Andrew Garfield Explains Why The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Was a Box Office Disappointment

"I'm proud of a lot of it and had a good time," the actor says

By Zach Johnson Sep 11, 2014 2:20 PMTags
The Amazing Spider-Man 2Niko Tavernise/Columbia Pictures

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was far from amazing.

The sequel failed to match the hype or success of its predecessor from 2011, debuting in May 2014 to lackluster reviews and disappointing U.S. box office results. Andrew Garfield, who reprised his role as the titular superhero, weighed in what went amiss—and what worked—in the the Sony Pictures movie.

"I read a lot of the reactions from people and I had to stop because I could feel I was getting away from how I actually felt about it," the actor, 31, told The Daily Beast. "For me, I read the script that [Alex Kurtzman] and [Bob Orci] wrote, and I genuinely loved it. There was this thread running through it."

"I think what happened was, through the pre-production, production, and post-production, when you have something that works as a whole, and then you start removing portions of it—because there was even more of it than was in the final cut, and everything was related. Once you start removing things and saying, 'No, that doesn't work,' then the thread is broken, and it's hard to go with the flow of the story. Certain people at the studio had problems with certain parts of it, and ultimately the studio is the final say in those movies because they're the tentpoles, so you have to answer to those people," he said.

Regardless, Garfield stands by the team who made the movie come to life.

"Talking about the experience as opposed to how it was perceived, I got to work in deep scenes that you don't usually see in comic book movies, and I got to explore this orphan boy—a lot of which was taken out, and which we'd explored more. It's interesting to do a postmortem," Emma Stone's co-star and boyfriend said. "I'm proud of a lot of it and had a good time, and was a bit taken aback by the response."

How so?

"It's a discernment thing," said Garfield, who next appears in the movie 99 Homes. "What are the people actually saying? What's underneath the complaint, and how can we learn from that? We can't go, 'Oh God, we f--ked up because all these people are saying all these things. It's s--t.' We have to ask ourselves, 'What do we believe to be true?' Is it that this is the fifth Spider-Man movie in however many years, and there's a bit of fatigue? Is it that there was too much in there? Is it that it didn't link? If it linked seamlessly, would that be too much? Were there tonal issues? What is it? I think all that is valuable."

Niko Tavernise/Columbia Pictures

"Constructive criticism is different from people just being dicks, and I love constructive criticism," he added. "Hopefully, we can get underneath what the criticism was about, and if we missed anything."

Sony is now developing The Sinister Six, the studio's answer to Disney's Avengers, Fox's X-Men and Warner Bros.' Justice League. The next Spider-Man installment was pushed back, from 2016 to 2018.