has The Amazing Spider-Man 3 in the works, with him attached to direct. However, Webb recently announced that he will not make the planned Amazing Spider-Man 4 or the villain spin-offs Venom and Sinister Six.

“I’d always imagined this as a three-part series,” he explains, “and, at the beginning of this second film, I started to feel that there were a lot of characters that could really have movies in their own right, particularly Venom. And we realised that the team aspect of the Sinister Six would be something interesting to play with.”

“So the world kind of fleshed out in such a way that I felt like I could contribute more as an adviser or consultant,” the director says, “rather than spending the rest of my life doing them. I’d always thought about this as three movies, and the broad strokes of the story are engineered for that.”