Leaked emails from 2015 revealed something interesting about Andrew Garfield, who at the time was still playing Peter Parker in Sony’s Amazing Spider-Man series. He was supposed to turn up for a glitzy event where Sony was going to announce The Amazing Spider-Man 3, a movie that never ended up happening, but he wasn’t feeling it. “Here we are about one hour away from our gala event and Andrew decides he doesn’t want to attend,” the email read. “He has a rather scruffy beard and he just wants to be left alone.”
Speaking to The Guardian now about his career, Garfield opened up about his experience in Sony’s superhero franchise, and it sounds like he has some misgivings. “I got my heart broken a little bit,” he said. “I went from being a naive boy to growing up. How could I ever imagine that it was going to be a pure experience? There are millions of dollars at stake and that’s what guides the ship. It was a big awakening and it hurt.”
"Comic-Con in San Diego is full of grown men and women still in touch with that pure thing the character meant to them. [But] you add in market forces and test groups and suddenly the focus is less on the soul of it and more on ensuring we make as much money as possible. And I found that — find that — heartbreaking in all matters of the culture. Money is the thing that has corrupted all of us and led to the terrible ecological collapse that we are all about to die under."
For the record, Garfield did crack up after saying this, tickled by his own seriousness, and qualify that he was “just kidding…I mean, it’ll take a bunch of years before that happens.” But still, that is way more honest than I thought a star would ever get about being in the superhero machine.
Andrew Garfield goes way beyond “Are you in Spider-Man: No Way Home?“
Garfield is right, of course; companies like Disney and Sony leverage the love that fans have for superheroes and Star Wars and whatever else, but ultimately it’s way more about making money than actually making those fans happy, or celebrating their passion. And Sony isn’t as smooth as Disney when it comes to marrying art, entertainment and commerce. It sounds like Garfield got a good hard look at how the superhero sausage was made, and it wasn’t appetizing.
But the wheel turns on. For instance, whatever his feelings, it’s looking pretty likely that Garfield will show up in yet another Spider-Man reboot, this time alongside Tom Holland. The superhero movie machine grinds on:
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