It's really hard to find just a simple character-driven drama, outside of a genre, that was available to direct, except for on TV.

I always remembered that when I saw people get married they got on a rocketship and went to Planet Happiness, Population: Them.

I think that if you make something that's relatable then people will attach themselves to it. You can express it in a lot of different ways but I feel like as long as you are consistent and fair with the audience they'll engage irrespective of how they self-identify. I think it just gets too complicated to track all those differences between demographics.

I think one of the things about Peter Parker that is so great, and what has made him and Spider-Man last so long is he is a kid that we all feel connected to, he's not an alien, he's not a millionaire, he's just this kid that has trouble asking girls out.

It's very important to keep the emotions grounded, to keep the characters in some real place.

We're creating a different universe with different rules and a different tone and different villains. We were very careful to honor the iconography of Spider-Man, but we wanted to tell it in a new and different way [in the film].

Earnestness can ferment into sentimentality.