One of the greatest events of 2021, Spider-Man: No Way Home brought the greatest stars from the Spider-Man saga into a single frame. And among the many who made their transition from the early Noughties’ Spider-Man universes was the evergreen Willem Dafoe. As Green Goblin, he has made an indelible mark in the history of CBM IPs, and remains one of the best renditions, live-action or otherwise. As such, to find the opportunity to witness the legend once again in action was a dream come true for almost the entire fandom.
Willem Dafoe Reveals His Disappointment With De-Aging CGI
With the progress that the cinematic industry has made in terms of filming equipment and technology in recent times, it was almost inevitable that someone would find a way to reverse-engineer actors’ faces to make them look younger on the silver screen, without having to recreate the entire person using CGI technology.
The new de-aging tech, although wonderful in so many ways, also simultaneously happens to be a bit creepy (for lack of a better word). One of the reasons for that could be the technology being in its formative stages, and not yet evolving completely to give the desired effect that one might expect of big-budget projects like No Way Home. Its star, Willem Dafoe, seems to think the same:
“Yeah, there were a couple of shots that were really fuzzy. I thought it was silly, because the de-aging thing, they don’t have it down yet. And what’s the point? I don’t look that much older, I don’t think, anyway. It’s the creams.”
But however wonky the technology may have been, it truly was essential in the perspective of the film and doing its plot and the fandom justice. Two of the three major villains, Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock and Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin had been part of Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man era when they had fallen to their deaths. As such, being pulled back into the present timeline from the past would mean they had to be aged back to the way they looked in the early 2000s.
No Way Home Pays Homage to Marvel’s Web Slingers
In all the time that Marvel has spent in bringing their comic book IPs alive on the screen, whether in animated form or live-action, the one character that has always remained a fan-favorite is Spider-Man. From the glossy comic book pages to the larger-than-life studio projects, no superhero has drawn so much unilateral love, praise, and admiration as Spider-Man, and that unified commitment to the character is what Marvel strived to achieve in No Way Home.
Executed with precision and a fast-paced plot, the entire 148-minute runtime of the movie was an homage and a tribute to the wall-crawler in all its faults and glories (but mostly the latter). Rarely has a franchise united the fandom in such an unequivocal show of strength as Spider-Man: No Way Home did with its release. Bringing back Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield also worked out perfectly, setting the tone for the multiversal chaos that is about to ensue in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. All that now remains is to see if they unite for one last stand against Kang the Conqueror in the epic Multiversal showdown in MCU Phase Six.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is now available for streaming on Disney+.
Source: Wired Autocomplete
