Alfred Molina aka Doc Ock Returns To Take Up The Tentacles Once Again.
In the past days, the internet was abuzz with the huge reveal from an exclusive interview from Variety detailing the Hollywood star Alfred Molina in reprising of his role as Doctor Octavius or Doc Ock in the upcoming Spider-Man: No Way Home. Alfred Molina played the scientist Otto Octavius in Spider-Man 2 (2004) who was a mentor to Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker until a lab accident turned him into a murderous Doctor Octopus. He was point-blank about it and went into a ton of detail with what is going on with his character, which version we are the fans going to get, and how Marvel plans on handling his reintroduction and the age discrepancy from when he last helmed the role.
Alfred Molina detailed his experience making the movie and returning to the iconic part he first played in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 (2004).
“It was wonderful. It was interesting going back after 17 years to play the same role given that in the intervening years, I now have two chins, a waddle crow’s feet, and a slightly dodgy lower back.”
Alfred Molina also went on to explain how the director Jon Watts explained to him how his character would be reintroduced in the third Spider-Man movie of the MCU. Molina revealed that director Jon Watts told him, “In this universe, no one really dies.” Jon Watts also told Molina that the movie will pick up Doc Ock’s story from that moment in the river where he would have drowned right at the end of Spider-Man 2. Hence a multiverse, or to be more precise, a ‘spider verse is going to connect the MCU with Sam Raimi’s original trilogy.
In a franchise which includes time-travel, different dimensions and diverging timelines, it doesn’t seem far-fetched to have a multiverse. Alfred Molina’s concerns were more practical as he asked the director how they will handle his age being depicted In the movie since he is 67 years old now, to which the director replied, “Did you see what we did with Rob Downey Jr and Sam Jackson?” referring to Captain America: Civil War (2016), Marvel used CGI to de-age Robert Downey Jr to look as he did in 1991 and in Captain Marvel (2019) also set in 90s, a de-aged Samuel Jackson played a younger version of his character Nick Fury. Alfred Molina also cited director Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman (2019) as an example.
“They made Robert De Niro’s face look younger but when he was fighting, he looked like an older guy. That’s what worried me about doing it again. I don’t have the same physicality that I had 17 years ago. That’s just a fact. I then remembered that it’s the tentacles that do all the work. My basic physical move as Doc Ock as the actor is just this,” he said as he glared intensely at the zoom camera and made menacing noise. I just do that a lot. The arms are doing all the killing and smashing and breaking and I’m just,” as he proceeded to glare again with a mean look.
Jamie Foxx is also rumored to reprise his role from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)as Electro albeit with a different look. It is safe to postulate that Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield might also reprise their roles as Spider-Men as part of the spider-verse. Adding to the hypothesis, it will all be possibly explained and tie into the upcoming MCU movie Dr. Strange: Multiverse of Madness. Spider-Man: No Way Home is slated for an initial release date of 17th December 2021. For more on Spider-Man and MCU,
