23 things you probably didn't know about 2002's 'Spider-Man' movie
In 2000, Entertainment Weekly reported Law, a "Spider-Man fanatic," was one of the main contenders for the role along with Freddie Prinze Jr.
On one of the film's commentary tracks, Tobey Maguire said he was seen as more of an arthouse actor at the time than someone who plays heroes. He said the studio was hesitant to hire him until director Sam Raimi really pushed for him in the role.
"They said, 'Well, we like him as an actor. We're not sure if he's right for this role,'" Maguire said of Sony on the film's commentary.
"Sam Raimi really fought for me and it was hard. I had to fight with him, but he was so supportive and passionate about having me in the movie," Maguire said, adding, "I went through two screen tests for the film and then off to the races. But it was good because I really felt like a partner with Sam."
In his theatrical debut, Manganiello memorably played Flash Thompson who tries to fight Peter in the school hallway.
"There was a crew guy who came up to me and said, 'Listen, I'll give you $100 if you hit him in the face by accident," Manganiello said in a 2013 interview with Pete Holmes, adding that he was told a few other crew members were "in on it."
He declined.
When asked if he considered it, Manganiello said, "I probably wouldn't have worked again."
"I first auditioned for the role of Peter Parker which went well," Franco told the high-school paper, The Paly Voice, in 2007.
After six weeks, Franco learned he didn't get the part. Instead, he was offered the role of Peter's best friend.
"I found out I didn't get it and I was disappointed," Franco said. "But then Sam Raimi, the director called me, and we got along so well, and he asked me [if I wanted] the role of Harry. No one else auditioned for the role."
Before his agent could tell him he was cast as Jameson, a fan in an advertising agency broke the news to Simmons.
"I found out I got the part because of some kid who was so connected to the internet fan sites, that they had that information on a Spider-Man website before my agent called me to tell me I got the job," Simmons recently told The Ringer.
"He called me like three hours later and I was like, 'Yeah, I know!'" he said.
"I screen-tested for the role of Mary-Jane Watson in the first 'Spider-Man' movie, opposite Tobey Maguire. Tobey and I are basically the same age and I was told I was too old to play her," Banks told Glamour UK in 2016, via Deadline. "I'm like, 'Oh, okay, that's what I've signed up for.'"
Banks, who was 26 at the time, was about a year-and-a-half older than Maguire.
Instead, Kirsten Dunst was cast in the role when she was 19 and Banks was cast as J.J. Jonah Jameson's assistant, Betty Brant.
According to Comicbook.com, in a 2008 interview for "Zack & Miri Make a Porno," Banks said the casting director called her, offering the role of Brant "as a consolation prize, essentially."
"I had seen more Gwen Stacy, for some odd reason," Kirsten Dunst said on one of the film's commentary tracks. "When I first met Sam [Raimi], I was just flipping through the comics. I saw her and I was like, 'All right, I'm blond. Makes sense."
When she learned she would be playing Mary Jane Watson, she did a lot of research on the character.
Bryce Dallas Howard first played Gwen in 2007's "Spider-Man 3" before Emma Stone took on the role in "The Amazing Spider-Man" movies opposite Andrew Garfield.
"I actually had some worries about that," Raimi told The Sydney Morning-Herald in 2007 after the release of "Spider-Man 3."
"They apparently began dating with each other, I think, in the middle of the first movie ... although I didn't know it at the time," he said, adding, "They eventually broke up before the second movie. I was concerned they wouldn't get the same chemistry back, but it was just me worrying."
Columbus directed "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" instead and he's OK with that choice.
"I probably heard the day before I got the 'Spider-Man' offer that I got 'Harry Potter,'" Columbus told Screen Rant. "Whoever it was, was like, 'Is he crazy? How could he pass up Spider-Man?' And part of me felt that way, because it's probably something I was waiting my entire life to do. But I'm glad I decided to go with 'Potter.' I'm happy about that."
"I do want to clarify, this is not my body, the skinny dude," Maguire said on the film's commentary with J.K. Simmons.
Maguire had to match a double's walk. The double's head was put on the actor's head.
When he awakes and looks in the mirror at his new physique, that is Maguire's body. The actor said he trained for five months (six days a week, four hours a day) with nutritionists and trainers to get into superhero shape.
On another one of the film's commentary tracks, special effects designer John Dykstra said they had a real spider crawl on someone's hand in that shot, but it wasn't Maguire's.
On Maguire's commentary track he added, "By the way, that wasn't my hand. That was not my thumbnail."
"They were gonna do that digitally," Maguire said on the film's commentary. "Someone came up with the idea of standing above the camera and dropping all that stuff and hoping it landed right."
"I think we saved them a bunch of money," Maguire continued to costar J.K. Simmons' amazement. "I just held the tray and he dropped stuff and I had to move the tray around and it just landed."
On another one of the film's commentary tracks, Dykstra said it was take 156, but it's a little tough to tell whether or not he was joking. On the film's third audio commentary, producer Laura Ziskin said there were many takes for the scene.
Simmons told Maguire on a commentary track that he spent a couple of days at the New York Post, "soaking up the atmosphere, trying to get the sense of the big-city newspaper office and what's it's like."
His time there influenced small things like the decision to have a telescope in his office. It also led to a script change.
