Spider-Man: Every Green Goblin actor ranked from worst to best
3. Dane DeHaan
If you’ve ever watched Chronicle, you know Dane DeHaan can be a fantastic actor and a superb villain for a superhero movie. And while some of that translated to his role in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, he didn’t have a script good enough or the necessary screen time to push his acting range to the fullest.
There were hints of brilliance in Dane DeHaan’s performance as Harry Osborn. His hands were constantly twitching due to the hereditary disease that his father passed on to him, and the scene where Spider-Man refused to give him his blood was played to perfection. Audiences could genuinely feel Harry’s anger and despise towards the wall-crawler after realizing his only hope of surviving was negated by the superhero himself. Dane also gifted us with a flawless interpretation of a man filled with desperation when Harry was begging Electro to help him in his mission against Oscorp. Dane’s character became more deranged as the movie went by, and his performance certainly tried to capture that.
However, Harry’s downfall wasn’t naturally or gradually developed. From the moment Peter refused to help him find Spider-Man at half of the film, Dane only had to portray two different emotions: anger and despair. As a result, you can’t help but feel his acting skills weren’t exploited at all. Sure, he did the best with the few scenes he had, but even his best take at a madman wasn’t enough to surpass the portrayal of Willem Dafoe as Spidey’s archnemesis.
It didn’t help that the only scene that Dane and Andrew Garfield had before turning into enemies was incredibly short. The movie tells us they used to be best friends growing up, but that was never portrayed convincingly. Granted, it’s difficult to sell that kind of relationship in only two minutes of screen time, but Harry’s development is so rushed you end up feeling his interpretation as the Green Goblin is a little bit forced at certain moments of the film.
If Dane’s character had more scenes or a different script that allowed him to feel more than two emotions for an entire half of the movie, the story could’ve been different. But while his Green Goblin interpretation wasn’t bad by any means, it falls short of the other two live-action iterations of the character.