Peter Parker faces a multitude of villains from across the Multiverse after he asks Doctor Strange to cast a spell to make the world forget who he really is. But when the spell goes wrong, the Multiverse is laid open, allowing villains from other universes through to menace our hero. When two other Spider-Men also arrive, Peter finds himself at the center of an epic adventure like nothing he has ever experienced before.
Titan Comics upcoming Spider-Man No Way Home: The Official Movie Special is a deluxe collector’s volume that features interviews with Tom Holland (Spider-Man/Peter Parker), Zendaya (MJ), Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Strange), and returning Spider-Men Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. It also includes behind-the-scenes interviews with the teams responsible for the movie’s stunts, costumes, and ground-breaking visual effects.
The kind folks over at Titan were kind enough to send over an exclusive tidbit from the book to share with you. The excerpt, which you can find below, is from a discussion with Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, the two writers of the film.
Spider-Man No Way Home: The Official Movie Special will be released on February 14th and is now availabe for pre-order through Amazon.com!
The film sees Peter Parker face his biggest challenge yet, doesn’t it?
CHRIS McKENNA: He’s a hopeful, optimistic character. That’s what’s great about Peter. No matt er how badly things go, he really hopes that he can pull it off... But, really, that optimism is sort of shining through. He does think that he can somehow get through this and weather this storm. And, well, he might be wrong!
ERIK SOMMERS: One of the biggest challenges always for Spider Man has been juggling his duties as Spider-Man and his life as Peter Parker, which is a secret life. The people don’t know he’s Spider-Man. Trying to keep that separate and secret, trying to keep those people safe – that’s something that’s been dealt with in the universe of Spider-Man since the beginning. But with this movie we get to start in a place where that has all been completely upended. Now everybody knows. Half the world thinks he’s guilty of some crime, and he has to deal with the same problems he’s always had but in this much more heightened and chaotic environment.
CHRIS McKENNA: When we ended the last movie we were like, “Wow, we really blew things up. How are the next writers gonna get out of that jam?” And kno where we are.
ERIK SOMMERS: Yeah, we did this to ourselves.
Is it difficult to stay true to the spirit of Spider-Man’s history while delivering new twists on the formula?
ERIK SOMMERS: It’s always a huge challenge to take something from the source material – and there’s years and years, decades and decades of it – and bring it to the screen, and try to make it fresh and interesting while also honoring what that source material was. And so with every character, with every storyline, we’re all talking about it and really being deliberative about satisfying the fans but also giving them a slightly new twist on the thing that they’ve seen before or in the comics that are so beloved. It’s just a case-by-case basis. How are we going to do it with this character? How would we do it with this story?
CHRIS McKENNA: Jon Watts, the director, always says it’s the ground level of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, just be true to that. Peter’s always going to have homework. He’s always going to have problems with the kids in his class. And he’s always going to have relatable teenage problems on top of his Spider-Man problems, but always doing it in a way that feels like he’s struggling to just sort of make his way in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's a struggle for him be cause every time he gets a taste of a little bit of victory, he gets knocked back down.
ERIK SOMMERS: The nice thing about working with the folks at Marvel Studios is that they’re all fans. They all enjoy the source material. And everyone working on this project from Amy [Pascal] to Jon to us, are fans. We all cherish the source material. And we’re all willing to look at those characters in a new light and say, “What are we going to do with this?” And, “Oh, the fans would like that.” Why? Because , well, that sounds neat to us. We would love to see that. Hopefully, the fans would like to see that. And so we just take it from there. In this movie we had an opportunity to have Peter teamed up with Doctor Strange in a way that we’d never done before. And so we got to look at the source material. “Oh, what are some cool stories where they first met? What’s the first time they worked together 50 years ago or whatever in that comic? And what would that look like now?” That was really fun.
You can read the full interview, plus interviews with Tom Holland, Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and the teams responsible for the movie’s stunts, costumes, and groundbreaking visual effects, in Spider-Man No Way Home: The Official Movie Special when it lands on store shelves next week, February 14th! You can support the site and pre-order it from Amazon.com by clicking here!