Marvel and Sony have revealed how and where Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's Spider-Men were cut from trailers for Garfield in particular denied it, viewers were convinced their return was guaranteed - and they could even point to the trailers as evidence.
Sony has always had a reputation for giving away too much in the trailers, but in this case, the studio wisely decided to hold things back. They knew how excited viewers were about the possibility of seeing the three Spider-Men side-by-side, but rather than confirm this they instead refused to comment - letting speculation build up online instead. It's not that there weren't plenty of clues, though; the trailers deliberately included shots where there was space for another Spider-Man or two, even one where the Lizard suffered an invisible punch, and these details were swiftly picked up by attentive viewers. The marketing strategy was absolutely genius, although granted it's amusing that even pre-release posters have avoided showing Garfield and Maguire. But how did Sony pull this off?
The Spider-Man: No Way Home trailers were actually pretty deceptive. The majority of shots in the first trailer are from the film's first and second act, setting up the main idea - that Doctor Strange's spell has broken the multiverse due to interference from Tom Holland's Spider-Man, and that the two heroes will wind up clashing. It wasn't until the second trailer that Sony began to really tease the scale of the third act, but even then the focus was on the multiverse breaking apart, and the majority of shots chosen focused on Holland. They were helped by the narrative structure of Spider-Man: No Way Home, and by the flow of specific story-beats; Holland's Spider-Man initially tries to save MJ from her fall but is blasted away, allowing Garfield to swing in and save the day, but the second trailer only focused on the first part of that sequence. But, in some cases, the trailers showed shots where - in the final theatrical cut - Holland was actually stood alongside two other Spider-Men.
The Spider-Men Strike A Pose: How Maguire & Garfield Were Cut From The Statue Of Liberty
The most interesting of these shots showed Tom Holland's Spider-Man standing on top of the Statue of Liberty. In Spider-Man: No Way Home's final theatrical cut, it's an epic moment with all three Spider-Men side-by-side, but in the trailers Holland is alone and the camera is focused a little more tightly on him to make it work. In an interview with three Spider-Men were created by an animation team who based their models on motion-capture as much as possible, but then extrapolated upon the mo-cap shots to make them meet the filmmakers' performance needs. The three Spider-Men in this shot are essentially digital doubles, and thus the edit was probably quite easy to make; the visual effects team simply deleted two of the models in that shot and sent a copy over to the studio. The tighter focus attempted to conceal the deception, but not too effectively; after all, Sony wanted there to be intense speculation, so they wanted it to be spotted.
How Spider-Men Were Cut From No Way Home's Third Act Battle
The most famous fake footage found its way on to mainstream news coverage because it was so believably done.
In reality, this modification was probably quite easy to make - simply because the whole shot was a digital one, and each character is a separate model. Sandman's model is particularly complex given his body is composed of so many different grains of sand. He's more like a physical sandstorm than a human being at this moment, with material being drawn into his body from his surroundings to structure him, creating a remarkably distinctive appearance. Compared to Sandman, the models for the three Spider-Men are actually pretty simply - and it wasn't difficult for the visual effects team to cut them. "As filmmakers we are often asked to deliver WIPs and other various media to the marketing teams. We pretty much give them what they’re requesting but we don’t see the final assembly until it’s released mainstream," Waegner observed. It must have seemed like a strange request, but it served its purpose. "I know the internet went crazy and there were many rumors about it," he added.
The Lizard jump and punch in this shot is actually pretty telling, because it confirms exactly how the shot was done. CGI modelers would have put in both the relevant Spider-Man and the Lizard, with the models interacting so they could effectively simulate the impact and figure out how the Lizard's body responded to the blow. That detail confirms the visual effects team actively went into the shot and deleted Spider-Man models, then ed that copy on to the studio. Again, Sony no doubt didn't mind that their deception was self-evident; they wanted viewers to pick up on this, after all, and the approach paid off rather well. That Lizard punch was all the confirmation audiences really needed that the studio was keeping the truth about Spider-Man: No Way Home from them, and expectation built. Fortunately, it paid off - as the film's box office performance proves.
