Legendary stuntman Vic Armstrong spoke with the folks at Comic Book Movie to promote his new book The True Adventures of the World’s Greatest Stuntman, and in it he provides a very detailed description of the stunt work performed for The Amazing Spider-man. More details after the jump.

It looks like the behind the scenes magic-makers have switched gears on ol’ Spidey. As everyone who has seen the previous three Spider-man movie knows, when Spidey flies he turns into a weird inhuman CGI monster.

Those days are no more since Armstrong came on board to be the stunt coordinator for the web slinger’s next outing:

I did a shot a few weeks back, on Spider-Man, where we had to jump over a 20 foot gap between skyscrapers. He does a somersault in the air as he’s going over the 20 foot distance, lands in a somersault, gets up and runs off – we had an 8 inch pad and an Air Ram. We did the shots, and I asked the guy what he needed next, and he said just give me a clean path, take the pad out, take the Air Ram out, nothing left, and we shoot a path like that, and then they can replace where the pad was with the roof – it’s a fantastic bonus in that respect, but what I don’t like is movies that use it AS the movie. It becomes a cartoon. When the landscape and all the objects in the landscape are totally CG, I lose interest instantly – there’s no drama, there’s no jeopardy. It’s a terrible thing used too much, and overused.

In our opinion, the change was much needed and using real stunt-work makes the difference since anyone can tell between a good effect and an actual human being. In fact, Armstrong goes on to say just that:

We flew him up there – you can see, we put in 2 ½ Gs as he changes directions – and he shoots his web, and you see the body stretch out under the stress and then pull up, and bend his knees, and get momentum and kick off. There’s something very organic and real about it. Of course there’s going to be CG in it, you’re going to lead in with CG, he’s going to fire his web with CG, and there will be other bits and pieces, but the guts of it is a real man doing real movement.

For the full interview at ComicBookMovie.com, click here.