Warning: Spoilers for Spider-Man: Homecoming are discussed in this intro and interview.
WithSpider-Man: Homecomingnow playing around the world, it’s finally time to post my spoiler-filled interview with directorJon Watts. During the conversation, Watts talked about what he learned from early screenings, the deleted scenes, how they decided on the final after-credits scene, if he’s coming back for the sequel, the final scene with Aunt May discovering Peter Parker was Spider-Man, and a lot more. In addition, Watts revealed some of the cool extras coming on theSpider-Man: HomecomingBlu-ray like more Captain America PSAs, more of Peter Parker’s behind-the-scenes journey at the beginning of the film, and more withMartin Starras Peter’s teacher Mr. Harrington.
As most of you know,Spider-Man: Homecomingtakes place after the events ofCaptain America: Civil Warand features Peter Parker trying to adjust to life back in High School while trying to be more than just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. The film also starsRobert Downey Jr.,Jon Favreau, Zendaya,Jacob Batalon,Laura Harrier, Michael Keaton,Bokeem Woodbine,Donald Glover,Hannibal Buress,Abraham Attah,Tony Revolori,Michael Barbieri, andAngourie Rice. For more on the film,read Matt Goldberg’s review.
As a long-time Spider-Man fan that grew up reading all the comics, I’m happy to reportSpider-Man: Homecomingis everything I wanted it to be and so much more. Not only does it have a great script, fantastic action, and perfect casting, it captures what it would really be like to be 15 years old and fighting crime without enough life experience. Also, while Marvel makes some great movies, I think we can all agree the weak link is some of the antagonists. That’s not the case with Michael Keaton’s Vulture. He’s a great three-dimensional villain where you can understand his motivations and empathize with what he’s trying to do. Trust me, there is no way you seeSpider-Man: Homecomingand walk out disappointed.
Check out what Jon Watts had to say below.
Collider: Congratulations.
JON WATTS: Thank you.
WATTS: Yeah, did you?
Yeah, it’s so great.
WATTS: Are you a Spider-Man fan?
I am, yeah. I had a very good time with this film.
WATTS: Awesome.
I want to start with an editing room questions first…What did you learn from friends and family screenings that impacted the finished film?
WATTS: That’s a good question. Well, the first thing that you learn is… Okay, that is gonna work. Because the biggest thing you’re trying to establish, first of all, is the tone of the movie, and that’s the… You have an idea of what the tone should be when you’re making it, but it really is so many different ingredients that you’re collecting on set and you’re just trying to find the right balance in the edit. I was really lucky, my editor is Dan Lebental who didIron ManandAnt Man, and so he knows this world. He didThor, too, I think. The biggest thing in the director’s screening was just, “Oh. Okay, good. This works. People like the tone. People like the humor.”
Who did you have in that first screening?
WATTS: First, we screened for the Marvel and Sony gang, and then you have just a focus test screening and see what people think. And the film’s not substantially different from the director’s cut, honestly. Like, most of it was in place and then it just became a matter of tweaking things to verify everything was clear and… Yeah, it was a fun process. Like, I’ve never been able to do this before.
Yeah. Well, you had a little more money to spend.
WATTS: Yeah, and being able to have a captive audience to try different things out on. I used it almost as like an experimental process, where you would just try slightly different timing on a punch line or different set up and things like that to see what played better. It’s like building a ride.
Absolutely. How long was your first cut compared to the finished film?
WATTS: I think my first cut was a little bit shorter than the finished film.
Oh, so they said to you, “You need to add back to it.”
WATTS: Yeah, I’m pretty ruthless as an editor so it wasn’t like the four and a half hour director’s cut. Like, I wanted to get the director’s cut as close as possible to what I thought the finished movie should be. As opposed to it being just everything.
Obviously fans love seeing extras, so did you have a lot of deleted scenes or no?
WATTS: No. There’s very few deleted scenes. I’m trying to think ‘cause we put them all together on the DVD for the DVD features, but no, nothing… No big scene was cut out, it was more just figuring out how long or how short it should be. There was maybe like one or two quick check ins with Michael Keaton that were redundant, and there was one check in with Aunt May that was redundant that we got rid of, but-
You’re talking about three to five minutes of deleted scenes or are we talking shorter or longer?
WATTS: What I’m very excited about for the deleted scenes is that I had all these great improv actors and they all built their own characters, especially Martin Starr, who plays Mr. Harrington.
He’s so awesome.
