Kirsten Dunst Couldn’t Stop Laughing at Tobey Maguire’s Dance in ‘Spider-Man 3’: ‘It’s so Ridiculous’
Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man franchise contains many memorable moments from Tobey Maguire. But one moment that stands out to many fans in the franchise is Spider-Man 3’s hilarious montage of Maguire dancing.
It was also memorable to Kirsten Dunst, who could barely get through their scene together because of it.
Tobey Maguire once shared that the ‘Spider-Man 3’ dance scene was meant to be silly
Although Spider-Man 3 was a bit divisive, many felt Maguire’s dance in the film was one of its highlights. The superhero feature portrayed a Peter Parker busting several moves in a couple of sequences. Internet memes have helped keep the scenes alive throughout the years. But it wasn’t something that came completely natural to Maguire, who confided it required some choreograph to nail just right.
“I worked with some people, a choreographer and some other people, a couple of dance people and the inside part was pretty much all choreographed and then the outside, the basic idea of it was choreographed, and then we kind of riffed on that and had fun from there,” Maguire once said according to Black Film.
Maguire also asserted that the scene was intentional and served a narrative purpose for the character. Maguire’s Spider-Man goes through a couple of notable changes in Spider-Man 3. The character indulging in his own dance publicly and confidently was a symptom of some of these changes.
“It really is like a thing where Peter thinks that he’s super cool and suave and really he’s a cornball. So we were making fun of that and having fun and our aim was to have people laughing. So I had that in mind while I was dancing,” Maguire explained.
Kirsten Dunst couldn’t stop laughing at Tobey Maguire’s dance moves
One of the people the scene and Maguire had laughing was Dunst. His Spider-Man co-star was supposed to have a serious and tense moment with Maguire in the movie. But the Mary-Jane Watson actor found it difficult to be serious at all after watching Maguire’s dance moves.
“It was so funny and I had to have a reaction of Peter, what’s wrong with you, but I couldn’t even do it, because when I’d see Tobey, I’d laugh when he was dancing. It’s so ridiculous. And I had to be in a shocked, what’s-happened-to-Peter mode. Meanwhile, he’s doing all these pelvic twists and thrusts. I couldn’t watch him do it anymore,” she once told SuperheroHype.
Tobey Maguire was originally supposed to do break-dancing in ‘Spider-Man 3’
Maguire’s dance scene was originally supposed to have a different style than it ended up having. Choreographer Marguerite Derricks would attempt to mold Maguire’s dancing skills for the movie.
“The way it was written originally was Tobey was going to be like a B-boy spinning on his head, doing more break-dancing stuff,” Derricks once told Thrillist. “And Tobey was not having it at all.”
Derricks also confided that Maguire, who recently reprised his Spider-Man role, didn’t seem too interested in dancing for the movie in the first place. Eventually, the break-dancing idea fell through, and Derricks would go to Maguire’s house personally to train him. There, Derricks was able to find a dance style that fit Maguire’s tastes more.
“I started giving him Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire moves, and Tobey just lit up like that was his jam,” she said. “I was like, ‘Okay, this guy didn’t want a dance double. He wanted to do it all himself.’ Spinning on his head—that wasn’t going to happen. It didn’t feel right to him and actually for me, too. It didn’t feel right for Spider-Man.”
