An Amazing Spider-Man concept artist has revealed Michael Fassbender was almost cast as The Lizard – and has the concept art to prove it. Released in 2012, The Amazing Spider-Man was a mostly successful reboot (in terms of box office and general critical response) of the Spider-Man live-action movies, with Andrew Garfield taking over from Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker. Its sequel, however, was far less well-received in 2014, with critics taking the film to task for being overstuffed with story threads and characters designed to set-up spinoffs like Sinister Six.
More than that, many felt the villains in The Amazing Spider-Man movies either lacked the tragic depth and/or were not as much over the top fun as the best baddies from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy in the 2000s. Even with Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx and acclaimed actors Rhy Ifans and Dane DeHaan behind them, the franchise’s versions of classic Spidey baddies Electro, The Lizard, and Green Goblin II struggled to leave a lasting impression on audiences. They weren’t necessarily as creepy as they could’ve been either, as evidenced by some of the early designs for The Lizard.
Concept artist Jerad S. Marantz, who was responsible for The Lizard’s freaky early design in The Amazing Spider-Man, has since posted additional artwork for the film to his Instagram account. As you can see below, he also gave the villain a few more humanoid facial features in a design he created based on Fassbender (whom Marantz has confirmed was in serious consideration for the role at one point).
It certainly would’ve been interesting (in a good way, one hopes) to see Fassbender play Dr. Curt Connors and his reptilian counterpart in The Amazing Spider-Man. The Oscar-nominee has long excelled at portraying characters with a dark side and The Lizard might’ve been more tragic in his hands than he ultimately was played by Ifans (who, in his defense, was perfectly acceptable, given the material he had to work with). However, if he had signed on for the part, Fassbender surely would’ve had to pass on playing Magneto in X-Men: First Class, seeing as the latter only started shooting a few months before The Amazing Spider-Man began filming in December 2010.
Although the First Class series ultimately went out on a whimper thanks to last year’s Dark Phoenix, Fassbender was always terrific in his antagonistic role and he’s probably (?) happy to have gotten to play Magneto in four movies instead of only playing The Lizard in one. In the end, he wouldn’t have been able to fix the various other problems which led to The Amazing Spider-Man series being cancelled two entries in and Peter Parker being rebooted as part of the MCU anyway. Still, it’s fun to speculate – and, thanks to Marantz, fans now get the chance to see what a Fassbender Lizard might’ve looked like for real.
