Spider-Man 4 must be a piece of cake compared to No Way Homeʼs phenomenal success but Jon Watts still comes to the rescue with an advice or two.

In the world of comic book movies, there has never been a stranger relationship than the one between Jon Watts and Spider-Man. One of the most critically as well as commercially favored and strongest IPs of Marvel Comics, Spider-Man’s entry into the MCU was placed in the hands of a creator with the strangest IMDb credits under his directorial section.

Known for directing music videos, shorts, a claymation movie, and television series, Watts couldn’t have been placed at a more substantial position and with a more high-risk, high-reward IP than directing Spider-Man’s first debut under the Marvel banner after the controversial 12-year-long saga at Sony.

And yet, Kevin Feige’s bargain paid off, and Jon Watt’s debut in the MCU with Spider-Man: Homecoming scored high among critics and audiences.

As the director finally steps back from his MCU duties, it might finally be clear as to why Watts succeeded in creating a mega-successful CBM trilogy whereas most experienced directors like Peyton Reed (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania) and Taika Waititi (Thor: Love and Thunder) failed spectacularly.

Director Jon Watts Reveals Spider-Man’s Trade Secret

In an age where AI, CGI, and VFX strike terror in the audience’s heart, the director of Marvel’s rare Phase Four blockbuster Spider-Man: No Way Home, Jon Watts, arrives equipped with the strangest tale about ropes and monkeys. In hindsight, it was perhaps his preconceived approach to the MCU that helped Watts get it right on his first foray into the genre of comic book movies after coming from a world of commercials and claymation.

In an interview with Collider at Mexico City CCXP, Jon Watts revealed the biggest trick to approaching a Spider-Man film that also serves as advice to the director who takes up the baton for the highly-anticipated and highly-coveted MCU sequel:

“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. 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. That’s my advice to the next Spider-Man director.”

Green-lit by Marvel Studios, Tom Holland’s Spider-Man 4 will be the first time the web-slinger gets a fourth outing in the comic book industry. The fourth film will finally lift the curse of the web-slinger that hexed the IP to always be limited to 3 (or fewer) movies.

Marvel Studios Update on Tom Holland’s Spider-Man 4

After a long and winding battle with Sony over the rights of the uber-successful Spider-Man franchise at Marvel and Tom Holland’s existential crisis over his age in correlation to playing a teenage superhero for a billion-dollar franchise, the studio finally assured fans about Spider-Man 4 being in the works. 

In an April 2024 interview with Deadline, Holland claimed: “The simple answer is that I’ll always want to do Spider-Man films. I owe my life and career to Spider-Man. So the simple answer is yes. I’ll always want to do more. 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.”

Keeping track of all the recent happenings in and around Marvel, it is highly likely that the studio will want a more grassroots-level and neighborhood-friendly outing after a multiversal feast in the third feature. Donald Glover’s Prowler, who made his debut in Homecoming and followed up in Sony’s Across the Spider-Verse, may be the antagonist of the fourth film.

Marvel Studios has not yet announced the cast and release date for Spider-Man 4 although Tom Holland and Zendaya are expected to return as leads.