Why Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man Failed, and Why Garfield Was Never the Reason

Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man movies failed because of the movies around him, not because of Garfield. Sony rebooted the character too soon, retold an origin audiences already knew, kept changing the series' identity, and rushed into a cinematic universe before this Spider-Man had been properly established.

When Garfield returned as Spider-Man in No Way Home, audiences absolutely loved him. After years of being treated as the black sheep of the franchise, sandwiched between Tobey Maguire and Tom Holland, he suddenly reminded everyone why so many people liked him in the first place. He was funny and emotional, he had incredible chemistry with the other Spider-Men, and his redemption when he saved MJ became one of the biggest crowd pleasing moments in the entire movie. That raises an obvious question: if Andrew Garfield was a great Spider-Man, why did his movies fail?

When Sony rebooted the character with The Amazing Spider-Man in 2012, it wasn't just making another Spider-Man movie. It was trying to launch a new version of the franchise that could expand into sequels, spinoffs and an entire cinematic universe. Just two movies later, the whole thing fell apart. Garfield was gone, the planned sequels and Sinister Six movie disappeared, and Sony eventually turned to Marvel to reboot Spider-Man all over again.

Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movies were an incredibly difficult act to follow

After the enormous success of the first two Spider-Man movies, Spider-Man 3 was widely considered a disappointment. Even director Sam Raimi was unhappy with how it turned out, and he wanted to make Spider-Man 4 partly as an opportunity to redeem himself and end the series on a high note. The problem was that Raimi couldn't find a story he was happy with. The movie went through several writers and different versions, while Sony was determined to have it in theaters by 2011.

Eventually Raimi realised he couldn't get the script where he wanted it in time and walked away. Sony scrapped the entire series and started over, announcing a new Spider-Man movie with a new cast and a new director, the aptly named Marc Webb. That was always going to be a difficult act to follow, because Raimi's Spider-Man movies were "absolutely dripping with personality."

Raimi brought the same exaggerated camera moves, strange angles and horror influences that had defined his earlier films. The birth of Doctor Octopus is probably the clearest example. What could have been a straightforward hospital scene becomes a full blown horror sequence, with mechanical tentacles tearing through doctors and nurses, shot like something out of The Evil Dead. The shadows of the tentacles crawl across the walls, the camera whips around the room, and quick cuts, extreme close ups and exaggerated reaction shots make the sequence feel violent, chaotic and genuinely frightening.

That visual identity extended to the production design too, with Spider-Man 2 in particular looking as if it was made in 1970s New York and Spider-Man just happens to show up. Danny Elfman's instantly recognisable score gave the movies a musical identity just as distinctive as their visual one.

Marc Webb's flatter direction made The Amazing Spider-Man feel conventional

By comparison, Webb's direction feels much flatter. There are obvious exceptions, especially when Spider-Man is actually swinging through New York, or the one shot library fight with the Lizard in the first film. But much of Webb's work is shot in a far more conventional way, and it often lacks the heightened visual imagination that made Raimi's films feel like comic books brought to life. Webb's movies "almost look like expensive made for TV movies."

The first Webb film also repeats many of the same beats as Raimi's first film, giving us nearly the same origin story we had already seen, but in a much less iconic way. In Raimi's Spider-Man, Peter has just fought Bonesaw in a wrestling ring, discovered what his powers can do, and then selfishly allowed a robber to escape. Minutes later he stumbles onto Uncle Ben dying in the street, realises the killer is the man he could have stopped, and, consumed by rage, uses his powers to chase him for the first time, nervous as he swings off a building.

As an audience member, you go through tons of emotions during that sequence, and it is incredibly memorable. It ties Peter discovering his abilities directly to the moment that teaches him what those abilities are actually for. The Amazing Spider-Man gives us essentially the same emotional turning point in a much more subdued and conventional way. Peter argues with a convenience store clerk, lets a thief escape, and later finds Uncle Ben lying in the street after being shot. The basic idea is still there, but the sequence never has the same momentum or sense of tragedy.

That became one of the biggest problems facing the reboot from the very beginning. It wasn't just asking audiences to watch Spider-Man's origin story again. It was asking them to watch a less distinctive version of moments they already loved and remembered incredibly well.

The Amazing Spider-Man worked hard to separate itself from Raimi

To Webb's credit, The Amazing Spider-Man does make a clear effort to stand apart from Raimi's films. Garfield's Peter Parker is less of a traditional nerd and more of a withdrawn outsider. Mary Jane is replaced by Gwen Stacy. Peter builds mechanical web shooters instead of producing webs organically, and the suit has a much more homemade look.

The film also keeps the characters in high school for the entire movie, in contrast to the Raimi films, which had them graduate partway through. The first film's composer gives it a completely new score and musical identity. So while it was retelling an origin audiences already knew, it was at least trying to establish a different version of Spider-Man with its own look, sound and supporting characters.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 abandoned what made the reboot distinct

By the time The Amazing Spider-Man 2 arrived, many of those creative choices had been abandoned. The suit is completely redesigned to look closer to the Raimi suit audiences loved. The darker visual style of the first film becomes significantly brighter and more colourful. Peter graduates high school almost immediately, dropping one of the clearest ways this version had distinguished itself.

The composer doesn't even return for the sequel. He's replaced by Hans Zimmer, which means that after just one movie, Spider-Man doesn't have the same musical theme anymore. None of these changes are necessarily bad on their own, but it is difficult to course correct that many creative choices after one movie and still expect the series to feel consistent.

