Glad to see Tobey Maguire back in the tights? So is he. 'Spider-Man 2' was a pain to get off the ground. But here's the good news: the movie really soars
F. Scott Schafer for Newsweek
Spidey Sequel: Maguire and Dunst are back for Round Two
By Sean Smith
Newsweek
June 28 issue - Superheroes are not supposed to get fired. Sure, they quit now and then, but saving the world from evil forces would appear to be a pretty secure career choice since bad guys are never in short supply. So the call Tobey Maguire received from "Spider-Man" director Sam Raimi last year must have come as a shock. The two men had not spoken for quite a while, communicating instead through agents, managers and studio executives. Raimi was deep in preproduction on "Spider-Man 2" and under pressure from Columbia Pictures to get the sequel on screens by summer 2004. The original shredded box-office records, grossing $820 million worldwide. Expectations were high, to say the least, and Raimi had reached the conclusion that his star would be unable to meet them. After much agonizing, he phoned Maguire. "Given this situation, I don't think we can make the picture with you," Raimi told him. "I have to hire somebody else."
advertisement
On June 30, part two of the most successful comic-book movie in history, and the linchpin of what's likely to be a multi-billion-dollar franchise, will arrive in theaters. For a brief time in 2003, the future of that franchise—the entire weight of the "Spider-Man" juggernaut—balanced on the fragile spine of one 28-year-old actor. Maguire had suffered from recurrent back problems for years. As the "Spider-Man" sequel was gearing up, he was just coming off "Seabiscuit," a movie for which he'd had to lose a lot of weight and do a lot of horse riding, neither of which helped his condition. "My back was the worst it had ever been," he says. "I looked at the stunts I was going to have to do for 'Spider-Man 2,' which were going to be three times as difficult as the stunts on the first movie, and it became a little overwhelming." And that became an overwhelming problem. Soon, Maguire found himself—fighting to hold on to his Spider-Man tights.
FREE VIDEO
• Trailer: 'Spider-Man 2' The first Spidey flick grossed $403 million. Director Sam Raimi and star Tobey Maguire return to try to one-up the original
NEWSWEEK
In Hollywood, records are made and broken almost every month, but when "Spider-Man" opened in May 2002, it racked up an astronomical $115 million in its opening weekend, a feat that no film to date, including the last installment of "The Lord of the Rings," "Shrek 2" or the third "Harry Potter," has managed to top. Much has been made of the fact that "Spider-Man" was the first post-9/11 blockbuster, and the conventional wisdom is that the film was a phenomenon because America needed heroes again. But maybe it's something more. To the rest of the world, the superhero symbol of the United States is Superman—broad shouldered, unconflicted, virtually indestructible. For decades, we've preferred to see ourselves that way, too. Spider-Man is none of those things. He's burdened by self-doubt. He wants to do the right thing, but isn't always sure what that is. He's constantly forced to choose between helping others and helping himself. He looks tough, but he's easily injured. In America after September 11, Superman was who we wanted to be. Spider-Man was who we were.
LIVE TALK | ALONG CAME SPIDEY
Next week, “Spider-Man 2,” comes swinging onto screens across the country. Join Jeff Giles on Wednesday, June 23, at noon ET to discuss the most anticipated movie of the summer season. Submit questions anytime.
CLICK SUBMIT TO ENTER YOUR QUESTION AND BE DIRECTED TO THE CHAT PAGE
In "Spider-Man 2" life has only gotten worse for Peter Parker. He may be keeping the criminals at bay, but he's exhausted, failing his college classes, getting fired from his job and alienating his best friend, Harry Osborn (James Franco), and his one true love, Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst). Plagued by guilt, and desperate to lead a normal life, Peter tosses his costume in the trash. Unfortunately, Peter's idol, scientist Dr. Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina), has had a little lab accident, and is now a madman menacing Manhattan with four mechanical tentacles. Peter is forced to choose between heroism and his own happiness, his relationship with Mary Jane in jeopardy all the while. "I was interested in the price of being a good person," Raimi says. "It's a story of someone trying to live up to an ideal and finding it impossible. Peter's living a life out of balance. He thinks he's got to make this journey alone, but he doesn't realize that to love someone is not to shield them from the truth, but to share it with them."
If that sounds a little deep for a summer blockbuster, it is. "Sam's smart," says Dunst. "He knows that you might spend five hours on one special-effects shot, but at the end of the day, if it's not emotional, nobody cares." That might have worried some studios, but Columbia Pictures was onboard. "In the past, these kinds of movies tended to focus just on who the next villain was going to be," says studio chairman Amy Pascal. "But the heart of 'Spider-Man' is Peter Parker. It's about making sure his story is as complicated and angst-ridden as it was before, if not more so." Not coincidentally, that angst is precisely what has made "Spider-Man" one of the best-selling Marvel Comics characters for more than 40 years. It's also why Tobey Maguire proved such a wise casting choice the first time around, and why his possible departure from the sequel generated so much angst of its own.
When Raimi cast Maguire back in 2000, the decision was met with some skepticism. The young actor had starred mostly in artful, emotional dramas like "The Ice Storm" and "The Cider House Rules." He didn't fit the standard idea of a comic-book hero, which was, of course, why Raimi wanted him. Columbia Pictures was happy, too. Maguire's lack of box-office clout allowed the studio to sign him to a three-picture deal for a relative song. Maguire earned only $4 million on the first movie, and although Columbia eventually gave him a bonus after "Spider-Man" exploded, he was still contracted to make the sequel for only $8 million. It wasn't unreasonable of Maguire to think he deserved a bigger check. His fee on "Seabiscuit" had already risen to $12 million, and it wasn't as if Columbia were hurting for cash. His agent asked for $25 million, or 10 percent of the gross—whichever was bigger. The studio said no.
