Jon Watts on the absence of one of Spider-Man’s key abilities in Homecoming

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

With SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING now playing in theaters, audiences are flocking to witness Marvel's long-overdue take on the web-slinger, but one particular abilitity of Spider-Man's seems to be absent from the film – Spider-Man's spider-sense. While speaking with Collider, SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING director Jon Watts addressed the absence and explained why Spidey's spider-sense wasn't a part of his film after being being such a big part of the previous SPIDER-MAN movies.

The idea was, again, just you want to make this movie be less about things you’ve already seen before, and you’ve definitely already seen a spider sense sequence done extremely well in Marc [Webb]’s and [Sam] Raimi’s movies. It could be something that develops over time or we can do it in a different way. It’s something that seemed like maybe there’s a cool thing to do with that eventually, but let’s not crowd this movie with something we’ve already seen before… That could be … I’m just making things up right now, but it could be something like you’re saying that develops over time.

Witnessing Peter Parker's spider-sense develop over the course of several movies may be an interesting avenue to explore, and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has indicated that they may go that route. The Marvel honcho spoke with IGN to comment on the lack of spider-sense in SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING, but Feige believes that Peter Parker "has it with or without that suit." Feige added that how they explore the ability in a cinematic sense will likely change from what we've seen before.

I think how we explore it in a cinematic sense will change. I mean, that was sort of a big showy part of previous versions and we thought that we’d make it more of an internal, sort of second nature thing for him. But there are ways coming up that will slowly hint at that and also just make it part of his, you know, his natural abilities. But we don’t know that if it will be — I think we’ll explore it further down the line, but [it’s] definitely him not the suit.

SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING is now playing in theaters, so check out reviews from our own Chris Bumbray and Eric Walkuski and be sure to let us know what YOU thought of the film!