Spider-Man: No Way Home is an amazing movie, but it doesn't sound like it had the smoothest of journeys to the big screen. Between the pandemic, all those returning actors, and the sheer level of secrecy, the cast and crew had a bumpy ride, which is evident from recent comments made by Digital Domain VFX Supervisor, Scott Edelstein.
Talking to ComicBook.com, Edelstein revealed that director Jon Watts had to stand in for Thomas Haden Church for his Sandman scenes. While it's never been explicitly stated, it's thought that neither Church nor Lizard actor Rhys Ifans was on set, hence why footage from The Amazing Spider-Man and Spider-Man 3 was repurposed for this threequel.
"Starting from set, when they're shooting, they have a stand-in that is there for eyelines, for the camera blocking, all that kind of stuff. [We] have multiple different things after that show us what Sandman could potentially be," Edelstein explained. "Sometimes it's the director himself, John Watts actually shot reference of himself doing the body performances, and the kind of facial like performance that he wanted the character to have. And so we would have that reference."
"They did do a shoot on a mocap set where they got a body actor to perform so that we would have mocap of what those performances would be, if that's what they were going to use. And then, like you said, we had the voiceover of Thomas Haden Church giving the lines," he continued. "And so most of the time, what it ended up being is the animators just literally hand keyframing everything. From the body performance to the facial performance to match the voice and all of that."
It's always fun to get some insight into how movies like Spider-Man: No Way Home came together. While it's not surprising to hear that Church wasn't present for Sandman's scenes, the finished effect worked very well, and the movie even found a way to explain why the "villain" remained in that sandy form upon arriving in the MCU. With that, the stage was set for a truly spectacular final battle.
There, Sandman once again grew to the size of a skyscraper to battle the three Spider-Men, but was ultimately cured by his world's Peter Parker in an emotional, albeit brief exchange between the two. As for Watts, he's rumoured to be heading to a Galaxy Far, Far Away in the not too distant future.
Spider-Man: No Way Home releases on Digital on March 22 and physical platforms on April 12.