Spider-Man: Far From Home VFX Supervisor Details Sam Raimi's Influences

Ask many genre fans and they'll likely say Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy is made up of some of the best superhero movies to still hit theaters. The films have certainly stood the test of time, so it's totally understandable Marvel Studios and Sony would draw what inspiration that they could from the earliest trilogy featuring the web-slinging fan-favorite.

Earlier this week, we sat down with Industrial Light and Magic's Julian Foddy, the visual effects supervisor leading the team charged with finally introducing some Manhattan-based scenes into the on-screen life of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's version of Peter Parker (Tom Holland). To date, we've seen the character far away from the hustle and bustle of Midtown then suddenly he was swinging from skyscraper to skyscraper at the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home, certainly a trademark of the Raimi films.

"I think whereas in some of the previous trilogies, the big, quite outlandish camera moves following Spider-Man as he swings through buildings and under..." Foddy recounts. "We wanted to do something that felt a little more grounded, so we designed in the shots and the camera moves in a way that could have been shot for real."

Foddy tells us he and his team were on hand in New York City to help out making some practical shots feel as real as possible.

"All the takeoff and landing shots are all done practically," the VFX boss tells us. "So we actually had Tom Hollands and Zendaya onset in central Manhattan wearing wire rigs. They did the stunts themselves, they had all the harnesses. We set up a crane outside Grand Central Station, and we hoisted them up into the air. And then we had the crane again outside Madison Square Garden, and use the crane to bring them down to the ground."

"And then, of course, the sequence is patterned with fully CG shots of them swinging between the buildings," Foddy continues. "But that I think that's part of the reason that it works so well, is that it's a mixture of real practical stuff, photography and fully CG. Which always helps to trick the eye into believing that obviously, it's completely real."

What's your favorite Spider-Man movie to date? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below! Spider-Man: Far From Home is now in theaters.

Other upcoming Marvel Studios projects include Black Widow on May 1, 2020, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier in fall 2020, The Eternals on November 6, 2020, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings on February 12, 2021, WandaVision in spring 2021, Loki in spring 2021, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness on May 7, 2021, What If? In summer 2021, Hawkeye hit Disney+ in fall 2021, and Thor: Love and Thunder on November 5, 2021.