Before and after his conflicts with Electro and Green Goblin, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 saw Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker dealing with Paul Giamatti’s Aleksei Sytsevich, an over-the-top Russian gangster who officially became The Rhino by the end of the movie. The final moments of the Amazing Spider-Man film series saw Peter and Aleksei about to go to battle, but we never the villain again since two years later, Tom Holland’s Spider-Man was introduced to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Ahead of The Amazing Spider-Man 2’s 10th anniversary in 2024, Giamatti reflected on his time playing Rhino, as well as discuss whether he was approached for the scrapped Sinister Six spinoff and Spider-Man: No Way Home.
The actor talked about this portion of his resume while appearing on Happy Sad Confused to promote his new movie The Holdovers, which critics have greatly enjoyed. To start off with, Giamatti summarized his experience working on The Amazing Spider-Man 2 to host Josh Horowitz as follows:
It was great. It was shot out of a cannon, it was just so, like, wow. And it was interesting to see how much was created on the fly with that. And it was practical stunts and stuff, which was really cool. Andrew Garfield was amazing in that. There were times where I was like, ‘You don’t probably have to be doing this. They have a guy in a suit, and nobody will be able to tell that it’s not you.’.. And physically amazing. It was crazy. I mean, it was like, I’m in a truck and I’m yelling in Russian… most of what I said was in Russian. And I think they showed it to an audience who was like, ‘What is going on? What is he saying?’ And so I had to redub it in English… or a lot of it in English. I don’t even remember. It’s such a blur.
When we first met Aleksei Sytsevich at the beginning of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, he was merely a common criminal who attempted to steal a shipment of Oscorp plutonium with his cronies, only to be foiled by the Web-Slinger. It wasn’t until the mysterious Gustav Fiers gave Aleksei access to that mechanized rhino suit on Harry Osborn’s orders that he upped his game, resulting in Garfield’s Peter coming out of his temporary retirement to confront him. While the end of the fight was never shown, we can safely assume that Spider-Man emerged the victor.
Had the Amazing Spider-Man franchise continued, among the ways this universe was going to expand was through Sinister Six, and it was believed that Paul Giamatti’s Rhino was going to be one of the members of the title team. However, Giamatti shared that no one ever approached him about this particular project, saying:
No, no. I don't remember [that]. I had just come off of doing a play for a while, and so I was a little bit out of it. And so I don't remember... I don't think they ever talked to me about any of that stuff. Not that I remember, no.
While there were no more Amazing Spider-Man-related movies after the 2014 entry, that didn’t mark the end of this continuity. In 2021, Spider-Man: No Way Home featured Andrew Garfield’s Peter, Jamie Foxx’s Electro and Rhys Ifan’s Lizard all being pulled into the main MCU universe thanks to a spell cast by Doctor Strange gone bad. When Josh Horowitz said he “felt” for Paul Giamatti that he wasn’t brought back for No Way Home, the actor sounded just fine with not being asked to return. As he put it:
[Laughs] No! I have to admit, I have not followed all the Spider-Man movies. I shouldn't be admitting this, but I haven’t followed it. I think in the first place, The Rhino is a tricky one… because if you really go Rhino, he's wearing the Rhino suit with the horn and everything. It's hilarious… they didn't do that, they went with the mechanical thing. But the Rhino might be a tricky one in the first place, I think.
Paul Giamatti’s time as The Rhino is done, but we’ll soon meet a new version of this villain thanks to Sony’s Spider-Man Universe. Kraven the Hunter, one of the upcoming movies in this franchise, stars Alessandro Nivola as Aleksei Sytsevich, and while we haven’t gotten a full look at him in his Rhino form yet, the super bloody Kraven trailer teased that the character will transform into some kind of rhino/human hybrid. It’s not quite the same as what Giamatti was talking about, but it’s certainly closer to the source material compared to The Amazing Spider-Man 2’s robot Rhino.
If you’re interested in revisiting Giamatti’s brief time in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, that movie can be streamed with a Disney+ subscription. After that, you can see where it lies on our ranking of Spider-Man movies, or if you’d rather shift your gaze to the future, the 2024 movies calendar is available for perusal.
