Spider-Man: No Way Home is finally out on home release for fans to buy for themselves and watch as many times as one's heart may desire. It's almost hard to believe that just a few months ago everyone was begging for more footage, and scrounging the internet for even the smallest leak possible. Remember when no one knew for sure if Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield were in the movie in the first place? Those were the times.
Looking back, it almost feels like an out-of-body experience thinking about some of the leaks that plagued No Way Home. One of the best examples was the infamous Andrew Garfield leak, with the image and video that circulated of him wearing his Spidey suit in front of a blue screen, crouching on what appeared to be a construction scaffolding.
At the time, fans would argue over whether it was real or just a really good fake, but little did everyone know that Garfield's Peter Parker was actively discussing body fluids with Tobey Maguire and Tom Holland's Peter's on the Statue of the Liberty during the scene he was filming. What a wild world it is.
Now, some VFX gurus have sat down and discussed how that leak was able to occur.
Andrew Garfield's Leaked Footage Explained
During a visit to the Corridor Crew on YouTube, Digital Domain visual effects supervisor Kelly Port, who worked on Spider-Man: No Way Home, discussed how he thinks the Andrew Garfield footage leaked, and how studios try to keep such leaks from happening.
Port mentioned how he believes the cause of the infamous leak to have been "an out-sourced vendor," and in this case, "the preventative medicine" of a giant "[watermark] across the whole thing" wasn't enough to keep the clip from leaking:
"It's just thousands of people. Like, our visual effects team was by far our biggest team there is and often the leaks don't necessarily come from VFX. In this case, I think they did, or an out-sourced vendor is where I think [the leak] really came from. I think the main thing that keeps people from doing it is just, their gonna lose their job, like, forever. As a studio, when Marvel/Sony sends over a sequence to a visual effects studio to begin work, we call that a turnover. And then when they get that, it's usually sent as a sequence, and your name is watermarked across the whole thing... that's sort of the preventative medicine."
One of Many Spider-Man Leaks Explained
It's been discussed many times, but it truly is crazy how many leaks plagued Spider-Man: No Way Home. Clearly, the threat of losing one's job forever didn't do the trick this time. It almost makes one shake in their boots thinking about what solution Marvel Studios security may think up next.
The common theory is that the increase in leaks across multiple projects has to do with the increased workload Marvel Studios has placed upon themselves. The amount of projects in the pipeline at any given time is quadruple the amount it used to be just a few years ago. That makes a lot of different moving pieces to have to worry about.
Hopefully, Andrew Garfield's experience trying to divert discussion from leaks over the last year hasn't soured his re-entry into the superhero space. After all, now fans are basically begging to have him back in some kind of project down the line.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is now available worldwide for purchase.
