Home Entertainment Dane DeHaan talks THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2; Osborn family relations and not being a comic book geek

Dane DeHaan talks THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2; Osborn family relations and not being a comic book geek

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It’s seem like every day now a new batch of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 set photos come swinging down the interwebs (we’ve featured a couple of them already). Thus far though, they’ve all just featured our resident wall crawler Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) and his sorta girlfriend Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone).

And that’s because nobody else has actually shown up for work yet, according to Chronicle star Dane DeHaan, who will be playing Harry Osborn, son of Spidey nemesis Norman Osborn.

Speaking to Collider during an interview about Beyond the Pines, a new drama from director Derek Cianfrance that DeHaan is starring in alongside Ryan Reynolds and Bradley Cooper, the young actor revealed that he, as well as recently announced Chris Cooper who will be playing Norma Osborn (whether he shows up in his villainous Green Goblin persona is still unknown, but looking unlikely for this film), would start shooting their scenes “super soon”. DeHaan also spoke about what he thinks of the film’s script, which he recently read in full.

“It’s awesome.  It really is.  It’s human and it’s deep and it’s also epic and still a huge superhero movie.  But it all makes sense and it all comes from very human elements and I think people are really going to love it.”

You can see Collider’s full interview down below, but in the meantime, in a different interview over at ComingSoon though, DeHaan elaborated on how his work in Chronicle and Place Beyond the Pines may share some similarities with this role.

“First of all, ‘Chronicle’ was about a kid with an abusive father. ‘Place Beyond the Pines’ is about a kid who doesn’t know who his father is, and they’re very different relationships. Obviously with Harry Osborn, the privilege of it is another dynamic. The relationship Harry has with Norman is a different dynamic. Every son has a relationship with their father, whether that father is there or not, and that always has an effect on the person whether they admit it or not. There’s a lot of different ways those relationships are complicated.”

DeHaan also said that he won’t be taking any cues from James Franco’s portrayal of Harry in Sam Raimi’s trilogy saying that “Franco did his thing, I’ll do my thing.” What that thing is though, is a bit of a mystery as DeHaan has admitted that he’s not a comic book person at all, so he doesn’t have that knowledge of the character to inform his performance.

“I don’t think you have to be a fan of something to do the job. I think ultimately it’s important that I’m familiar with past takes on the Osborn story, more for like common, know-it-all ’cause it’s stuff I should know. My job as an actor is the same job, whether it’s a comic book movie or a gritty Derek Cianfrance drama, or a ‘Chronicle,’ or a ‘Lawless,’ which is to take a character and, for lack of better word, to breathe life into it. I’m a fan of acting!”

Now while most of comic geekery, myself included, would obviously love it if the person portraying a comic book character has an in-depth understanding and knowledge of the character, might I remind you that the last time we had a talented young actor tackle a character without really knowing anything about him, we ended up with Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight. Now while I admit that Harry Osborn is to the Joker what a block of cheese is to a gold bar, I’m hoping DeHaan can pull off something unexpected here. At least just give us something better than Franco’s bratty version, which admittedly shouldn’t be that hard.

We still have quite some time to see how things pan out though, with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 only set to swing into theatres in more than a year from now on May 2, 2014.

Last Updated: March 12, 2013

One Comment

  1. For someone who isn’t into comics, he sure knows how to choose movies that scream comic book geek.

    Reply

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