Willem Dafoe calls The Amazing Spider-Man reboot "cynical"

Total Film sat down with Willem Dafoe this week to discuss his new videogame Beyond: Two Souls , and we couldn’t resist asking him what he thought of last year's The Amazing Spider-Man .

Though we discovered he’s not seen the Andrew Garfield-starring reboot, he definitely has an opinion on it.

“I saw a trailer for the first Spider-Man reboot and I thought, ‘This is crazy! It’s not shot for shot, but it’s the same story,’” Dafoe told us. “I thought, ‘This is sort of a cynical approach to making money!’”

As if you needed reminding, Dafoe played Norman Osborn aka the Green Goblin in all three of Sam Raimi’s original Spider-Man films.

Though he was killed off in part one, his ghostly visage haunted James Franco for two further films, and Dafoe’s terrifying incarnation of Osborn really is the thing of nightmares.

“I like Spider-Man , the first one that I was involved in, because although you can argue all sorts of things, from my perspective it was very pure,” Dafoe says.

“It really was. The way Sam Raimi approached it, it was pure in its intentions and I think he captured, particularly, Tobey [ Maguire ] at that particular moment.

“This real, genuine innocence; it wasn’t indicated. Then after that it became more difficult because it’s hard to achieve that when it’s gotten some kind of attention and a certain level of success!”

Dafoe’s not in a hurry to watch any of the Spider-Man reboots, either. “Not so much,” he says, diplomatically adding: “The older I get, I don’t have the time to do everything that I want to do.”

As to Chris Cooper playing Osborn in Marc Webb’s films, Dafoe can take it or leave. “You know, in the theatre, people play the same role all the time. I don’t know anything about it, really,” he says.

Beyond: Two Souls is released on PlayStation 3 on 11 October 2013.

Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.