Amazing Spider-Man (2012): Marc Webb Explains Mechanical Web-Shooters

When the first promo image for the Amazing Spider-Man movie hit, all the attention focused on the fact that Andrew Garfield was sporting mechanic web-shooters, and not the biological-based versions from the Sam Raimi movies that starred Tobey Maguire.

Now, the director on Amazing, Marc Webb, gives us some insights as to why he chose to go the route of having the shooters man-made, instead of spider-man-made.

 ”I had a meeting with Stan Lee and we talked about the web-shooters,” Webb told the LA Times Hero Complex. “I was curious about the incarnation of them [because] of course in the previous films [they went away from them] and we wanted to reestablish ourselves. That was one thing but the other thing was the fact that the web-shooters were able to dramatize Peter’s intellect and I thought that was really cool. … It was in the comics and we have a different design but it’s a cool element to have. It’s not something we over-use or over-exploit. To me, it’s something I remember from when I was a kid and thinking ‘It would be cool if I could build those.’”

Webb continues mentioning how the new mechanical web-shooters and the costume design go hand in hand, as both are created by Peter Parker.

“We paid attention to the question of ‘How would a kid make it?’ And obviously we took some license with it. We also wanted a design that would make the body longer and more lithe, more of an acrobat, someone incredibly agile, and the legs of the spider [symbol on the chest] were something we used to emphasize that. We made a bunch of different suits for different lighting conditions. I wanted something that worked in the night a little better. We paid attention to that and also made the webbing [on the costume] a little bit darker.  With the costume and the web-shooters we wanted to emphasize that these are things that Peter Parker made and that he is special himself even if he feels like he’s an outsider.”

The Amazing Spider-Man swings into theaters July 3rd, in 3-D and is directed by Marc Webb starring Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker/Spider-Man, Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy, Rhys Ifans as Dr. Curt Connors/The Lizard, Irrfan Khan as Nels Van Adder, Martin Sheen as Ben Parker, Denis Leary as Captain George Stacy, Sally Field as May Parker and C. Thomas Howell as Ray Cooper.

Head on over to the Cosmic Book News Amazing Spider-Man Movie Hub for more news, images and trailers.