Spider-Man: No Way Home's Doc Ock Fight Was Originally a Lot Longer
Decades after he first made his live-action debut in Spider-Man 2, Alfred Molina's Doc Ock returned to the screen for Sony and Marvel's multiversal adventure, Spider-Man: No Way Home. The beloved villain's inclusion in the new movie was first revealed in the film's trailer, which depicted a fight with Tom Holland's Spider-Man on a bridge in New York City. That fight scene, which takes place early on in the movie, was actually a lot longer when it was originally put together.
While speaking to Before & Afters, Spider-Man: No Way Home visual effects supervisor Kelly Port talked a bit about creating that popular bridge fight. Throughout the production process, the length of that fight scene varied, but several iterations of the battle were longer than the one that made the final cut.
"Digital Domain was tasked with doing that sequence, which was a few hundred VFX shots," Port explained. "Also, the Digital Domain previs team did the previs for the whole movie, which was really cool, led by Matt McClurg. They just did such a great job. There's so many cool iterations of that sequence that will never see the light of day. It was way longer. At one point in its longest iteration, it was 15 minutes long."
During the same interview, Port went into detail about bringing that massive fight to life, explaining that a lot of the New York City scenery was digitally recreated.
"But beyond that little piece of road section, Digital Domain built an entire, fully-CG digital environment around that that would include all the other surrounding bridges, the other side of the bridge that they're on, all the city of Brooklyn and all the area around it, the river, and all the trees, the fall foliage. It just looked great," the supervisor explained.
"My rule of thumb is, if there's any way possible to shoot something for real, something physical, then we do," Port continued. "We made an Iron Spider bust from chest to head and shoulders, which was just so, so helpful to get those bright pings for reference. We shot this outdoors, and so it was all about, how does this read on an Alexa camera if we were to actually shoot it otherwise, you just don't know. You just guess. And just actually having that there, having physical cars there, too, will help inform our digital cars."
What did you think of Spider-Man and Doc Ock's fight in No Way Home? Let us know in the comments!