Spider-Man: NWH was the biggest movie of 2021, and nobody can say otherwise. The movie united three generations of Spider-Men, their villains, and their fans. The movie gave us some of the best scenes that fans never imagined in their wildest dreams. And one of them was the ‘Bridge scene’. It saw 2004’s Spider-Man 2’s Doc Ock going against Peter One but little did anyone know, the original scene featured someone else taking on the Spidey, too. And it was none other than Green Goblin. But, as we all know the editors scrapped that footage and we believe it was a good thing. Keep up to find out why we have a deleted Green Goblin bridge fight!
Spider-Man: No Way Home teased fans for almost half a year with little tidbits and featurettes. And the moment the Studios released the trailer, the internet went berserk! While both the trailers gave us an idea of the plot, they were too focused on the scenes from the Bridge sequence. And after seeing the movie myself, I am glad that the editors kept most of the scenes from the movie for the theatrical cut! But that’s not all that they were keeping in their pockets! Turns out, the original scene featured Peter One taking on, not one, but two major Spider-Man villains. But they cut the whole sequence with Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin and instead made Peter escape the frame right after he got the first look at the villain.
To understand why they did what they did, have a look at the concept sequence first.
THE DELETED GREEN GOBLIN BRIDGE FIGHT SEQUENCE
Now that it has been three months since the theatrical release of the Spider-Man: NWH, many crew members have been doing interviews with media companies to talk more about the cinematic masterpiece that was NWH. In one of those interviews, attended by NWH’s Visual Effects Supervisor, Kelly Port, he talked about the award-winning Visual Effects of the movie and revealed the Green Goblin bridge sequence. The sequence was more of a pre-vis, so if you were dreaming of the complete shot scene, I am sorry. Check out the pre-viz at about the 23:00 mark of his interview in this video.
The scene starts roughly a couple of seconds ago when Doctor Strange portalled Peter One and Doc Ock in the Sanctum Sanctorum. We can see that after calling out to Spider-Man, Green Goblin advances towards him on his glider. But Spider-Man dodges the attack and uses his web to attack him from behind.
He detaches the Goblin from his Glider and sends him flying into the scaffolding holding the signs on the bridge. But this was not enough as he uses the webs again to hurl him towards Doc Ock. So, in this sequence, it took more time for Peter to hack into Doc’s system than in the theatrical cut.
Then the sequence ended with Green Goblin facefirst onto the floor. It might be short but you have to understand that this was just a pre-viz and the original shot would have been much longer and better!
WHY DO WE THINK THE EDITORS FELT THE NEED TO DELETE THIS SCENE?
Jon Watts and crew have stated multiple times that NWH’s original villain has and always been Green Goblin. With this in mind, if viewers had seen Spider-Man kick the Goblin’s green butt within seconds of his entry, it would have been a catastrophe. Now, you should know that webheads have been waiting for 20 years for Willem Dafoe to reprise his role as the Green Goblin. And to see him enter the MCU just to get beaten would have trashed the big finale.
But this is not the only reason! For a long time, before the release of the movie, many people were joking about the bridge scene. And it wasn’t completely wrong too. In the first few looks of the movie, all Marvel revealed was the bridge scene. It was in pieces and tidbits but they were focussed on a single sequence. Eventually, fans started joking that the entirety of the movie will be shot on the bridge. When the movie came out, we were relieved that this was not the case. The scene seemed correctly-timed and well-choreographed. However, if they had included the Goblin fight scene, the scene might have looked stretched & inappropriate.
So hats off to the crew members who knew just what to include and what to discard.
Spider-Man: NWH is currently available for digital purchase, so go ahead and buy it to watch the movie in 4K.
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