Wild ride for young ‘Spider-man’ director
Tasked with bringing everyone’s favorite web-slinger to the big screen in “Spider-man: Homecoming,”
Jon Watts has entered the swirling $11.7 billion-grossing maelstrom of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
And as every super hero knows, with great power …
“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 in the middle of the most intensive media tour of his young career. “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. Just a few days after his 36th birthday, the writer and director opened “Spider-man: Homecoming” in which the most popular comic book hero of all time officially becomes part of the highest-grossing film franchise in history.
It is Watts’ third feature film.
And with a budget of $175 million, it cost 35 times more than the indie that landed him on Kevin Feige’s radar two years ago.
That was “Cop Car,” a modest Sundance 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.
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 iconic character? 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,” he said.
Watts and his onscreen Spidey, British actor Tom Holland, then 19, landed their life-changing gigs around the same time and bonded quickly.
Watts traveled 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.
“Whatwasgreatwasthat we were both total greenhorns. Neither one of us has been in this situation before,” said Watts. “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 the previous MCU installments. 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 Spider-man suit and a pat on the head, the eager web-slinger yearns to graduate from friendly neighborhood Spider-man to Avenger big leagues.