Spider-Man: No Way Home VFX Supervisor Details How Old Footage Was Used to Make Sandman, Lizard

When Spider-Man: No Way Home was released back in December, it featured many surprise appearances from former Spider-Man actors. Before the film was released, Alfred Molina (Doc Ock), Jamie Foxx (Electro), and Willem Dafoe (Green Goblin) were all confirmed to return. Once the film hit theatres, the biggest surprise was the inclusion of former Spidey stars, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. The movie also featured Sadman and Lizard, the villains played by Thomas Haden Church and Rhys Ifans in Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man, respectively. However, it was revealed soon after the movie was released that the men were not really involved with the production and that the new movie used old footage from their previous films. Recently, Digital Domain VFX Supervisor Kelly Port spoke with Corridor Digital and broke down how they brought Sandman and Lizard back to life.

“We didn’t really have access to Rhys Ifans or Thomas Hayden Church, so we actually ended up using footage from the previous films and manipulating it. SoRhys Ifans, when he’s healing, we actually used an outtake and that was shot on film, scanned at high resolution, tracked, body tracked, everything. So ultimately, it ended up being a lot of that CG, especially for Thomas Hayden Church when he’s transforming. We had to manipulate it to get him into the scene lighting-wise, and all sorts of things like that,” Port explained.

Port goes on to talk about how much technology has changed between the making of Spider-Man 3 and Spider-Man: No Way Home. You can check out the full interview below: 

During a previous chat with Discussing Film, writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers talked about balancing the movie’s cameos.

“Very carefully,” Sommers replied when asked how they divided up the actors’ screentime. “Because, I mean, you want to give everyone their due, and just as a fan, you want to see those people as those characters and have fun with them. But at the end of the day, it’s a Spider-Man movie – you have to be telling the story of Peter Parker, and everything has to be in service of that. So there were a lot of painful decisions made, you know, we would have loved to have done this and that and ‘Oh, wouldn’t be great if these two villains could do this!’ But it has to be in service of Peter’s journey, and you have to keep things moving. There were definitely a lot of what we call ‘little darlings’ – little moments and things that you really just love – but sometimes you have to let them go.”

Spider-Man: No Way Home is now available to buy on DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K.