There's a bigger universe at hand.

I just like that dynamic in relationships in movies where they're kind of lovers as rivals, you know?

For me, there were a few things in the Spider-Man comics that I thought were really interesting. There's this story about Peter's parents and where he came from, and I thought that it was really interesting to explore the emotional consequence of someone whose parents had left them, at a very young age.

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

I think that Spider-Man is a part of our culture. He's a perennial character. He's something that's constantly reexamined and there are so many versions of him in the comics that it was something that I thought that we could do cinematically. He belongs on the big screen.

Geeks are running the world, anyone who's seen The Social Network knows the dynamic has shifted, but what I think is iconic and timeless about Peter Parker is that he's an outsider, on the outside looking in, and that was something I thought was very important to protect.

Audiences can tell when you're being fake and they will eat you alive. But if you're doing something authentic they will connect to it and that can lead to commercial success.