In Spider-Man: No Way Home's final battle, the three actors who have played Peter Parker on the big screen team up to take on a sinister quintet of villains. It's an amazing sequence and one that does a phenomenal job of showcasing Tom Holland, Tobey Maguire, and Andrew Garfield's respective takes on Spider-Man as they swing into action together (pulling off some iconic poses in the process).
In an interview with before and afters, VFX Supervisor Kelly Port explained some of the challenges presented by making sure moviegoers would be able to differentiate the three Spider-Men.
"In the end battle, there’s a lot of passing and things like that. Editorially, we did everything we could to just make sure that it was as clear as possible, whether through handovers, meaning you saw more than one Spidey in a frame handing something off and tossing something to somebody else, so that you know who’s who for the most part, in addition to what the different suits look like."
"Stylistically, they each have their own kind of iconic poses. This is especially the case where after the sandstorm and regrouping, you get that amazing theme music where even the scores are intertwined. You get some of the Danny Elfman stuff in there, and it’s really, really cool, because each have their own themes," Port continued. "When all three jumping onto the top of the statue head, backlit by the moon, you get those iconic poses as well in the air. We just took great pains to even get their running styles and the gaits and their iconic poses in the air and their swinging styles."
As for the suits themselves, with very little in the way of past VFX elements to work from (given the age of the previous Spider-Man movies and the fact that those franchises have ended), it was a case of "[basing] our digital suits on what our costume department made. And I think for the most part, they based them on the original suits. However, there could be a little bit of variation in them."
"The fact that Tobey and Andrew came from a slightly later timeline, they’re older, so time has passed," she explained, "and they’ve lived their lives and probably have changed their suits or augmented them a little bit." Obviously, we're hoping for some official images down the line that offer a much better look at Maguire and Garfield back in costume as their takes on Spider-Man.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is now playing in theaters. Check out our Easter Egg breakdown here.