When you're getting to do what you want to do, you just assume you're going to hit a point where someone is like, 'No, you can't do that.' Strangely, that never happened.
— Jon Watts
It's such an amazing team working with both Marvel and Sony, and I have the support of just the very best technicians in the world.
I'd been writing my own coming-of-age story, and I got to take a lot of that energy and a lot of those moments and themes that I wanted to explore in a much smaller film and then apply them to 'Spider-Man: Homecoming.'
I think it would be great to have more female directors making huge-budget movies.
Peter Parker is sort of our ground-level view of this Marvel universe. You know what it's like to be in the penthouse with Tony Stark or have this god-like view like Thor, and I want to show what it's like for regular people in this world.
I feel like what we've done in 'Homecoming' is really scratching the surface with Spider-Man.
It's just this feeling of when you're a kid, you have these ideas about the world and about people in your life that don't always hold up as you get older and start to realise that things are more complex than you might've realised. That's always a big part of a coming-of-age story.
There's so many great coming-of-age movies to steal from, and I feel like I just tried to steal from them all equally.
'The Onion' is an amazing place to work because it's a bunch of really smart, collaborative writers who aren't afraid to try crazy things.
I had no problem relating to Peter Parker. He feels like he might be in way over his head but is desperate to prove himself.
What I love about movies is, no matter how many people are involved or how complicated the process is, at the end of the day, it's just what's inside of that frame. It's going to be people sitting in a movie theater watching one shot at a time. And that's my focus.
I loved the idea of Spider-Man as a kid, and I loved the Todd MacFarlane run in the 1990s, and the first Raimi movies were released when I was in film school. Those were big.
If Spider-Man is your ground level superhero, I wanted to come up with a ground-level villain. I wanted to figure out if I could turn a regular guy into a super-villain.
I think saying 'a John Hughes movie' is just shorthand for a lot of people to say 'a coming-of-age story,' because I think, when you're of a certain age, that's what John Hughes means to you.
It doesn't matter whose idea it is or where it came from or when it arrived in the process. The best idea is the best idea no matter what.
There are so many great John Hughes movies covering so many different genres. You can pull so much from him.
My friends and I have always been trying to make movies, at every moment. We've tried so many different angles and approaches. But when it happens, it happens, and you just run with it.
I wouldn't say that I was a Spider-Man super fan.
Have you ever seen the video of the kid with the Spider-Man pinata? He just sets the stick down, walks over, and gives the Spider-Man pinata a hug. He doesn't want to hurt his Spider-Man. He loves him! And I think that's a universal feeling towards Spider-Man. You just can't help but love him.