WATTS: He’s so awesome, and I would just… You need him to say one line or do like a reaction shot or something like that. That’s all you really need for the scene, but because he’s so good I just let it play out and I have a whole story that’s just about him and his ex-wife and how much he loves being a teacher and it’s like this whole other movie that is happening parallel toSpiderman Homecoming. You know, you want all of your characters to be so fleshed out that they have their whole own life, and he would just… He just prepared his own sort of story arc, and so as we were editing we just had a separate timeline of the Mr. Harrington story.
Wait, so is that like a whole thing on the Blu-ray?
WATTS: Yeah.
What is it exactly? Do you have like a separate movie almost of him?
WATTS: Yeah… Well, I mean it’s like five minutes long, but it’s like its own little… It unintentionally led to it being its own little short film.
That sounds awesome just because he’s so great in the movie.
WATTS: He’s so great.
Getting back to my thing-
WATTS: Sorry, it’s a total tangent.
I loved his character. Do you think it’s like three to five minutes of deleted scenes or more?
WATTS: Let me think. That’s probably like five minutes. There’s more Captain America videos than what you see in the movie… So we have a lot more of those. There’s an extended Donald Glover scene, which is nice, people will like that. Yeah, there should be quite a bit.
I want to talk about the Captain America stuff anyway: How many of those other PSAs are on the Blu-ray?
WATTS: So many. We put it together like it was the actual DVD that they show at the school, so it just is clicking from one to another to another.
That’s hysterical.
WATTS: ‘Cause I just wrote pages of them ‘cause I had Chris Evans for however amount of time, so I just feed him… I think we had a teleprompter actually, so he was just… It’s was like Captain America just showed up and had to do this stuff for the government.
Right, it’s great.
WATTS: He’s just reading it off the scrolling thing and be like, “Are you sure you want me to say this?”
One of my favorite of the after the credits scenes of all the Marvel movies is your last one in this movie.
WATTS: Really?
I love it so much.
WATTS: I was worried that people would be mad.
No, everyone’s laughing.
WATTS: Okay good.
I wanted to know, did you always think that that one was gonna be-
WATTS: No.
When did you decide that was gonna be the last thing you saw at the end of the credits.
WATTS: Late in the process. I was mainly focused on the movie. And we had some potential ideas for what the tags would be, but pretty late in the process I think the editor and I were just going through some of those… And I don’t remember whose idea it was, actually, to put that as the last one.
I think we … I remember making it up on set too. When we were shooting, Eric Carroll, one of the Marvel producers and I just started laughing about, “What if we did one about patience and make that be a final thing.” I don’t want to give that away, but-
It’s all right. I’m gonna run some of this after release.
WATTS: Yeah. It was just kind of an in the moment joke thing that ended up working really well.
In the movie, all together there’s three of them, I think, three or four… On the Blu-ray, do you have like 10? Do you have-
WATTS: Yeah, at least.
Oh, really? So it’s a lot.
WATTS: I think… Yeah, it’s like it’s clicking through a DVD.
WATTS: But you see the DVD menu and you see them select play all and then you see it skip to the next one, so you don’t see the full presentation, you just see the seven.
Oh, I get it. And you’re saying that’s like five, ten minutes?
WATTS: I think that one’s probably… They’re just little snip-its, so that’s probably a couple minutes.
Yeah, I’m all in on that.
WATTS: Oh, and we also have… I don’t know if this is supposed to be a secret, if I’m not supposed to give this away, but I really love them. We also have so much more of Peter’s behind the scene’s footage.
Oh, from the camera stuff.
Is that a whole separate, ‘nother, short film type thing?
WATTS: It’s more just like the extended … His extended day and night in Germany.
I get it. And that’s like another bit on the Blu-ray.
That also played like gang busters. During the press conference, basically I’m watching you and Kevin [Feige] talk, and Amy [Pascal], and I’m realizing that you are doing the sequel because it’s right there on the press conference, you guys haven’t sent out the press release yet, so when you are guys announcing that you’re doing the sequel?
WATTS: I don’t think we talk about anything until after the movie comes out. I just sort of-
It’s very obvious, and then I just spoke to Kevin and Amy and I said to them, “When are you announcing that Jon’s coming back?” And they just laugh and they go, “It’s our intention for Jon to be doing the sequel.” And I’m like, “Okay.”
WATTS: I’ll wait for them to ask me.
To be clear, has Sony/Marvel asked you to do the sequel or is it sort of like it’s everyone’s on the same page?
WATTS: I think everyone’s on the same page.
Okay. ‘Cause they seem very-
WATTS: I don’t like talking about anything until like the movie comes out, yeah.
Sure. I would imagine when you signed on a lot of the directors when they sign on-
WATTS: Yeah, I think I’m signed on for two movies.