Simmons said he learned more about the going rate for Spider-Man photos J.J. Jameson demanded for The Daily Bugle.
"That line about how much I'll give you for the photos was actually one of the little details that I gleaned during that process... What's really the going rate," Simmons said, adding that it led to a change in the script.
The original teaser for "Spider-Man" featured bank robbers caught in a web between the two towers. The teaser then cut to a shot of Spidey with the towers reflected in his eye lens.
After the events of September 11, the scene was removed from the film.
"We didn't think it was our right, in the middle of the summer after this terrible massacre, to show a scene of such heartbreak for so many," Raimi told The New York Times in 2019. "I didn't want to pull them back into the heart of that tragedy."
Though some reports have suggested the film scrubbed other appearances of the tower, according to the film's visual effects commentary, visual effects designer John Dykstra says that's not true because there wasn't anything else to scrub.
We didn't remove the World Trade Center from any of our shots," said Dykstra. "The only shot that had the World Trade Center in it, I think, [that] was taken out of the film, potentially, was the one in the trailer."
In fact, they added the towers into the end of the movie when Spidey swings through New York City.
You can spot the towers right before he jumps off a flagstaff with the American flag, which feels like a tribute to the people of New York City.
Additionally, you can see the towers 56 minutes and 42 seconds in the background on a TV in J. Jonah Jameson's office.
"It's a one-piece that I couldn't get in and out of myself and my lenses would fog up a little bit so the vision would be restricted," Maguire said on the film's commentary.
"If I ever had to use the restroom or get a sip of water it was, like, a 30-minute process and the zippers broke all the time," Maguire continued, adding, "They weren't even gonna put zippers on it and I insisted... They ended up stitching me into the suit, sewing the suit up at least 60% of the time."
On the film's commentary, Maguire explained that the wet mask was covering his nose.
"When I was actually upside down, I couldn't breathe," Maguire said. "Water was pouring down. I mean, it couldn't have been more uncomfortable. I literally couldn't breathe."
"I apologized to Kirsten," he continued. "I said, 'Listen, I'm gonna have to suck air out of the side our mouths.' ... The mask is rolled up to my nose and the mask is wet so it's no longer breathable at all. I could only breathe through my mouth and then I was kissing her, so there was nowhere to breathe. It was unbearable. And it was, like, 4:30, 5 in the morning."
In a behind-the-scenes book that comes with the "Spider-Man" limited edition collection, the film's costume designer, James Acheson, said he based the Goblin's suit off of Japanese art prints, reptilian patterns, comic books, and space suits.
During Brazil's 2021 Comic-Con Experience "Spider-Man: No Way Home" panel, Willem Dafoe, who is reprising his role as the Green Goblin in the sequel, said his new costume is much more comfortable than the original one.
"To create the costume for the Green Goblin, I stood there for eight hours and they put different pre-formed pieces on me," Dafoe said of the differences in costume design. "Now, they scan me and they can design it and then make the costume and then try it on me. It's a huge leap in the technology."
This is an incredible detail that you may have missed while watching the original "Spider-Man" movies.
You'd expect the CEO of Oscorp to have perfect teeth, but when we start to see Norman unravel into his alter-ego, the Green Goblin persona, we see Dafoe's real teeth in mirror reflections.
Cameron famously worked on a "Spider-Man" script in the '90s that would have included Electro and Sandman as villains and a sex scene between Peter Parker and Mary Jane atop the Brooklyn Bridge.
In his recent book "Tech Noir: The Art of James Cameron," the director referred to the film as "the greatest movie I never made," according to Screencrush.
Instead, Cameron made "Titanic" with DiCaprio. At the time, it became the highest-grossing movie in the world until Cameron made "Avatar."
In 2013, Jackman told Huffpost the two worlds would've collided on screen in a fun moment, but they couldn't find his suit from 2000's "X-Men."
"In the first 'Spider-Man' — [now Marvel Studios president] Kevin Feige reminded me of this — we really tried to get me to come on and do something, whether it was a gag or just to walk through the shot or something," Jackman said.
"The problem was, we couldn't find the suit," Jackman added of why it never happened. "The suit was stuck in some thing. And so when they were in New York when I was there, we couldn't get it together."
Funny enough, Spider-Man (not Maguire) appears in a blooper on the "X-Men" DVD.
Spider-Man originally had a mouth full of blood spewing out after Green Goblin punched him in the face at one point.
In order for the movie to still be kid-friendly, the SFX team had to change the color from red to clear so it would look like spit instead of blood. They also had to lessen the amount of liquid that came out of Spidey's mouth.
"It's not exactly like they were breaking down on my door to have me in this movie," Dafoe said in an E! Entertainment Special included in the bonus features disc of "Spider-Man."
"It was something that I actually lobbied for," he added.
On a commentary track with Dunst, producer Laura Ziskin said that Maguire uttered lines like "shazam!" and "up, up, and way," with "much encouragement" from Raimi.
"Tobey can be so funny," Dunst added. "He's really funny. He's really a great Peter Parker in this film."
Lee had the line, "How about these? They wore 'em in the X-Men," but the scene was scrapped. Instead, he played a scared civilian who narrowly evaded getting hit by falling debris from Green Goblin's attack.