The newly released MCU film Spider-Man: No Way Home has no shortage of exciting characters. Aside from appearances by those familiar to MCU fans, such as Doctor Strange, the film also features familiar faces from outside continuities. In particular, both Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield show up as their respective versions of Spider-Man, and their respective villains arrive as well. This includes the Green Goblin, Doc Ock, Electro, Sandman, and The Lizard. And while Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina, and Jamie Foxx returned to play their respective villains – things were a little different when it came to Sandman and The Lizard.
In fact, visual effects supervisor Kelly Port confirmed that actor Thomas Hayden Church didn’t even step on set for Spider-Man: No Way Home.
This was revealed by Kelly Port in an interview with Befores & Afters, where they explained the process for actor Thomas Hayden Church’s role in Spider-Man: No Way Home.
“There were two parts to him, where he’s more humanoid and talking, and when he is in the sanctum. Digital Domain did a lot of that work. And then Luma did the sequence that we called the power line corridor, which is where Sandman is first introduced. And Electro is also introduced and they have that little battle before they all meet and then get sent to the sanctum. I have to say, if you’re able to see that in extended dynamic range, for both that sequence and the end battle, it really looks cool in that higher dynamic range. That electricity just pops.”
Kelly Port also explained how different visual effects companies were brought in for the larger effects sequences:
“Then Imageworks, for the end battle, they did the much bigger Sandman with big FX sims. There were a lot of big sims in the end battle, not only with Sandman, but for the shield falling and crashing through all the scaffolding and millions and millions of pieces all interacting with each other, the crane falling through Sandman’s head and all that good stuff. I remember when we were first interviewing companies, there’s a little bit of collective post-traumatic stress disorder with anyone who had previously worked on Sandman. And so I knew that going in, I had a feeling this was going to be challenging both technically and creatively, just to get that character looking right and behaving right. But I think we were successful in the end. I think it looked pretty cool.”
Specifically, then, Kelly Port confirmed they only used Thomas Hayden Church’s voice as far as new material from the actor was concerned.
“Well, we had his voice. We weren’t able to get a lot of visuals on him, but we were able to get his voice for sure and we got scans and textures and things like that.”
This was perhaps already a given considering that some fans noticed the human footage of Sandman and The Lizard were taken directly from their respective films. Nevertheless, it’s interesting to hear a more in-depth explanation of the process. Unfortunately, we still don’t know why exactly they chose that route with the characters. Hopefully we’ll have more info in the near future.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe film Spider-Man: No Way Home is currently playing in theaters.