19 Years Later, Affordable Villains Pay Off (SPOILERS)
As Hollywood "dipped its toe" in the comic book hero genre in the 70's, 80's, and 90's, there seemed to be a desire to make these movies more prestigious by hiring top drawer A-list movie stars to be in them.
The first of these was Marlon Brando in Superman (1978). Brando was given top billing and paid an enormous sum to appear only in the first 20 minutes of the movie(less some brief snippets later); he only worked for a few days.
But it was with the casting of villains that the studios made sure to "buy the best."
Gene Hackman played Lex Luthor in '78's Superman (after Jack Nicholson turned the role down.) 11 years later, the even more iconic Nicholson DID take a gigantic pay package to play the Joker in Batman. And a small trend was established.
Top dollar stars played The Riddler(Jim Carrey, newly hot) and Mr. Freeze(Arnold Schwarzenegger, a superstar about to cool down). Perhaps less superstarry, bankable character stars like Danny DeVito(Penguin) and Tommy Lee Jones(Two Face) were also paid big bucks to be Bad Guys (along with two lovely ladies, Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman and Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy.)
After Batman and Robin bombed in 1997(with Arnold and Uma going down with the ship) and before Batman Begins rebooted the franchise in 2005 came..Spiderman.
With fanciful Sam Raimi at the directorial helm, whoever did the casting for the first Spider-Man made a key decision: no longer did 1/3 of the gross have to go to a superstar villain.
Let's hire Willem Dafoe instead. He'd been seen as Joker material(wouldn't even need make-up) but he wasn't BIG enough -- Nicholson had been required for the proper superstar credentials. No longer.
For Spider-Man 2 and its great villain(perhaps the greatest of them all) Doc Ock -- Alfred Molina would suffice. Good actor, not a superstar.
For Spider-Man 3...they went with one of the guys from Sideways: Thomas Haden Church(the horndog with the weird face and the weirder voice.) A bit well known FROM Sideways, but not a major star(and they threw in that kid from That Seventies Show as Venom.)
Well, all these years later, the plan to hire "non superstars" to play comic book villains has really paid off in Spider-Man No Way Home.
Almost ALL of them come back. They are literally all assembled in an apartment for a couple of scenes: Dafoe, Molina, Church....plus Rhys Ifans (The Lizard, from a later Spider-Man iteration, barely seen when not the effect lizard himself), not a superstar either.
But wait: one MORE villain comes back and he's a bit pricier, and a Best Actor Oscar winner to boot: Jaime Foxx. They manage to get him in the apartment, too, and he rather sticks out - he looks like Jaime Foxx, his superpower looks kind of silly on him (electic bolts flying out of his body) , he's just not quite as cool in look and powers as Doc Ock(the greatest) and Green Goblin(Dafoe, in THIS movie, often without the Goblin's mask; you can see his face but the villainous monster effect is gone.)
And I guess they couldn't get Michael Keaton (The Vulture).
That said, its still impressive who they DID get. But they could only get them because they were affordable.
No way you could stuff an apartment with Marlon Brando, Gene Hackman, Jack Nicholson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Carrey, Michelle Pfeiffer, Tommy Lee Jones and Danny DeVito!