2021 was Marvel’s year at the box office. With the release of four movies in the span of ten months, Marvel films accounted for 30% of the total box office revenue brought in by all films released in 2021, an alarming statistic that shows Marvel’s power in the movie industry. Marvel’s latest release of Spider-Man: No Way Home, in particular, caught most of the attention among their fanbase.
The movie was released on December 16th, 2021 and performed exceedingly well at the box office. Despite the fact that it was released during a pandemic, it became the third most grossing film of all time, behind Avengers: Endgame and James Cameron’s Avatar. The movie itself was a rollercoaster from start to finish, with Peter’s identity being revealed to the public and nearly five villains making their entrance towards the middle and end of the movie.
Famous critic companies gave the movie remarkably high ratings, with Rotten Tomatoes giving a score of 93 and audience score of 98 and IMDB giving an 8.7. The film was met with approval and praise, to say the least, and it has proven that Marvel is far from finished with the MCU legacy.
Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s appearance in the movie made for a nostalgic experience for viewers all around the world. Several months prior to the movie’s release, there was already speculation of the actors making a return to the Marvel screen; however, nothing was concretely confirmed up until the release.
An image leak showing Garfield wearing the Spiderman suit, drew fans’ attention. In multiple interviews, Garfield was directly interrogated over this leaked image where he claimed that it was photoshopped. Even after his response, the Marvel audience was still sure that he was going to make an appearance.
The original idea of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield being in the movie all stems from an Instagram post. The post was a picture of three spidermen all looking up at the face of Electro, played by Jamie Foxx. Foxx appeared most notably in the series which centered around Tobey Maguire. Minutes after the upload, Foxx immediately took it down and the Marvel audience went into turmoil over this unique idea.
Another leak came when a Sony employee accidentally leaked the entire movie soundtrack publicly. However, this was taken care of fairly quickly so very few people were able to get hold of the playlist. The few people that did get ahold of it, however, leaked the music to Twitter where Marvel fans were able to hear the themes of the Maguire and Garfield Spider-Man films. Even then, the thematic music was very faint, so the speculation did not exactly confirm the actors’ role in the movie with Tom Holland.
Regardless of these leaks, they only added to the hype surrounding the film, generating more than a billion dollars within the first couple of weeks of the release. Having Tobey as Tom’s mentor and Andrew as the comedic relief made for an awkward yet enjoyable chemistry among the characters. Each of the characters exhibited the shy, genius personality traits of Peter Parker in their own unique way.
Because this third Spider-Man movie performed so well at the box office, Andrew’s and Tobey’s characters aren’t finished just yet. It was leaked that Sony has more plans with Andrew Garfield and they want to give him another chance to play the role with better directing and dialogue, aspects that they failed to deliver on with the two movies already published.
