Marc Webb Talks THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN In Detail

Thanks to our friends over at Latino Review, we have the following transcription of a revealing new interview with director Marc Webb taken from this year's Comic-Con Annual. Be sure to click on the link for more and stay tuned to CBM on Monday as I'll be bringing you all the details from The Amazing Spider-Man sneak peek taking place in London.

You came out with a new poster in December that said "The Untold Story" on it. Is that the untold story you’re looking to tell?

That’s part of the untold story certainly. It’s really important for us to be able to communicate that this isn’t a remake of Sam Raimi’s movie. There’s a new territory, there’s a new villain, it’s a different Peter Parker.

Why did you feel Gwen Stacy was the way to go as opposed to Mary Jane?

We’ve seen Mary Jane. I also think that Gwen Stacy is a young scientifically minded woman who’s super smart, maybe even a little bit smarter than Peter at times. I like that dynamic, that there was a rivalry between the two of them in some way. And I think Emma and Andrew’s chemistry really describes that in a fun, very intimate way.

Looking at the trailers and the poster, this film seems to have a bit of a darker tone to it, yet Spidey has always been a wisecracking, fun kind of super-hero. Are you able to maintain that humor in your film?

There’s this trickster quality we were very keen on exploring, with that humor and that fun and that wisecracking stuff. We wanted to keep that alive, but we wanted it to be realistic. We wanted that humor to come from a real place. My aim was to create a world where you could feel all those emotions. There are certainly darker, more intense feelings in this movie. There is betrayal, there is tragedy, but there’s also humor and romance. So it’s a very complex bouquet of emotions, but what you have to tread on is what feels authentic and what feels real, and you have to earn those different emotions. There are moments of furiousness and gravity, absolutely. But are there moments of humor and levity and whimsy? Absolutely. Andrew was really great. He used this term to describe Peter Parker in Spider-Man and Spider-Man in particular: he’s a trickster. He was like “How would Spider-Man web this guy? He’d give him a wedgy or he’d dos some awful graffiti.” There’s a punk rock quality to Peter Parker that’s really irreverent and fun and that’s something that Andrew embodies in a way that we haven’t seen before. Certainly the materials that have come out have a darker sentiment or there’s a darker projection, but we’re very keen on staying loyal to the humor of Spider-Man.

It seems the way Spider-Man is, his powers and the way he moves, would really lend itself to 3D.

When we first talked about it, it was in the heyday of 3D and there was a lot of craziness about it. But it was never forced upon us. I thought if there’s ever a movie that should be in 3D, it’s Spider-Man for crying out loud. And watching it in 3D, particularly in IMAX, even the early stuff I’ve seen, it’s fantastic. You get a visceral feeling that you don’t get any other way when you have good 3D. We shot this all in stereo so it was native 3D. Nothing has been converted. And when you get that scope, the movie gradually expands. It starts off in a very intimate, small way and gradually expands to take advantage of that sensation. So do you have to see it in 3D? No, you’ll still get the thrill of it. But those point-of-view sequences, those came very directly from a philosophy about putting the audience in Spider-Man’s shoes. We wanted them to feel what he feels, and that’s where those sequences came from.

The villain, Rhys Ifans as Dr. Curt Connors.

The Welshman. He’s fantastic. He brings a surly sophistication. Curt Connors is a friend of Peter Parker. He is an ally who evolves into an adversary, but Peter always cares deeply for Dr. Connors. Rhys has tow sides to his personality. He has a wonderful kindness and warmth, and he has this surly rock ‘n’ roll part of his personality and you really sense both of those in this movie.