Sony Pictures’ 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home starring Tom Holland was directed by Jon Watts and was the sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Far From Home. The movie saw the return of not only Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield but also Alfred Molina and Willem Dafoe as Doc Ock and Green Goblin. Kevin Feige explains why the studios avoided bringing them back before No Way Home.
Upon its release, Spider-Man: No Way Home received positive reviews from the critics and the audience and became the highest-grossing film of 2021. The movie grossed near about $1.9 billion worldwide and surpassed its predecessors. The crossover between the Marvel Cinematic Universe and previous Spider-Man movies directed by Sam Raimi and Marc Webb was highly appreciated by the audience. According to Kevin Feige they had a good reason for not bringing back the characters before Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Kevin Feige clarifies why Doc Ock and Green Goblin were not brought back before Spider-Man: No Way Home
In a conversation with Empire Magazine back in 2021, Tom Holland who plays Peter Parker a.k.a., Spider-Man dwelled upon the idea of bringing back familiar faces from the Spider-Man franchise. It meant bringing back actor Alfred Molina as Doctor Octopus and Willem Dafoe as Green Goblin. He said,
“When I was first pitched the idea, I was like, ‘Wow, that would be awesome if we could pull it off. ‘But there’s just no way it’s going to work. You’re just not going to be able to get everyone to do what they need to do. It’s just not going to happen’. But it did happen. And it’s crazy.”
Talking about Kevin Feige believed that Spider-Man: No Way Home seemed like a perfect opportunity to bring back the former foes of Spider-Man. He noted,
“I remember having discussions with Amy Pascal years ago. ‘Do we want to revisit villains we’ve seen before?’ No let’s do Vulture and Mysterio, and characters we haven’t brought to the screen before. But I remember thinking, ‘How would you even do Doc Ock again?’ because Alfred Molina is perfect casting. If you ever brought him back, it would have to be him somehow.”
During his interview for ComicBook.com. Kevin Feige acknowledged that it did not occur to them to do a new Goblin story or to do an Oscorp story or to do Doc Ock, or anyone that had been before. Kevin Feige explained the reason by stating;
“Even as we were doing that—and I had been saying for years, even before anybody asked me what I thought, you can’t get better than Alfred Molina as Doc Ock. I said stepping into those shoes would be very, very difficult. And wouldn’t it be fun to find a way, if you were going to bring Doc Ock back, it would have to be Alfred Molina.”
Kevin Feige added that in the early development of No Way Home, they realized that there was a way they could bring the original actors who had played the villains in previous Spider-Man movies.
Willem Dafoe returned as Green Goblin for Spider-Man: No Way Home under one condition
In his conversation with Mulderville, Willem Dafoe who played Norman Osborn a.k.a., Green Goblin in Spider-Man shared the one condition he had if the studios wanted him back for Spider-Man: No Way Home. He mentioned,
“To do this physical stuff was important to me. In fact, one of the first things I said to Jon Watts and Amy Pascal, basically when they pitched it to me before there was even a script was, ‘listen, I don’t want to just pop in there as a cameo or just fill in the close-ups. I want to do the action because that’s fun for me’.”
The actor who was recently seen in Emma Stone’s Poor Things mentioned at the time that he told the director and the producer of the movie that it’s really impossible to add any integrity or any sort of fun to the character if he couldn’t participate in these things. He added that it makes him feel that he earned the right to play the character.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is available on VOD on Prime Video.
