Alright Students, we are well past the Vince Gilligan-authorised two week Spoiler Zone on Spider-Man: No Way Home. However, if you haven’t seen the movie yet this post is going to contain spoilers as well as spoilers for Amazing Spider-Man and Amazing Spider-Man 2.
When the first Amazing Spider-Man came out Andrew Garfield had the power of The Social Network at his back making him a very exciting casting choice. Ashley tells the story on Her Twitter about waiting for the trailer to buffer on her friend Alex’s iPhone and huddling together to watch it seconds before their Voice Production and Speech class started. If you go all the way back to Geek History Lesson episode 39 we cover Gwen Stacy and chat extensively about Emam Stone’s turn as the character because the Amazing Spider-Man movies were releasing in theaters at the time.
Heck - we saw Amazing Spider-Man 2 at the cinema together!
And, then there were no more Amazing Spider-Man movie. Amidst all the excitement of up-and-coming Andrew Garfield putting on the Spidey suit - and controversy about whether ot not he was just too hot to do so - amidst the late show appearances where Garfield put on the suit to takes selfies with unsuspecting tourist on Hollywood Boulevard …
… amidst pride in an actor landing the role of his favourite superhero, fans didn’t react well to the latest Sony offering and then live action Peter Parker had to go to bed for a while until Marvel Studios stirred a little spider from his slumber.
(now we’re wading into true spoiler territory, from this point forward consider yourself warned)
Garfield’s return to the Spider-Man in 2021’s No Way Home was a reminder to nay-saying fans that he can steal a scene from either of his fellow Spider-Men and, for many, the dawning realization that perhaps we - as collective Spider-Man fans - were too hard on the amazing Andrew Garfield. In fact #AndrewGarfield trended so hard and so positively on Twitter the rumours of a return to form swirled to life almost immediately:
Spider-Man: No Way Home showcased Garfield’s Spider-Man with more depth and humanity than Toby Maguire of Tom Holland. Peter Parker is a conduit for grief. A common backbone of superheroes is the tragic origin story of the loss of a parent, much in the folkloric traditions of myths then distilled and popularized by the Brothers Grimm into what we now think of as fairy tales. Unlike other heroes, Peter never gets an opportunity to transcend this. However, grief doesn’t exactly make for super-fun-happy-times when writing the lead of an action-adventure movie. With the death of Gwen Stacy being the bookend of Amazing Spider-Man 2 this is some very fertile land to till and Garfield’s Peter Parker opens himself up emotionally to his Spider-Verse brothers in their first major conversation trio.
We also share the popular opinion that Garfield has always been the best “Spider-Man”. Spidey is jokey, quippy, confident, and cocky. At the beginning of his journey this persona is purposefully designed to be in opposition to the nerdy, nervous, poor kid from Queens. On screen Amazing Spider-Man made more room for this aspect of the character than the original Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies. Throughout Spider-Man: No Way Home Garfield’s comedic timing is just as strong as his emotional performances. He’s easily the funniest on screen and certainly got the most laughs at the screening we saw the movie in.
To say nothing of the meta jokes around “being amazing” and a lack of confidence.
Lastly, and Ashley is willing to die on this hill, Andrew Garfield has the best Spider-Man suit. Across the superhero canon Spider-Man has one of the best costume designs PERIOD.
… in fact we may-or-may-not be planning a long form video essay about this very topic for the Jawiin Patreon!
The spider on Garfield’s costume and the lenses are really what separates his on-screen look from those of Maguire or the ever-evolving Holland suits.
Whether or not Andrew Garfield thinks he is more handsome than Ben Barnes and even if we never had a chance to see him in Narnia he is an iconic, integral part of who Spider-Man is in the zeitgeist beyond the comic rack at your local shop. Being proved wrong and having opinions change is an exciting part of being a fan of comic book characters. Comics put out more material across so many mediums there is always a chance to have something be reinvented for you. Having Andrew Garfield back on screen after the fall of the Amazing Spider-Man franchise. It’s even better that he knocked re-embodying Peter Parker out of the park.