From the moment the ‘Queens’ title card popped up during Captain America: Civil War, fans have been dying to see Spider-Man’s corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe come to life. After years of being out on his own, Spidey is now back in the bosom of Marvel – even if they are having to share him with Sony. We sat down with the Spider-Man: Homecoming director Jon Watts to get the inside scoop on how Homecoming came together.
“When [Spider-Man] was introduced in the comics it was to give a different perspective on this crazy superhero universe that they’d been building at Marvel, to give just a regular person’s ground-level perspective,” Watts explains.
“And that’s what made Spider-Man pop back then, and what made him so great and relatable and iconic from the moment he was introduced. So to now have him back in the universe, to have that ‘Queens’ title pop up, you get to see Spider-Man’s perspective on all the insane events of Civil War.”
But while Watts had a very clear take on how he would approach Spider-Man, he never really thought that he’d actually be sat in the director’s chair – not least because this is by far the biggest movie he’s ever made.
“I don’t know exactly how I got [the directing gig], but it started off just as a general meeting at Marvel, not about anything in particular. They had seen Cop Car and I guess wanted to meet me. In the meeting they told me that they were in the process of being able to bring Spider-Man back into the Marvel universe and he was going to be in the new Captain America movie and then they were going to potentially be working with Sony to do more Spider-Man movies.”
One meeting turned into multiple meetings, and “every time I’d come back there’d be more people in the room, people from Sony, people from Marvel. I didn’t think I was going to get it at all, I just kept going back and would make a mood reel, fake trailer kind of thing, I was storyboarding sequences, I was really going to go down swinging. But I really didn’t think I was going to get it until the very, very end.”
Homecoming is a huge deal for both Sony and Marvel – but, amazingly, Watts doesn’t seem to have felt much pressure to keep both sides happy.
“I just focused on being the biggest fan I could, and then making something I want to see. I think if I had stopped and thought about the size of it I might have freaked out,” he laughs. “At the end of the day no matter how big the movie it, it still boils down to just what elements are going to be in that frame. And that really helps give you perspective and stay focused. That’s what’s so nice about making a movie. Just look through that frame. Everything else that’s outside of that frame, for that moment, doesn’t matter.”
Spider-Man: Homecoming is in cinemas from 5 July. Get all the latest superhero news with every issue of SciFiNow.
