The production team behind Spider-Man: No Way Home pulled out all the stops to make Spider-Man and Green Goblin's first one-on-one battle look and feel as vicious as possible.
A behind-the-scenes video from No Way Home's upcoming Blu-ray and 4K release detailed how the team constructed the battle as means of showing off each character's power level. "The fight in Happy's condo, we were all very excited about because I think our main baseline was just 'We're going to destroy this condo,'" fight coordinator Jackson Spidell noted. In between footage of Tom Holland and the stunt team performing web stunts, 2nd Unit director George Cottle explained why this fight was one of his favorites to shoot, since it clearly established the Goblin as physical threat to Spider-Man. As he explained, "the Green Goblin is super-strong, and he can take the abuse and the violence from Spidey, so that was a really interesting and exciting avenue for us to explore."
Though doubles were used occasionally in the video, Green Goblin actor Willem Dafoe participated in the majority of his stunts, having specifically demanded those terms when asked to reprise his role for No Way Home. This further contributed to their battle's "violent" vibe, which Spidell described as wanting "to make it as big as it could be, as well as really play that Willem is a demented, evil character." The crew also admitted to being terrified by Dafoe's performance while shooting the condo fight.
In Spider-Man: No Way Home, Dafoe's Norman Osborn and four other supervillains from past Spider-Man films are transported into the Marvel Cinematic Universe via a botched spell from Doctor Strange. After capturing all five, Peter attempts to cure the villains in hopes of preventing their future deaths, but the Goblin takes over Norman's body before he can fully accomplish that.
Dafoe first played Osborn/Green Goblin in Sam Raimi's original 2002 Spider-Man and, despite being killed off, cameoed in its sequels as a figment of his son Harry's mind. With No Way Home, both he and Tobey Maguire broke the Guinness World Record for "longest career as a live-action Marvel character," a title previously held by X-Men's Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart. Marvel's next film, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, will mark Raimi's official return to directing superhero films and address the fallout of Strange's spell on the multiverse's stability and his own life.
Spider-Man: No Way Home releases on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD April 12.
Source: ScreenRant, via YouTube