From Flower Vase to Film Emperor in Hollywood

Logically speaking, villains also need to be subdued, which is a characteristic of superhero comics.

Despite people constantly complaining about Superman's tights, they also have to admit that Superman's look is deeply rooted in people's hearts. Even after "Man of Steel" redesigned the suit, the traditional underwear-outside look is still deeply imprinted in popular culture, so much so that superhero costumes have become a crucial part.

However, not everyone is suitable for tights.

Alfred's figure is not suitable. Not only is he pear-shaped, but his five-to-five body proportion looks particularly strange in tights.

In the end, Doctor Octopus's look didn't include special tights. Instead, the film crew's styling team designed a trench coat for him, using long lines to conceal his soft, chubby, and loose figure, which still managed to present the villain's demeanor.

At least, from a plot perspective, Doctor Octopus's mutation was an accident, and he himself didn't plan to become an evil villain, so he didn't prepare and didn't need to prepare a special tights costume.

Alfred, with a simple and honest face, raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, "Thank God, otherwise, I don't know if I could work happily; but I can say with one hundred percent certainty that you probably couldn't."

The laughter became even more cheerful.

James, that活宝, immediately covered his eyes with his hands, shouting loudly like Phoebe from "Friends", "My eyes, my eyes?"

Anson nodded crisply, "No problem."

Work started again.

In the New Jersey studio, the "Spider-Man 2" crew was preparing to shoot the most exciting fight scene in the entire movie, carefully designed by Sam Raimi:

The train fight.

Generally speaking, the grand finale of the third act of a movie is the climax. "Spider-Man 2" also needs to conceive such a scene, but at the same time, it needs to be slightly different from the previous work, presenting a different style and texture.

As it stands, Hollywood genre film sequels still have their own "constraints." Sequels must be more grand and larger in scale, so superhero movies often involve saving the city in the first movie, saving the Earth in the second, and saving the universe in the third, until the story can no longer be written.

Sony Columbia naturally expects the same; sequel movies should go even further.

But Sam's opinion was slightly different.

The special thing about "Spider-Man" is that he is a city hero with a deep New York imprint and the image of a friendly neighborhood. If the scale is simply continuously enlarged, then its own characteristics will be lost.

Therefore, after careful consideration, balancing Sony Columbia's ambition and the director's positioning, Sam decided that the grand finale would focus on visual effects, which is the big explosion popular in commercial genre films now, saving a potential urban destruction crisis, to satisfy the film company's obsession with large-scale scenes.

At the same time, Sam brought forward the close-quarters combat between the superhero and the villain, using fists and knives, as a warm-up for the ultimate battle, placing it on New York's most ordinary city train, designing a peak duel between two people.

In Sam's view, those explosions, those gunfights, those high-tech confrontations are indeed dazzling and wonderful, but they are always cold, lacking a sense of reality and a taste of blood. After all, they can't stir up emotions. Perhaps a round of indiscriminate bombing can pin the audience to their seats, but it can't make the audience's blood boil like close combat.

At least, this is Sam's insistence. The horror movie director still can't give up his love for blood.

For this reason, Sam was particularly excited. He not only designed the entire story framework but also designed the storyboards and many details of the fight confrontation.

It's no exaggeration to say that this is Sam's greatest motivation for making the sequel.

For him, this is the real climax.

It was precisely because of this that Sam decided to complete the filming of this scene early, not long after the start of filming, when the actors and crew were still full of creative energy, before the crew was devastated and tortured by the long filming process, focusing their energy on completing this core climax scene of the sequel movie.

So, ten days after the start of filming, the crew arrived at the New Jersey studio to shoot the second-to-last key plot of the movie—

This is the movie.

In this plot, Doctor Octopus, who has gone mad, needs to obtain tritium from the group company controlled by Harry in order to continue his research; Harry requires Doctor Octopus to bring Spider-Man in exchange.

Because he couldn't find Spider-Man's whereabouts, Peter, who had been taking pictures of Spider-Man, became the target. Doctor Octopus kidnapped Mary Jane, who was about to confess to Peter, demanding that Peter summon Spider-Man to complete the exchange.

So, Spider-Man appeared.

Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus engaged in a fight, from the skyscrapers of New York all the way to the high-speed train, and involved the ordinary people in the train cars.

Doctor Octopus, consumed by anger, recklessly used ordinary passengers as weapons to attack, but Spider-Man couldn't stand by and watch, which put him in a dilemma.

The filming of this scene was undoubtedly difficult. From the virtual to the real, from the real to the virtual, mixing reality and illusion, breaking boundaries. It required real martial arts actions, as well as a lot of computer special effects; it required the actors to go into action personally, as well as the professionalism of the stunt actors. The difficulty was off the charts.

In the movie, Doctor Octopus has a total of four mechanical arms, fixed on his back. This three-headed, six-armed appearance put Spider-Man at a disadvantage in the confrontation.

In the actual filming, it was clear that the crew had no way to create four flexible and powerful mechanical arms; at the same time, they had no way to completely rely on computer special effects to complete the post-production work, because the mechanical arms needed to come into contact with Spider-Man, control and even attack him. It was difficult for the actors to complete the performance by imagining in the air without any contact—

Although Anson said, "I can try to see, but I don't think I can deceive anyone."

Moreover, in Hollywood in 2003, computer special effects had been fully developed, possessing the ability to create realistic images on the big screen, but they were still not fully mature and still had room for continued growth and exploration.

Ten years later, looking back at the special effects of "Spider-Man 2", you can clearly see the joints and details, and the overall plastic feel lingers, with a clear gap compared to those truly superb computer special effects later.

In other words, current computer special effects are still unable to create images out of thin air 100% and bring the audience a perfect viewing experience.

Therefore, how to combine the virtual and the real to complete the filming, and perfectly combine on-site filming and computer special effects, has also become a test for the film production industry.