Just as we were all getting used to the idea of Jesse Eisenberg playing Lex Luthor in Batman vs. Superman, an even weirder villain casting is announced. The Office's B.J. Novak will appear in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 as Alistair Skye, according to a tweet from the film's director, Mark Webb. In the comic series, Alistair is the son of Spencer Smythe, who created robots called Spider-Slayers and was killed in the process. Alistair himself is in a wheelchair in some editions of the comic and takes over his father's mission. He also looks absolutely nothing like Novak.
At least in the case of Eisenberg, he had already played a selfish millionaire. Novak doesn't have anything like this to pull from—unless you think what Ryan did to Kelly was really, really bad. Since The Office, Novak has appeared in Saving Mr. Banks, The Mindy Project and The Internship. Still no villains.
Although, Novak's Skye might not get too much screen time, since The Amazing Spider-Man 2 already has quite a few villains, including Jamie Foxx's Electro, Paul Giamatti's Rhino, Chris Copper's Norman Osborn and Dane DeHaan returning as Harry Osborn, who will likely become the Green Goblin in this movie.
Maybe Skye is being setup for a larger role in the already-planned Amazing Spider-Man 3 , in which case, Novak would be an even weirder choice since he doesn't exactly bring name recognition. For the villains of the next round of superhero films, it might be harder to impress the audience than to fight the heroes.
