Had Spider-Man: No Way Home not been shot in the midst of the pandemic, chances are the movie would have been at least a little different. Due to travel restrictions, for example, neither Rhys Ifans nor Thomas Haden Church were able to shoot their respective returns as The Lizard and Sandman.
They were able to voice the characters, but recycled footage from The Amazing Spider-Man and Spider-Man 3 was used to show both villains in their human forms.
The newly released "Art of" book for the 2021 threequel reveals that Marvel Studios considered completely overhauling The Lizard's appearance, delivering something more in line with the comic books.
That meant giving Curt Connors his purple pants and lab coat along with an elongated snout which was absent from his 2012 live-action debut. However, as much as COVID impacted Spider-Man: No Way Home, it was decided fairly early on that The Amazing Spider-Man's design would remain.
"We're looking to pull a character from another film and have this audience believe it's that same character," Marvel Studios Head of Visual Development Ryan Meinerding explains. "If we change it too much, if we're changing bone structure, it doesn't feel like it's the character from that other movie, and we've lost the magic of The Multiverse."
"Having said that, all the explorations that [Visual Development Supervisor Ian Joyner] did were incredible," he adds. "Incorporating more costume and ripped and torn pants or shirts or lab coats, was also part of the fun exploration that I'm glad we did, even if it didn't end up serving the story."
Seeing a comic-accurate Lizard on screen would have been a blast, and it's a shame there wasn't room for him to evolve as the story continued. Curt Connors was largely a secondary villain, with the focus instead on Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, and Electro.
It's also worth noting, as we did well over a decade ago, that this Lizard design is how the villain looked when Stan Lee and Steve Ditko first introduced him!