Green Goblin Willem Dafoe Calls Spider-Man Reboot ‘Cynical’

The actor who co-starred in the Tobey Maguire films says new versions are “a cynical approach to making money”

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Willem Dafoe, who starred as the Green Goblin in the Spider-Man trilogy that starred Tobey Maguire, is not a fan of the re-boot versions of his former franchise.

“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,’” the actor told Total Film. “I thought, ‘This is sort of a cynical approach to making money!’”

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He didn’t have a problem with Chris Cooper playing his pre-re-boot part of Norman Osborn/Green Goblin in “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” saying: “You know, in the theatre, people play the same role all the time.”

The actor had much kinder words for the Sam Raimi version of the franchise.

“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.

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“It really was. The way Sam Raimi approached it, it was pure in its intentions … 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 has yet to watch the re-boots, nor does he appear to have any plans to do so.

“The older I get, I don’t have the time to do everything that I want to do.”

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