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.”