If there are 2 things that movie fans will eagerly gobble up whenever the chance is presented, then this must be Bizarro World, because movie fans will go absolutely gaga over countless reveals, info drops, and musical stingers. But among all that nerd grub are 2 particularly enticing morsels known as leaks and deepfakes, and one particularly recent instance of both has Spider-Man fans all bouncy.
Some may already be familiar with a reportedly leaked video that allegedly shows Andrew Garfield on the set of Spider-Man: No Way Home in full superhero garb. This comes after a long history of speculation that the Amazing Spider-Man star will reprise his web-slinging role in the upcoming film alongside Tom Holland as the current Spidey and Tobey Maguire as his own previous version of the character. The short clip was pretty convincing, but articles and videos quickly came out that supposedly "debunked" the whole thing as just a particularly sophisticated deepfake. But now, a VFX studio has taken it upon themselves to debunk the debunkers and prove once and for all whether the video is real or not.
Many may already be familiar with Corridor Digital, who already have plenty of creative videos under their belt up to and including using visual effects to "kill" every version of James Bond. Well, now they've decided to refocus their powers for chaos into knowledge as they've meticulously gone over the leaked Spider-Man video in order to finally give a proper verdict on its authenticity. Thanks to their own experience with deepfakes, their analysis came from far more than a place of simple speculation.
Similar to their attempts to recreate Luke Skywalker's cameo in The Mandalorian, the Corridor Crew not only got up close and personal with the footage, but they also explained in detail what exactly they were looking for and how viewers could actually use this knowledge to sniff out deepfakes on their own. Of course, since this is a YouTube video, they had to pad things out a little bit somehow, which is why the audience was treated to several fake-outs regarding whether or not the clip was real or not.
Ultimately, however, it seems they decided that everything came together far too perfectly for it to be a deepfake or any other sort of trickery. While giving the concession that it's technically possible for the video to be faked, Corridor Digital's expertise seems to have landed the company firmly on the "it's probably real" side of things.
At the end of the day, Corridor Digital's analysis appears to be "we can't definitively prove that it's not fake, but our years of experience in the field of VFX tells us that it's most likely real." Until the movie itself comes out, that's probably as close as audiences will get to a proper answer. Luckily, it won't be too much longer.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is set to release December 17th, 2021 in theaters.
Source: Corridor Crew/YouTube