I did not see this coming!
Yes, you're all crying: "It's because of Spider-man: No Way Home!"
and I reply: "Well, d'oh!"
I managed to remain spoiler free, so for the longest of times, I had no clue this movie had three spider-men....oh, spoiler warning...😐
I'm not a massive Spider-man fan, nor is my friend, so we decided not to go see it in the cinema, but to hold off till it was available online. But this blog is not about all that. I'm trying to write an intro and failing miserably.
I do need to mention spider-man and my personal history with it. It's actually pretty much absent, or at best minimal. I was aware of the comics, but never read them. I was also aware that Tobey Maguire is the original (movie) spider-man and Andrew Garfield his follow up. I never watched their movies however. I did watch Homecoming and Far From Home. I was even aware of the reboot after reboot, which of course automatically follows out of the fact that we had known two different spider-men before Tom Holland's. I was even aware that Tobey's spider-man is many's favorite spider-man. I was even aware of Tobey Maguire as an actor. I feel I'm listing all this in the wrong order.
My awareness of Tobey Maguire didn't stretch much further then his profession. I never specifically seeked him out. I never went to see a movie because he was in it. To me he was just one of those high profile actors that shuffled by my attention from time to time. That was that. Didn't think much about him.
Along comes No Way Home. Nope, never seen the Maguire/Garfield movies, but I was still excited when both Andrew Garfield and Tobey appeared. I loved the interactions between the spider-men. It was epic to watch them swing through my screen. It was decided then and there I needed to watch what had gone before.
I was more aware of Andrew's career, though I'm not an avid fan and I missed most of what he's been doing. Of Andrew I knew he is a good actor; he impressed me in the movie The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Tobey, as I wrote before, I had no clue of what he had done in the past.
Remember my crush on Jake Gyllenhaal (I feel like such a soppy fangirl)? In that period, as I always do with new actor crushes, I bought several of his movies including the movie Brothers. Jake was one brother, Tobey was the other. I completely forgot Tobey was in it. In my defense, I was rather focused on Jake.
Brothers was the third movie I checked out (again) to start my research on Tobey. The third, because the DVD was already gathering dust on my shelves and I checked out Spider-man 1 and 2 first. I'm a bit ashamed I had forgotten he was in that movie, because he did a great job. Definately one of his best performances. I wasn't, however, completely hooked yet. I don't know when that happened.
I googled him to see what I could find about the actor, rather than the roles he had been playing. I very quickly found footage of him getting angry and mildly aggressive with paparazzi, some very unflattering stories coming out of his poker games and weird scandal about a movie called Don's Plum. It all didn't look great; it didn't paint a very positive picture of him. But I couldn't shake the feeling there was a sweet person somewhere in there, so I dug deeper to see if I could solve the puzzle that is Tobey Maguire.
With him being a very privat person, it's not easy to get a good grip on his character, if there is any truth to the above, and to explain why it all happened. It's even hard to paint a nice picture of him. The thing is, Peter Parker's sweetness came from somewhere and I believe it didn't just come out of Tobey's acting chops, but for a great deal out of the man himself. So I set out to find out where it came from and how the previous paragraph fits within the Tobey Maguire story.
My goal was not to make him my next interest, my new hobby or fantasy. I just wanted to understand why. So I dug, I googled, I read, I watched, I analyzed.
Suddenly I was crushing hard. Every time I see a photo of him I can feel the blood rushing to my cheeks and butterflies taking off in my stomach. It's somewhat unsettling. I'm 41 fer-goodness-sakes! Ain't I too old to crush so hard?? What am I crushing on? I don't know him personally!! I barely know anything about him!!! It also really took me by surprise and I'm not really sure why this is happening. Like I said, not a very positive picture of him.
To be fair to him, he hasn't been in any scandals for a decade and more, and he does seem to be a good and sweet father. He also seems much more settled, calmed down and content. I think he really did leave his wild days behind him. Visiting a club with Leo doesn't count; he should be able to go out and enjoy himself.
Next stop on this journey is figuring out his personality type. In interviews he's very thoughtful and takes his time finding the right words. That suggests he's an introvert. Not 100% sure yet though.