Well, that was what I was gonna say, it’s like… It used to be the actors were the only ones that got multi picture deals, and now it’s also directors where everyone is signing on for…
WATTS: Yeah. Yeah.
I think that the Spider-Man being in high school is great because the best stories are when he’s in high school, so assuming you were to do say a Spider-Man trilogy: the intention is sophomore year, junior year, senior year?
WATTS: That’s one idea for sure. I think that would be great.
I do, too.
WATTS: It’s really cool to do like a Harry Potter evolution because you’re able to really take your time with the character development, really like don’t rush past the implications of great power and great responsibility. Like, really let that be complicated and grow Peter to be the best superhero of all time. Because Spider-Man is the best superhero of all time and I would like to take the time to show people why.
Tom [Holland] told me that they start filming the sequel middle of next year, and Amy and Kevin said that pre-production begins real soon, and then it goes like the filming is like April or May of next year, so are you prepared for-
Right, I was gonna say … ‘Cause there’s almost no break. It’s almost like you’re gonna have a few weeks to just get your shit together, and then jump right back on in.
WATTS: Yeah. If that is the case..
Hypothetically, if you were coming back for the sequel…
WATTS: It would be fun. It’s like you’re so in it, you’re so in this world that a little bit of time to pause and reflect and see what people like, and then just jump back in it. I need to figure out what happens inInfinity War, that’d probably be the first thing. Just call Joe [Russo], “Hey, so ahhhh…”
But isn’t it also… Like, ‘cause you’ve put your heart and soul into the movie and it’s like it has to be re-invigorating or even more everything with seeing the positive reaction. Doesn’t that sort of energize you on a whole ‘nother level?
WATTS: It’s a huge relief.
Oh, so it’s not even energizing, it’s just relief.
WATTS: Yeah. Right now it just feels like a long exhale. Because it’s really… Big movie or small movie, you make this thing and then you show it to people and you just hope they like it. You hope it works. You hope… I was saying before, it’s like building a ride. You hope people enjoy the ride and don’t throw up or get hurt.
Absolutely. I definitely have to touch on, and this is gonna run after release… You end the movie with May and Peter in a scene together that is a holy shit moment. Was it always the intention for that to happen or was that a debated scene?
WATTS: No, that was always the intention, weirdly. Like, I don’t know why… I don’t remember exactly when it was brought up, but it was the same thing as the twist, it was like, “Yes, this is… No one is gonna be expecting that.”
Yes, that’s true.
WATTS: “And it’s gonna be a complicated thing to deal with. I have no idea how we’re gonna deal with it, but we’ll figure that out later.” But, yeah. Kevin told me the story, it was the same with the ending ofIron Man1 where they were like, “Are we really gonna do this?” “Like, are we really just gonna have him tell everyone?” It was like, “I guess so.” I don’t know. If you get excited and nervous in the room as the creators, like that’s gonna get people excited and nervous in the theater.
Because obviously they’re thinking about this as like a trilogy, is there an element of, “We already know in the back of our brain where this dynamic is gonna go in the future movies.” Or is it sort of like “Let’s just do this and then let’s figure it out after the movie’s done.”
WATTS: It’s totally one movie at a time as opposed to just I feel like getting ahead of yourself. If you’re spending your whole movie setting up a bunch of things that are gonna happen later, you know, you’ve forgot the most important thing, which is to make a movie. To me at least, it was just about making this movie be as good as possible. If the world ended tomorrow, this would be a great, satisfying movie.
One of the things this movie does not have is Spider-Man having a spider sense. And I’m curious, was it always … For me, I’m watching it I’m like, “Oh, I’m wondering if they’re gonna pay this off as this is a power that comes as he has his powers longer.”
WATTS: Yeah, possibly. The idea was, again, just you want to make this movie be less about things you’ve already seen before, and you’ve definitely already seen a spider sense sequence done extremely well in Mark [Webb]’s and [Sam] Raimi’s movies.
But is that also like a power that also in essence doesn’t make sense? Like, him having the spider sense is… Do you know what I mean? ‘Cause it’s more realistic for him not to have that.
WATTS: Or it could be something that develops over time or we can do it in a different way. Like, it’s something that seemed like maybe there’s a cool thing to do with that eventually, but let’s not crowd this movie with something we’ve already seen before. And that could be … I’m just making things up right now, but it could be something like you’re saying that develops over time.
I gotta go, but that’s what I was thinking is that maybe as he has his powers longer that all of a sudden he grows into it.
WATTS: Yeah, ‘cause you don’t have to do it all in the first act. You know?
