The CGI in Spider-Man: No Way Home is criticised by Willem Dafoe

Willem Dafoe, who plays the Green Goblin, didn’t like how the Multiverse villains in Spider-Man: No Way Home were digitally aged.

According to the history of the wall-crawler, Spider-Man: No Way Home brought together Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parkers along with five of their most recognisable enemies for a Multiverse adventure.

These villains were removed from their timelines in No Way Home just before they met sad ends. De-aging them to approximate their former appearance, which in some cases was twenty years ago, needed extensive CGI work for the entire group.

Even Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige had some harsh words for Alfred Molina after he revealed that his character Doc Ock would be susceptible to de-aging eight months before the film’s premiere.

Star of Spider-Man: No Way Home Criticizes De-Aging VFX

Willem Dafoe, who plays the Green Goblin, recently took part in a WIRED auto-complete interview in which he responded to popular Google search queries. This led to some fascinating comments regarding Spider-Man: No Way Home.

When asked if he was CGI-de-aged for No Way Home, the actor said, “[doesn’t] think so,” before calling the effect “silly, because… they don’t have [de-aging] down yet:”

“No, I don’t think so. Yeah, there was a couple of shots that were really fuzzy. I thought it was silly, because the de-aging thing, they don’t have down yet. And what’s the point? I don’t look that much older, I don’t think, anyway. It’s the creams.”

According to the actor’s claims, VFX supervisor Kelly Port acknowledged to The Hollywood Reporter last year that Dafoe had “very minimal” de-aging work done on him:

“We would take great pains to not lose any facial detail, the high-frequency facial detail, like pores. When you do that, it starts to look airbrushed … so we kept all the detail that was in the original photography.”

When asked why his Green Goblin is the best during the auto-complete interview, he responded, “Because he was the first:”

“Because he was the first Green Goblin. Is that a good answer?”

When asked if he will reprise his role as the Green Goblin, Dafoe said in a cryptic, That is a good question, I suppose.

The actor previously stated that he would only play Green Goblin once more “if everything was right” before expressing his favourite aspects of the role:

“If everything was right, sure. I mean, that’s a great role. I liked the fact that it’s a double role both times. Twenty years ago, and fairly recently, both times [were] very different experiences, but I had a good time on both.”

Why Spider-Man: No Way Home’s De-Aging Was Crucial

Although it has been around since 2006’s X-Men:The Last Stand, de-aging CGI has just truly started to play a significant role in Hollywood in the last few years. As a result, VFX studios are still ironing out the wrinkles in order to make these little actors look more realistic than before.

Willem Dafoe was fortunate in that his de-aging back to 2002 only required “very minor” CGI work because the Green Goblin actor has scarcely aged over the past two decades. Except for those few “fuzzy” shots he noted, Dafoe himself hardly even recognised the retouching that had been done.

Both Dafoe and Thomas Haden Church from Sandman needed de-aging procedures to seem more like the characters they played in the Sam Raimi trilogy. The most amazing work, however, was undoubtedly done with Alfred Molina, who in No Way Home looks as youthful as ever despite barely resembling his appearance from 2004.

Based on his remarks, the Green Goblin actor certainly seems to be leaving the door open to reprising his Spider-Man character in a future movie. Given that Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man is also speculated to feature in Avengers: Secret Wars, a comeback might be on the table.

Dafoe isn’t the only villain in No Way Home who has hinted that he might return in the future; he also remarked that he  “can neither confirm nor deny” whether the Multiversal movie signalled his exit from the franchise.

Both physical and digital copies of Spider-Man: No Way Home are now readily accessible.