Actor talks great power, great responsibility, nature vs. nurture and a possible Spidey quadrilogy at Comic-Con.


SAN DIEGO -- During two Comic-Cons now, Andrew Garfield has put on Spider-Man tights for a movie panel featuring his stint as Marvel Comics' chief web-slinger.

He's obviously cool putting on the colorful skintight togs for fellow Spidey fans, yet for the on-screen work — which movie-goers will next see in cinemas on May 2, 2014, with director Marc Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man 2 — he's not totally comfortable.

And for good reason, since Peter Parker, the geeky science whiz underneath the mask, isn't comfortable being Spider-Man either.

"As soon as you're comfortable with that kind of responsibility and job, then you won't take it as seriously and you won't put as much care and attention and effort into it. So I guess I have the intention of not being comfortable," Garfield told USA TODAY on Friday before the Amazing Spider-Man 2 panel.

He began the session in full Spidey regalia to the delight of 6,500 fans, as he did in the 2011 Comic-Con panel for The Amazing Spider-Man, which was released in summer 2012.

That movie retold the age-old Spider-Man tale "with different nuance and different characterization," Garfield said, and the origin story featured teenage Peter gaining unreal powers and abilities after being accidentally bitten by a genetically engineered spider at an Oscorp science facility.

Now that they don't have to retread any old ground, the actor added, "we can start on our own adventure with bringing this character to life."

The first movie delved into the human consequences of a real teenage kid having insanely neat abilities, and that foundation gives Spider-Man "more chance to fly and express his powers in more and more of a superhuman way," Garfield said.

But the hero gets a very dangerous nemesis with a similar origin in Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx). A nerdy loner who works at Oscorp, Dillon is saved by Spider-Man and is determined to find his own way to make himself stand out. One disastrous experiment involving electric eels later, the blue-skinned Electro is born and he's saving all of his voltage to take down Spidey.

"Electro is a god in terms of the power that he wields, and to be faced with that creates a whole host of problems, obstacles and drama that is great to have between those two people," Garfield said.

One of the new film's main themes is dealing with the choices one has when given great power, so it calls back to that original mantra Peter's Uncle Ben gave him way back in 1962 courtesy of Spider-Man co-creator Stan Lee: "With great power comes great responsibility."

"You can't get away from that and you wouldn't want to," Garfield, 29, said. "Why would you want to reinvent the wheel? It's a beautiful sentiment Stan Lee first set down and it's a question that will continue to haunt governments, presidents, actors and activists. What's great about Spider-Man is he came from having no power, and the idea that absolute power corrupts absolutely is an incredibly rich idea to explore.

"I like the idea that Max Dillon and Peter Parker are the same person, and it's about nature, nurture and soul — three things that will define how man or a woman makes the choice of how to use that power."

Spider-Man gets all the attention and the love, but he's also why Peter doesn't get to have a life. And the upcoming sequel will explore how, even being a superhero, he can't keep a part-time job, support his Aunt May (Sally Field), put through himself school, or maintain relationships with love interest Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) or best friend Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan).

"He has a hard time with those he loves and are closest to him," Garfield said.

Peter's everyday struggles tend toward the mundane, but filming a Spider-Man movie is anything but. The actor never had a dull moment while filming — for example, he recalls jumping from a faceoff with Foxx 300 yards away one day to having an emotional scene with Field the next day to then flirting with Stone the day after that.

It's not just pure wish fulfillment for him, though. Garfield admits there are often days he'd just as soon watch the film as be in it and sit in a theater and say, "Hey, it's Spider-Man!" like he did with the previous Tobey Maguire movies.

Because of that, he's conflicted about the third and fourth Amazing Spider-Man movies that are scheduled to come out June 10, 2016, and May 4, 2018, respectively.

"They might ask me back for No. 3, that would be very nice," Garfield said. "As far as a No. 4 goes? I will be I think 40 years old at that point. So I don't know whether it would be appropriate." (He was joking — he'll only be 34, with at least a few more web-swinging years before hitting middle age.)

At the same time, Spider-Man is a character who has meant the world to him since he was a little boy who could barely string a sentence together.

"The opportunity to step into the suit and step into his shoes is one I relish but it's a mixed bag," Garfield said. "I do cherish it, it is a true dream come true, but when the dream becomes a reality, we all know what reality is. Reality is good and bad, reality is flowers and a gravestone. You can't just have the flowers."