Today is the day you can buy a digital copy of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, with physical copies entering the market on August 19th. It's possibly your last best chance to catch some of Spidey's action before 2016's The Sinister Six, which may or may not even have the wall-crawler. But one of the special features, seen above, will be of particular interest – yep, in the scene above, you can see the dead Richard Parker as played by Campbell Scott.
Spoilers, obviously: It's always been rumored that Scott shot a lot more footage as Peter Parker's estranged dad, but now we get to see it. As befitting the wonky plotting of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, he does not explain where he's been, or why he's faked his death for so long, or why he picked Gwen Stacy's funeral to re-emerge. Nice beard, though. It also doesn't clear up the central confusion regarding Mr. Parker's contribution to the overall Spider-Man story – what exactly was Richard Parker trying to reveal about OsCorp that got him killed? Poor safety standards? The development of military weapons? Salmonella? Instead, it's just a vague idea that he may have placed some of the genetic coding of his experiments inside Peter Parker. The movies seem very unclear about this.
Campbell Scott's a really terrific actor, so he always seemed wasted in this role. You needed a guy with some gravity to play Richard Parker, so it's not a terrible choice, no matter the size of the role. But the movies had a real non-committal stance towards Richard Parker and his story, so you're never really certain how much you should care about Peter's quest for his family. Of course, this was certain – no one in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movies ever once wondered where the hero's parents were.
This scene above could also have darker implications, of course, one that would push the films even farther into science fiction. In the comics, when Peter finally meets his folks, they carry on as normal former spies for a few months as Peter gets acclimated to having parents. And then, months later, he reveals to them that he is Spider-Man, and they reveal themselves as evil robotic clones meant to gain his trust before killing him. It's a sick joke perpetrated by the villain Chameleon, and it would be a helluva kicker for the ending of a future film. Alas, this deleted scene only has a home on the DVD, and Richard Parker remains dead. Given the audience's reaction to the mystery, Sony probably won't be calling Scott again for any flashbacks, like the random one that begins The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and reveals Richard Parker as a man who will fight to the death to keep his laptop standing upright.
