MOVIES Watts leaps into action
Marvel plucks director from indie ranks to make Spider-Man blockbuster
It’s been a wild ride for film director Jon Watts. Tasked with bringing everyone’s favourite web-slinger to the big screen in Spider-Man: Homecoming, Watts has entered the swirling $11.7 billion US-grossing maelstrom of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“I tried to not think about it while I was making Homecoming so I wouldn’t freak myself out,” said Watts, laughing into the phone from New York City. “Once this is over, maybe then. It will be nice to have a moment to take stock and appreciate everything and how absurd it is.”
“Absurd” is one word for the surreal whirlwind leap Watts has taken from the independent film world to the studio blockbuster machine. This week, a few days after his 36th birthday, the writer and director will open Spider-Man: Homecoming, in which the popular comic book hero becomes part of the highest-grossing film franchise in history. It is Watts’s third feature film.
With a budget of $175 million, it cost 35 times more than the indie that landed him on the radar of Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige two years ago.
It was Cop Car, a modest thriller about auto-stealing kids on the lam from an evil lawman, played by Kevin Bacon, that got him in the door at Marvel. Watts had no idea then that those first meetings would land him the biggest opportunity of his career.
“I was excited just to go to Marvel,” Watts said. “I kept my drive-on pass, it was such an exciting thing. Do you remember that Simpsons episode where Bart goes to the Mad magazine headquarters in New York? That’s what I felt like it was going to be like: You walk in, there’s Iron Man making coffee.”
The Colorado native had a background in music videos, commercials and comedy with episodes of the Onion News Network and Clown, a little-seen Eli Roth horror movie, under his belt. But he’d also been developing a coming-of-age script based on his own childhood, which, he now says, placed him in the right mindset to reimagine Peter Parker as a 16-year-old junior superhero, wrestling with his still-developing powers after getting a taste of the big time in Captain America: Civil War.
The first thing Watts did to find a new way into the character? He re-read the Spider-Man comics, starting with his introduction in the August 1962 issue of Marvel Comics’ Amazing Fantasy.
“That was the best thing I could have done, because it revealed to me what was so exceptional about Spider-Man in the first place,” Watts said. “What people forget is that Stan Lee and Steve Ditko created him and introduced him into a huge world of superheroes that they had already been building. The idea was, let’s get a regular kid’s take on all of this, let’s have a new perspective.”
Watts and his onscreen Spidey, British actor Tom Holland, then 19, bonded quickly.
Watts went to Atlanta to watch Holland film his scene-stealing cameo in Civil War,a pivotal screen introduction that won over fans and critics and set the stage for Homecoming, the first of three contracted films Holland has reportedly signed on for.
“What was great was that we were both total greenhorns. Neither one of us has been in this situation before,” Watts said. “He’s never been the lead of a movie, let alone a huge summer franchise tentpole. I’ve never directed something of this scale, either.”
With a youthful new star taking on the Peter Parker role and one of the franchise’s youngest directors at the helm, Homecoming brims with a buoyant energy absent from previous MCU instalments. The film begins with a replay of Peter’s Captain America: Civil War airport battle as seen through his millennial eyes — i.e., captured on his smartphone, a detail partly inspired by Holland’s own antics.
“When Tom got the job I was looking at his Instagram and he was already filming everything he does,” Watts explained. “He’s trying to get the job by filming himself doing backflips in his backyard, and that idea definitely originated somewhere around there — he’s filming everything, so Peter should be doing the same.”
When Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and his driver Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) drop Peter back home with his new SpiderMan suit and a pat on the head, the eager web-slinger yearns to graduate from friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man to Avenger big leagues. He is also dealing with the agony of teenage life as a science nerd with a crush on a girl (Laura Harrier) who is trying to fend off the school bully (Tony Revolori), compete on the school’s academic decathlon squad and keep his best friend (Jacob Batalon) from spilling his secret identity to the world.
“I watched all the Marvel movies from the beginning sequentially with the idea in mind of, ‘Where is Spider-Man in this world?’ ” Watts said.
Filming began a year ago at Pinewood Studios in Atlanta before production moved to New York City, where it wrapped a little more than three months later.
A modest schedule for a blockbuster, it was a marathon compared with Watts’ previous films. “Eighty shooting days is almost more shooting days than I’ve ever had in my life,” he said.