Live Magazine June Issue 2017 June July Magazine Spiderman | Page 42

Spider-Man in action that
suits your personality but
still has that kind of elasticity
and nimbleness that’s maybe
a little different than other
superheroes?
Watts: I wanted it to always
again be grounded in a way
where I only wanted to shoot
shots that you could actually
shoot, like there’s no video
game camera flying around do-
ing impossible things. For me,
it has to always be within the
realm of, you could shoot this
with a drone, you could shoot
this with a 100 foot technocrane
– that was always an essential
part of creating the visual lan-
guage for this. We had to keep
it as realistic as possible. What
Spider-Man can do is more than
what a human being can do.
So you do some crazy things,
but he can’t break the laws of
physics. And a big part of what
we’re doing is being really rig-
orous about making sure this
stuff feels as real as possible.
Q: What sort of discoveries
did you and Tom make to-
gether in terms of Spider-Man
as he’s playing the character
and you’re directing him?
Watts: We learned to have a lot
of fun with it and with the block-
ing. Some of the moments have
a very sort of Michael J. Fox
feeling about it – Tom has that
Marty McFly [from Back To The
Future] spirit in a way that’s
amazing, or like Tom Cruise in
Risky Business, just that twin-
kle in his eye. But he’s still a
kid and he’s ready for bigger
and better things – but he still
has to get to like his chemistry
class on time. So we had a lot
of fun with that and found a lot
of humor in those moments and
that’s something that we would
work on together.
Q: What, if anything, really
surprised you about Tom’s
performance?
Watts: Do you know what
caught me off guard? I mean,
he’s so amazing and charm-
ing and talented, but he’s also
such a precise technical actor
and you don’t ever encounter a
20-year-old that has that kind
of training and precision. I don’t
know if it’s training, I don’t know
if it’s just natural, but it was
amazing. He could hit his marks
perfectly. He could just do slight
tweaks to his performance to
dial it up and dial it down. And
it was amazing. That’s like hav-
ing a precision instrument – as
a director that’s so satisfying.
It’s like Tom, can you do that
again five percent less excited
and can you rotate your mark
20 degrees counterclockwise?
And he’d be like, “alright,” and
he could do it. I love compli-
cated camera moves and long
tracking shots and things like
that, so to be able to do that
with an actor who can hit all
those marks is like a dream
come true. It makes it so much
easier for me.
Q: How difficult was it to cre-
ate a story that is self-con-
tained and satisfying by itself
without telegraphing ele-
ments that might be relevant
in future stories?
Watts: What’s great about Spi-
der-Man is that all that stuff is
already happening, and then
Spider-Man is just in that world.
I thanked [director] Joe Russo
recently for making all of the
serious, complicated movies so
that I could then come in and
make the Spider-Man one that
has fun in the sandbox that
[those] guys have all created.
Q: How did you develop the
relationship with Tony Stark,
as his mentor?
Watts: It’s interesting because
it’s part of Tony’s journey. He
picked Peter, he introduced Pe-
ter to this world and now he’s
dealing with the implications
and responsibility of that. And
then Happy Hogan is sort of the
intermediary between the two
of them. I think of Happy as be-
ing the annoying older brother
who Peter thinks is an obstacle
between him getting to talk to
Tony. An d Tony is sort of the re-
luctant mentor who picked him
when he was in a jam, and now
looks up to him like, what next?
He’s like oh, right, I’ve got to
do something about this. It’s a
really funny place to put Tony
into.
Q: Tony is a bells and whis-
tles guy when it comes to his
inventions. But Peter is him-
self an inventor. Was there a
balance that you had to strike