Russo Brothers Interview on Realistic Spider-Man
The above video is a great interview from the folks over at ComicBook.com! In it, they interview the tremendously talented Russo Brothers who made their mark with Winter Soldier and are currently helming Civil War and Infinity War. It is great to see that they still have time to sit down and answer a few questions and this time specifically focused on the new Spider-Man and other new additions to the MCU. If you don’t have time to watch the interview, some of the key points are listed below!
So how are they are going to ground Spider-Man, make him fit within the context of the greater Marvel Universe? “We had thought back to the things that excited us about him as a character when we were younger, and one of the most important components of that was that he’s a high schooler burdened with incredible powers and responsibility/ That really differentiates him from every other character in the Marvel universe as opposed to other superheroes. For us, it was extremely important that we cast somebody very close to the age of a high school student. The previous films had adults playing a high schooler. We wanted more of an authenticity to the casting. We were very specific about that. We wanted an energy and charisma from the character, an energy, but also an insecurity that would make him fun to watch in contrast to the confident superheroes.”
“It was also important to us that the actor that was cast feel contemporary because the other films that portrayed where he lived is more… they honored the comic books in terms of the choices. But you go look at the home that Tobey Maguire lived in in Raimi’s Spider-Man was… those were very expensive homes. We wanted to relate it to the reality. A character growing up with his aunt in New York, a single income family… Where would they live? What would that look like? Where could they afford to live? We asked ourselves all those questions. We try to take a very logical and realistic and naturalistic approach to the character.” A realistic Spider-Man, eh? This should prove to be interesting!
Anthony Russo continued, “We’re bringing Spider-Man into the movie in that universe, now, in that specific tonal stylistic world. I think underscoring everything Joe was saying about your question in terms of how were we thinking about the character in relation to past interpretations of the character, part of our choices were all so colored by the specifics of the world what we were playing in with these two Captain America movies, meaning Winter Soldier and Civil War. It’s a very specific tonal world. It’s a little more grounded and a little more hard-core contemporary. That was also coloring our choices a lot about the character on Spider-Man.”
“We’re not trying to denigrate other interpretations of Spider-Man/ Raimi’s movies are fantastic. Spider-Man one and two are amazing. Two, is one of if not my favorite comic book movie of all time. But he made a very strong choice with those movies from a color palate standpoint to a costume standpoint, execution standpoint, camerawork standpoint to honor the feeling of the comic book. We’re trying to honor the feeling of naturalism and to honor the feeling of reality. The harder we can pull these characters into reality, the better for us, especially because we’re all so connected now through social media, the Internet. We’re all so dialed in to what’s happening in current events. That it’s important for us that these characters live in the world that we live in because it makes them more real and it makes our experience of watching them more passionate and more well-rounded.”