Andrew Garfield portrays Spider-Man offscreen by surprising and entertaining kids.
One of the most amazing things a star can do is use his (or her) talents to entertain sick or underprivileged kids. In the months leading up to The Amazing Spider-Man 2, we saw Andrew Garfield wear the uniform in public possibly more than we saw him wear it in the entire first movie. We’d be naive if we didn’t think that a fair amount of Garfield’s outings weren’t planned media stunts. Yet, Garfield does them with such enthusiasm and pride that he makes our hearts melt.
However, our favorite Garfield Spider-Man story is that of his relationship with Batkid. After the Spider-Man/Batkid segment was cut from the Oscars, Garfield not only skipped the Oscars to accompany the boy to Disneyland but also invited the boy to the New York premiere of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Now, we may be wrong about this, but we don’t remember Tobey Maguire ever doing as much as Spider-Man as Garfield does.
Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker flexes his intelligence and is a believable nerd.
We’ll admit that, even though it’s not at all canon, we really liked and bought into the fact that Tobey Maguire’s spider bite caused him to form web shooters on his wrists. It makes sense to us. After all, he has all of these other abilities that spiders have, so why not web-creating abilities too? However, Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man really shows us how intelligent Peter Parker can be. It’s a classic case of “show, don’t tell,” really. We’re repeatedly told in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man franchise that Peter Parker is smart. Yet, we don’t have much visual evidence or physical application of his brainpower. Maguire ends up portraying (and looking like) more of a geek than a nerd. In fact, we kind of think he looks like someone who’s trying too hard to look like a nerd.
Garfield, on the other hand, plays more of a sassy intellectual. He builds his own web shooters. He attends Midtown Science High School. He understands and utilizes the information in his father’s research which is definitely not high school reading material, for heaven’s sake. With Garfield’s Spider-Man, we get both brains and brawn. Plus, in our opinion, Garfield looks the part of a smarty pants much more than Maguire. In The Amazing Spider-Man, Garfield’s Parker always looks like he was up late reading or researching and didn’t really care about making himself look put-together for school. Case in point: That hair.
Garfield’s build is better-suited for the character.
Not that Maguire could do anything about it, his build was simply a bit shorter and less agile than what the Spider-Man character deserves. No, film adaptations of comic books, novels, or other mediums do not have to be entirely faithful to their source material (see: Movie Tris not being blonde). We’re totally open-minded about these things. However, in comparison, Garfield’s body matches comic book Spider-Man’s a lot better. For a guy who’s trying to be as aerodynamic as possible while he’s flying through the air, a taller, more streamlined body would definitely be helpful (or so we’d imagine). Andrew Garfield just does a better job of filling out the uniform.
He doesn’t make the worst faces imaginable while acting.
Unlike some of our points, this is definitely something that Maguire could have helped. His facial expressions were forced at best. At worst? Well we’d rather not say. But what we will say is that there have been quite a few memes inspired by them and none of them are pleasant to look at (even for short amounts of time). Honestly, we don’t even understand how some of them could even be possible without being forced. Needless to say, we feel that Garfield has much more control over his facial expressions while acting. None of his faces ever look out of place or strange within the context of scenes. Plus, we’ve never seen collections of memes dedicated to photos of his acting expressions. So there’s that.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 hits theaters tomorrow (or tonight, depending on where you live and how your movie theaters work), so be prepared for more Andrew Garfield Spider-Man awesomeness!
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