Sundance is a really special place. They're very protective of movies, especially lower-budget movies.

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].

One of my life philosophies is that you have a choice to make when you're doing something creative. You can be cheesy... or you can be lame.

Something you can do in a comic that you can't do in a film is that you can have thought bubbles.

Earnestness can ferment into sentimentality.

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

I think it's really important, when you're redefining a character [ Spider-Man], for the audience to experience things that they haven't experienced, from the ground up. I wanted to build a character. I feel like point of view is a really crucial thing in the story, and that you need to build up the emotional building blocks, so that you can experience all the other emotions in a very specific way, rather than just experiencing it in an intellectual way.