Quotes from Jon Watts

I love 'River's Edge.'

Since being at Marvel, I've been watching everything over and over and over again, all the movies, and seeing how all the movies connect has been very satisfying for me.

Film is a temporal medium as much as it is a visual medium: you're playing with time, and you don't have that ability where someone can pause at home. That's such a fundamental part of what makes filmmaking exciting to me. I don't really have as much interest in any other medium. I just like the control.

It's all about making an experience. You go to the movies to see something you've never seen before. You want to get different people out there with different voices. So you see awesome huge spectacle or just a small unbelievable story you've never seen before.

When we were kids, we would just go walking: just walk in a direction and hope that you were gonna find a crashed alien spaceship or buried pirate's treasure or something like that. You never did. You'd find, like, a coyote skeleton, something like that. That was the most exciting thing you'd ever find.

Have you ever seen the video of the kid with the Spider-Man pinata? He just sets the stick down, walks over, and gives the Spider-Man pinata a hug. He doesn't want to hurt his Spider-Man. He loves him! And I think that's a universal feeling towards Spider-Man. You just can't help but love him.

Big movie or small movie, you make this thing, and then you show it to people, and you just hope they like it. You hope it works.

Sundance is like a genre.

I wouldn't say that I was a Spider-Man super fan.

I love Cameron Crowe's 'Say Anything' and 'Almost Famous.' I think those are really great coming-of-age movies.

What's nice about having kids close to the age they're playing is that you can actually capture awkwardness.

I wouldn't say I was a massive comic fan growing up, just because I now know people that really are, and I would never claim to be in that same category.

That's why people love Spider-Man: he's the most grounded, relatable of superheroes.

I feel like what we've done in 'Homecoming' is really scratching the surface with Spider-Man.

It's really cool to do, like, a 'Harry Potter' evolution because you can really take your time with the character development: really, like, don't rush past the implications of great power and great responsibility.

'Cop Car' was made with all of my friends. I wrote it with my best friend.

Talking to someone you have a crush on is as scary as fighting a super-villain.

I was definitely the kid who was the chicken, who didn't want to say the cuss words.

We always talked about the sequel to 'Clown' being called 'Clowns,' like an 'Alien'/'Aliens' sorta thing, where you have multiple clowns. And just really make it, in the way that 'Aliens' was an action movie, do the same thing. Action-horror. That would be great.

'Welcome to the Dollhouse' is great. Even though it's about a girl in middle school, to me, that feels like the most honest reflection of what being a kid around that age feels like.

I just remember having the President's Fitness Challenge when I was in elementary school and middle school. You had to do different activities, and at the end of it, I think you got a little pin or a badge. I was like, 'How do we incorporate Captain America into high school?' You would have the 'Captain America Fitness Challenge.'

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.

My friends and I have always been trying to make movies, at every moment. We've tried so many different angles and approaches. But when it happens, it happens, and you just run with it.

I didn't even think anyone would want to make 'Cop Car,' and then I didn't think anyone would want to distribute 'Cop Car,' and then I didn't think anyone would want to see 'Cop Car.'