peace was never an option

“I’ve poked my head into theaters in L.A. for that moment just to hear people gasp,” director Marc Webb tells EW. “It’s fascinating. People just don’t believe it.” Webb understands. He felt much the same way when Gwen Stacy was killed off in the comic. “It stayed with me in a profound way. It broke me. I was anxious and curious to explore it on the screen. From the very beginning I planned on doing it,” he says. “For me, everything in the movie was built around that moment. There’s a cost to being a hero.”
But there was another theme that greatly interested Webb: “[The movie] is also about time and about valuing the time you have with the one you love,” he says. He points out that the very first shot of the film is a ticking clock, and that its first line is Richard Parker saying, “I wish I had more time.” Time is the underlying theme of Gwen’s valedictorian speech, and her last fateful moments take place where? At a clock tower. “Ultimately, it’s not the Goblin that kills Gwen,” says Webb. “They’re fighting in the cogs, in the machinery of the clock tower, and Spider-Man puts his foot in between the cogs and literally tries to stop time. That’s what causes her death—his inability, despite his enormous efforts, to stop time.”
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