I don't think the net is a new idea. Wasn't it mentioned in one of the articles during rehearsals? And we saw a photo of it in the Annie Leibovitz shoot. I think they were just never able to get it to work, so they cut it until now.
UPDATE:
I found the photo and quotes.
From New York Magazine:
"Uplit like a Renaissance virgin by the glow of her iPad, the director Julie Taymor watches with mounting excitement as a gigantic black net unspools from a kind of coffin beneath the stage. The net is supposed to whoosh up, but like everything else to do with Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, the job takes longer than expected. Indeed, in its first outing, the effect is less special than glacial, but Taymor’s half-smile doesn’t fade, even as ten stagehands scramble to keep the mesh from snagging as it rises. Anything that works beautifully, she knows, once didn’t. Especially anything big."
"These movements, if they turn out to be feasible and safe, and if they adequately replicate the vision Taymor had of them so long ago, will be part of the climax of the $400 billion new musical: a scene in which Peter Parker, trapped in his enemy’s web, must learn to embrace his power or die."
"Whatever the cost, and the value of that cost, it soon becomes clear that the web isn’t working: It’s not just slow; it’s ungainly. The climber looks trapped all right, but not in a good way. His harness keeps catching on the fabric, his sneakers slip through the webbing. When the shredding noises start, and two-inch metal grommets start zinging into the orchestra, most people might decide it’s time to give up. But not Taymor. Seated amid a sea of computers that makes the theater resemble NASA mission control, the tiny figure in her giant contraption is not the least bit worried. She turns on her “God mike” and, in the artificially lowered voice she has learned to use in order to sound calm and authoritative, suggests that a narrower mesh might solve the problem, or tighter rigging, or both. If these measures fail, she adds with the microphone off, she’ll come up with something else, just as she did when the huge steel “flying ring” that had been built and hoisted into the rococo dome of the theater turned out to be a dud. (That one lasted two days.) “Let’s wait and see,” she concludes, as designers make notes for ordering a new net and Sparky barks again."
Annie Liebovitz Photo
Updated On: 12/18/10 at 03:40 PM
