Speaking of villains, being the director of the first installment and doing such a good job, how do you feel about all these upcoming villain spinoff films?
Jon Watts: You mean on the Sony side?
Yeah, do you get a bit precious about it and want to be involved with them and how do you see films like Venom tying into the Homecoming world?
Jon Watts: Those aren’t technically in the Marvel Universe so I don’t think they’d crossover in that way. My experience with this has been that the Russo Brothers set up Spider-Man in the Marvel Universe and they did a lot of the hard work in finding Tom Holland, establishing the dynamic between him and Tony Stark and building the new suit. I just got to take that and then have fun with it.
So I feel a different kind of responsibility. But for me, it’s really just been focused on this movie and making it as good as it can be. I think the danger in trying to set too many things up or do too much world building in a movie so soon is you forget to actually make a movie. I just wanted to make sure this movie was great and stood on its own.
With that being the case, and I’m going to use a Spider-Man adjective, the film is sensational! Will we see you back for the second?
Jon Watts: I’d like to!
It’s been the tradition so far in Spider-Man films, Raimi on the first three and Webb on the two Amazing films. It kind of makes sense.
Jon Watts: I would love to. I feel like Tom Holland and I built something pretty fun together and I do feel like we are just getting started in terms of where Spider-Man can go and how he fits into this world and what sorts of adventures he’s going to go on. So yeah, I’d love to.
Which villain would you want to take on next?
Jon Watts: I don’t know. I really haven’t thought yet about anything other than this movie.
I’m going to throw a name at you.
Jon Watts: Oh, yeah? Who do you like?
This is just because of the film you made Clown. I’m thinking maybe someone like The Chameleon? Hasn’t been done yet.
Jon Watts: Yeah, Chameleon’s cool. I wonder is it that cool of an ability nowadays? Like, we’d have to come up with a way to make him to be more than just that. But Chameleon is great and he’s also one of the earlier day villains. I mainly focused on the bad villains as just a joke because there are so many really silly guys. Like Big Wheel. [laughs] So I’ve kind of done the wrong research so far in who the next villain could be. Swarm… [laughs]
I was also thinking Morbius?
Jon Watts: Morbius is kind of cool!
But then I wasn’t sure of the tone of the character.
Jon Watts: The tone of the character is pretty dark but the vampire/Marvel Universe thing is pretty cool. Could get Blade to show up, too? That’d be neat.
That concludes our interview, but many thanks to Jon Watts for his time. Don’t miss Spider-Man: Homecoming when it opens in theatres everywhere on July 7th!