Collider have just posted a lengthy interview with The Amazing Spider-Man director Marc Webb, in which he discusses many aspects of the movie - including casting, special effects, and the new trailer. But what caught my eye was the excerpt below, as Webb reveals the reasons behind the particular look he went with for the villain of the movie, The Lizard..
There’s a lot that goes into it. When we shot those sequences, we actually shot a human. There was a guy named Big John, who is literally this big guy named John, who did a lot of the interactive stuff. When you’re trying to interact with Peter [Parker], you need someone grabbing him and to do those things, and then we would replace him with the computer-generated lizard. But then, the performance capture was done with Rhys [Ifans]. We would shoot Rhys in a similar environment and get his facial expressions, and we’re still working on that. I just came from trying to incorporate his performance into The Lizard. That takes an enormous amount of time and it’s tricky. In the comics, there are different incarnations of The Lizard. There’s the one with the snout, but I was interested more in something that could relate human emotions because I wanted to keep Rhys’ performance in that creature. Pixar does it extremely well, creating those emotions within characters that are essentially computer-generated. So, getting that nuance and the eyebrow ticks and the looks, and creating something that can actually speak with lips that make sounds, is a very detailed and, frankly, tedious process. But, I really wanted him to have emotion, have a face and have feeling. That’s the way I chose to do that. And then, there’s the physical components of it, which was making him very powerful and strong.
Many fans were a bit disappointed that they didn't get the more bestial creature with the full snout that is frequently seen in the comics nowadays, but Webbs explanation certainly makes sense now that we know his intentions for the character. Oh, and the director also reveals that the running time will be close to 2 hours..
"Yeah, it’s right around two hours. There was something on some website that said it was an hour and 30 minutes, or something like that. No. Every once in a while, it’s really interesting because you hear people talk about information that gets out and you’re like, “Oh, yeah, there’s some truth to it.” But sometimes, things come up and you’re like, “What are you talking about?!” That’s one of those things. I just don’t know where that came from. The cut is pretty much locked. We’re just doing a lot of visual stuff."
Yeah, that was us. Sorry Marc! In our defense we got it from a listing on a theater website, and we did mark it as a rumor. 2 hours sounds much better indeed. There is MUCH more to the interview, so be sure to click the link back to Collider below to check it out.
About The Author:
Mark Cassidy is a writer, photographer, amateur filmmaker, and Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic from Dublin, Ireland.