Andrew Garfield turns 43 today, August 20th, and I can't think of a stranger day for his birthday to land on.
Three weeks ago, Spider-Man: Brand New Day opened to the biggest weekend in box office history. $360 million domestic. Roughly $927 million worldwide in three days. It has since cleared $2 billion. Tom Holland's Spidey is officially the biggest thing on the planet.
And Garfield WASN'T in it!
Garfield's Peter Parker was too cool for my tastes. Peter is supposed to be a NERD. That's the entire character! The kid who gets shoved into lockers, who can't talk to girls, who builds web-shooters in his bedroom because he has nothing better to do on a Friday night. Garfield's version skateboarded. He had great hair. He was the guy Peter Parker would have feared in high school.
But his SPIDER-MAN? I loved him.
Once that mask went on, Garfield understood something a lot of people miss about the character. Spider-Man talks. He never stops talking. He's cracking jokes while getting thrown through a wall because a terrified kid is trying to keep himself from falling apart. It just happened to work for the movie's comic relief too… Garfield played the mask as armor, and I don't think anybody has done it better before or since. Holland's take in Spider-Man: Brand New Day gets close!
The films around him were a mess. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 doesn't really hold up. It was stuffed with setup for sequels that never came, and Sony's plans collapsed underneath it. But watch the scene where he catches Gwen. Watch what he does with his hands afterward. That's a great actor stranded in a bad film.
His run ended in 2014, and for seven years that was the end of the story.
Then December 2021 happened!
I don't need to describe the reaction Spider-Man: No Way Home got because you were probably in the theater seats with everyone else. When Garfield stepped through that portal, fans lost their minds in a way I've never experienced at a comic book movie. And what he did with those two hours was remarkable.
He played a man who had spent seven years carrying a failure that he couldn't fix, and then he caught the falling girl. He got his redemption on screen, in front of everyone, and he earned every second of it. I'm tearing up just writing about it! I won't even get into the reaction I had while WATCHING it on the big screen …
The best moments in that performance were his own inventions, too. We covered which beloved scene he improvised on the spot. He definitely wasn't phoning it in.
Which brings me back to today, and to the awkward thing sitting in the middle of this birthday.
When the Brand New Day marketing started rolling out, fans went frame by frame convinced Garfield had been edited out of a trailer. He addressed the speculation himself. The rumor mill has been just as busy about whether he and Tobey Maguire turn up again after Avengers: Secret Wars. Nothing has been confirmed, and nothing has been confirmed for years.
That's the position he's been in since 2021. Permanently rumored, never actually cast.
I think a Garfield return to the MCU is unlikely. The franchise has its Spider-Man, that Spider-Man just posted the biggest opening in the history of the medium, and there's no commercial reason on earth to complicate that.
Regardless, I hope we see him again anyway.
Not as a cameo, and not as a nostalgia fan bait for a trailer. No Way Home proved there's a version of this character with a real story left to share, played by an actor who clearly still loves him, and it seems like a waste to leave that on the shelf because the timing is inconvenient.
Garfield has moved on, and good for him! He was nominated for an Oscar for tick, tick... BOOM!, he's led prestige television, and he's got the Bourne director's The Uprising coming. He has a great career outside of Spider-Man.
That's what makes the idea appealing. If he ever comes back, it won't be because he needs the job.
Happy 43rd, Andrew. Your movies deserved better than they got, and your Spider-Man deserved better than both of them!
Was Garfield's Peter too cool to be Peter, or did he nail something the others didn't? Do you want him back after Secret Wars, or was No Way Home the perfect ending that shouldn't be touched?
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