Audiences need time to fall in love with a particular version of Spider-Man. That becomes a lot harder when the second film is already changing so much of what defined the first, muddying the series' identity.

The mystery of Peter's parents was one few people wanted solved

Another problem with The Amazing Spider-Man movies is how much importance they place on the mystery of Peter's parents. The first movie opens with Richard and Mary Parker suddenly leaving Peter with Aunt May and Uncle Ben before disappearing. Much of the story revolves around Peter trying to work out what happened to them, what his father was working on at Oscorp, and why they left him behind.

This was another way of separating the new movies from Raimi's trilogy. Peter's parents barely mattered in those films, so The Amazing Spider-Man could explore a part of his backstory audiences hadn't really seen. However, very few people walked out of Raimi's trilogy wondering what really happened to Peter Parker's parents.

The problem with Webb's series is that we barely know Peter's parents, and what little we see isn't particularly interesting. Richard Parker is written as a bland scientist with very little personality, and Campbell Scott plays him so quietly and flatly that there is almost nothing memorable about the character. While the movies keep treating the disappearance like an enormous mystery, audiences were being asked to care about the fate of two people the films had given them almost no reason to care about.

The Parker DNA twist turned Peter into a chosen one

The second movie doubles down. Peter discovers a hidden subway station containing his father's secret laboratory, where Richard left behind a message explaining that Norman Osborn wanted to weaponise their research and that the genetically engineered spiders had been encoded with Richard's own DNA. As a result, the spiders would only properly work with someone from the Parker bloodline, directly connecting Peter's powers to his father.

So instead of Peter being an ordinary kid who happened to be bitten by a genetically engineered spider, the movie makes him essentially the only person who could have become Spider-Man. That arguably weakens one of the most important things about the character. Peter was never supposed to be special before he got his powers. He was an ordinary kid given extraordinary abilities who then had to learn to use them responsibly. By making his powers something only he could have received, The Amazing Spider-Man turns him slightly into a chosen one.

Amazingly, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 originally went further. In a deleted scene, Peter visits Gwen's grave when Richard Parker suddenly appears alive, despite the movie opening with the plane crash that supposedly killed him. Peter then has an emotional reunion with the father he has spent two movies trying to understand. The entire scene was cut from the finished movie, leaving this huge ongoing storyline with even less payoff than the filmmakers had intended.

Sony built a cinematic universe before Garfield's Spider-Man was established

Before the second movie had even been released, Sony announced plans for The Amazing Spider-Man 3, Venom and a Sinister Six movie, assembling what the studio literally described as a "franchise brain trust" to develop an interconnected series of Spider-Man films. The idea was essentially to do for Spider-Man what Marvel had done for the Avengers, except Sony only controlled Spider-Man and the characters around him.

The difference is that Marvel spent years introducing Iron Man, Captain America and Thor in their own movies before bringing them together in The Avengers. Sony was already planning Venom, the Sinister Six and more sequels before Garfield's Spider-Man had made it through a second movie. It was building outward before it had finished establishing what it already had, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ultimately feels less like a complete movie than the first episode of several other movies Sony hoped audiences would pay to see.

This is where the movie makes essentially the same mistakes Spider-Man 3 was criticised for, only on an even larger scale. Spider-Man 3 had too many villains because Raimi was trying to fit Harry and Venom among others into the same movie. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 does the same thing while also trying to launch an entire cinematic universe, so it barely has time to properly develop any of its new characters.

Harry Osborn got a trilogy's worth of story in one movie

The biggest example is Harry Osborn. Harry doesn't appear at all in the first movie, but when he suddenly shows up in the sequel, we're told he and Peter were childhood best friends who haven't seen each other in years. That means the movie has to establish their entire friendship from scratch while also introducing Harry's relationship with his father, his inherited disease, his takeover of Oscorp, his obsession with Spider-Man's blood, his falling out with Peter, and eventually his transformation into the Goblin.

By the end of the movie, Harry is responsible for Gwen Stacy's death. But Peter and Harry have spent so little time together that their friendship never carries the emotional weight the story needs. That is an entire trilogy's worth of Harry Osborn development compressed into one movie, especially compared with how the Raimi films stretched it over three and let it breathe.

Andrew Garfield was never really the reason his Spider-Man failed

That ultimately seems to be why Garfield's Spider-Man failed. Sony rebooted the character too soon, retold an origin audiences already knew, struggled to give the movies a consistent identity, devoted enormous amounts of time to storylines audiences weren't particularly invested in, and rushed into building a cinematic universe before this version of Spider-Man had been properly established.

The frustrating part is that there is clearly a good Spider-Man buried inside all of it. "Garfield was great in the suit." His chemistry with Emma Stone gave the movies a genuine emotional core, and some of the actual Spider-Man sequences are still among the best the character has ever had on screen. But the movies around him kept changing direction, overcomplicating his mythology, and setting up future stories instead of concentrating on the one they were telling.

That is why Garfield's return in No Way Home feels like such an appropriate ending. Seven years after his franchise collapsed, he came back without the baggage that had weighed those movies down, got a handful of strong character moments, finally found some closure over Gwen's death, and immediately reminded audiences why they had liked him in the first place. His Spider-Man movies failed, but in the end, Andrew Garfield was never really the reason why.

Which misstep do you think hurt The Amazing Spider-Man series most: the rushed reboot, the Parker parents mystery, or the race to build a cinematic universe?