Spider-Man: Homecoming Director Explains New Technique For Filming Webslinging

Sorry Superman, with your flights in your tights. Move over Batman, climbing up walls with grappling hooks. Perhaps the coolest-looking way for a superhero to get around is Spider-Man with his webslinging. The effect of him thwipping through New York has been achieved brilliantly throughout Sam Raimi’s trilogy and Marc Webb’s movies and that will hopefully continue in Spider-Man: Homecoming. 

We have no reason to think that it won’t, but in a recent interview, director Jon Watts has revealed that he took a different approach to it compared to previous Spider-films. Speaking to Den Of Geek, Watts talked about his desire to make Spidey’s webslinging feel “real,” which inspired him to use only practical equipment to capture it:

“Yeah, I wanted it to always be shot as if it was real, you know? If you actually had a Spider-Man who could do all of this stuff, you know, you would shoot it with actual equipment.

So, it’s really cool to do that [the swoopy camera]. I always call it the Peter Jackson camera moves, where the camera is going like ten thousand miles. But I didn’t want to do that for this, because I wanted to keep it all as grounded as possible. So, whether it was shooting with a drone camera or a helicopter or a cable-cam, or even just handheld, up on a roof chasing after him, I wanted it to feel like we were there with him, and everything was something you could actually film.”

Watts’ comments gel with the whole ethos of Spider-Man: Homecoming and the MCU’s portrayal of Peter Parker. In hiring a younger actor and a more diverse supporting cast, the movie is clearly aiming to capture a more realistic experience of life as a teenager in modern-day NYC. Just, you know, with added superpowers.

Spider-Man: Homecoming arrives in cinemas today, July 5th, in the UK. It will then swing into US theaters on July 7th.