Doctor Octopus is back and has Spider-Man in his clutches in a new image from Spider-Man: No Way Home. The image, released as part of Fandango‘s holiday movie preview, shows Doc Ock (Alfred Molina) with Spidey (Tom Holland), still in his Iron Spider suit, wrapped in his mechanical arms. Molina’s Doctor Octopus from Spider-Man 2 is one of several past cinematic Spider-Man villains reprising their roles in No Way Home. Tom Holland says Molina’s return was, at least in part, his idea. “When I was first pitched the idea, I was like, ‘Wow, that would be awesome if we could pull it off’,” Holland said while speaking to Empire Magazine. “‘But there’s just no way it’s going to work. You’re just not going to be able to get everyone to do what they need to do. It’s just not going to happen.’ But it did happen. And it’s crazy.”
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Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige recalls, “I remember having discussions with Amy Pascal years ago. ‘Do we want to revisit villains we’ve seen before?’ No, let’s do Vulture, and Mysterio, and characters we haven’t brought to the screen before. But I remember thinking, ‘How would you even do Doc Ock again?’, because Alfred Molina is perfect casting. If you ever brought him back, it would have to be him somehow.”
“It was really fun to watch him see how technology has advanced,” Holland said of working with Molina in a previous interview with Entertainment Weekly. “When he was making these films, the arms were puppets, and when we did it, they’re all imaginary and CG. It was quite cool to see him relive it, but also relearn it.
“It’s absolutely surreal to be working on a Doctor Strange movie with Sam Raimi in one part of the office, and then working on a Spider-Man movie with Jon Watts and Alfred Molina as Doc Ock in another room,” Feige added. “That has been a mind-blowing part of the last 10 years of my life.”
In Spider-Man: No Way Home, “With Spider-Man’s identity now revealed, our friendly neighborhood web-slinger is unmasked and no longer able to separate his normal life as Peter Parker from the high stakes of being a superhero. When Peter asks for help from Doctor Strange, the stakes become even more dangerous, forcing him to discover what it truly means to be Spider-Man.”
Jon Watts directed Spider-Man: No Way Home. The film stars Tom Holland as Spider-Man, with Zendaya as MJ, Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange, Jacob Batalon as Ned, Jon Favreau as Happy Hogan, Marisa Tomei as Aunt May, J. B. Smoove as Julius Dell, Benedict Wong as Wong, Jamie Foxx as Electro, Alfred Molina as Doctor Octopus, Willem Dafoe as the Green Goblin, Thomas Haden Church as Sandman, and Rhys Ifans as the Lizard.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments. Spider-Man: No Way Home opens in theaters on December 17th.
