Jon Watts Has Advice for Spider-Man 4 Director

The Spider-Man trilogy filmmaker gives "a very practical bit" of advice for Sony and Marvel's Spider-Man 4 director.

By Cameron Bonomolo

Spider-Man can swing from a thread, but the web-slinger shouldn't. Jon Watts, who directed Sony and Marvel Studios' Spider-Man trilogy starring Tom Holland as the web-swinging superhero, imparted his advice for the next filmmaker to take a swing at the in-the-works Spider-Man 4: Don't do practical wire work.

"I have a very practical bit of Spider-Man advice, and I think every Spider-Man director goes through it. It doesn't look good when someone is just swinging on a rope," Watts told Collider. "You think you're gonna go in there, you're like, 'We're gonna do it all practical. We're gonna get a stuntman. We're gonna be swinging around.' It's boring. It looks dumb."

"It looks like a monkey swinging on a vine when you put someone on just a rope. Don't waste your time," Watts added. "That's my advice to the next Spider-Man director." 

Watts' Spider-Man trilogy — 2017's Spider-Man: Homecoming, 2019's Spider-Man: Far From Home, and 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home — had its share of practical stunt and wire work, but the last Spidey movie to utilize "real" web-swinging was 2012's The Amazing Spider-Man. ("It was a combination of a lot of human skills and mechanical engineering," stunt coordinator Andy Armstrong explained about using wires, rigs, harnesses, and machinery — rather than just computers and CGI — to realize Spider-Man's more realistic swings.)

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Sony Pictures is still searching for its Spider-Man 4 director, with Justin Lin (Fast Five), Drew Goddard (The Cabin in the Woods), and Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves) among the rumored contenders. In April, Holland said he'll "always want to do more" Spider-Man movies and revealed that work is underway on the fourth movie's story. 

"We have the best in the business working toward whatever the story might be. But until we've cracked it, we have a legacy to protect. The third movie was so special in so many ways that we need to make sure we do the right thing," Holland said. "This is the first time in this process that I've been part of the creative so early. It's just a process where I'm watching and learning. It's just a really fun stage for me... Everyone wants it to happen. But we want to make sure we're not overdoing the same things."

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