Last August, a group of fellow journalists and I got to visit the London set of Spider-Man: Far From Home. In the upcoming sequel, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is planning to enjoy a European vacation with his friends, but his plans are disrupted when Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) recruits him to battle rampaging elemental monsters.

Although he was unavailable during filming, several months ago, director Jon Watts was good enough to take some time to do a group phoner about the movie. During our conversation, he talked about why they chose to add Mysterio to the MCU, designing his costume, how Peter’s journey differs from Homecoming, and more.

Check out the interview below. Spider-Man: Far From Home opens July 2nd.

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One of the things that I've kind of been most interested in is you are looking like you're going to introduce some kind of classic comic character with our medley, and stuff like Mysterio, but they're going to be twists and I was wondering kind of what comics you looked back on when you were thinking about those characters.

JON WATTS: Uh, I mean I was really going back to the very beginning. It was pretty clear that Mysterio would be the next villain with Jackal, just because he's, you know, part of the original Rogues Gallery, he looks cool, and we've never seen him in a movie before. I wanted to do Mysterio. I just went back and read the original Mysterio comic and just started from that, and it's good to remind yourself why characters jump out in the first place, and I want to try and tackle who he is as a person in the same way we did with Peter and the Vulture. I was going to start with the same place of inspiration but then see where our take on the world takes it.

One of the cool things about Mysterio is that his costume is very faithful to the comics. Can you talk about developing that look for him, and making sure it stayed true to his original appearance?

WATTS: Yeah, well, part of the visual development process is to start with what is the totally faithful adaptation and then see what happens when you go in various directions just to see if anything interesting develops. And we did that with Mysterio, we started with something that was very true to the comics, but as you're developing the character design you're also developing the story so as the story changes we kind of incorporate different elements of Mysterio's story and see how that would affect the design of the suit, but surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly, in the end it was basically a big circle to where we came back around to a design that was very true to the original that also could tell the story that we wanted to tell. I'm really happy with it.

One of the things I was really interested in was the kind of elemental monsters, and those designs, and so kind of on a developmental level, how did you get to the fact that was the direction you wanted to go in, and what kind of role do they play?

WATTS: Well because Mysterio is a hero in our world, I needed villains. And rather than... There are so many Spider-Man villains, for me, from the Rogues Gallery that I wanted to dig a little deeper than anyone might be expecting. And when you get into what might be a really cool monster to have Spider-Man fight, what would be a cool villain put Spider man up against. There is something so exciting about villains like Hydro-Man and Molten Man. That open up such amazing visual possibilities and pose such dangerous challenges for Spider-Man that I wanted to try and find a way to reimagine those characters that would be fun to watch and make for an interesting story.

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Image via Sony Pictures

In Homecoming, Peter's journey is kind of going from being a hero is really cool to learning about the sacrifice that's required of him. Can you talk a little bit about his emotional journey in Far From Home?

WATTS: Yeah, I mean, the way I think about it, is that if the last movie is about a kid who really desperately wants to be treated like an adult to be given more responsibility. And by the end of the movie he proves that he's worthy of it, and is given the opportunity to make that choice. But, there's this feeling when you're growing up where you want so badly to be treated like an adult, and then one day you wake up and people start treating you like and adult and you're like, wait, I like it better when I was a kid, and you can't. And so now I think this movie is Peter being given the responsibility he wanted in the first movie and starting to really deal with the implications of what that means. You know, he's been through so much after the first movie and kind of just wants to go on this vacation with his friends, but his life is never going to be the same.

Was there anything from the first movie that you weren't able to include for one reason or another that you were able to port of to the second film?

WATTS: know there's always so many ideas that it never feels like we're going to run out of ideas, but I will say the one thing that I always wanted that was part of my original pitch to Marvel was to put Spider-Man, to put fresh faced young Peter Parker with Nick Fury, you know. To see those two things, those two personalities spar, an idealistic young kid and a morally ambiguous cold warrior, to see that pragmatism versus idealism conflict. But, that was something that I always wanted I'm really happy that we got to put that in this movie. And then so many other things. It would be a laundry list of just fun things we won't have to do.

Obviously, the kind of world that Spider-Man and Peter's villain is in at the moment is in turmoil. Is there anything that you personally kind of are really, really excited for fans to see in your film, like a little character beat or a moment you think will surprise people or a little bit of character development that you're waiting for people to discover when they see Far From Home?

WATTS: Uh, there's so much, I'm still making my Director's Cut, so I'm hoping that those moments, when I... There's so many of those moments and I'm hoping that they work. There's a lot of surprises in this movie. I think people are going to have a really good time.

In Homecoming Peter doesn't really have Spidey Sense yet. Will he have in Far From Home? And if so how are you sort of depicting it, because we've seen it done differently in other films.

WATTS: Yeah, well, Spidey Sense is always a part of Peter's abilities I think whether we draw attention to it or not. You know, just the ability to dodge bullets and things like that implies that there's something more than just gymnastic prowess, but whether he's aware of it or not I think is something that is interesting, and worth exploring. And how much of that is conscious and unconscious, if that's... Maybe as he grows up his powers change or evolve. So yeah, it's always something that we're thinking about, but again I never want to sort of return to visuals that we've seen before in the other Spider-Man movies, so you want to do your best to keep everything feeling as new as possible.

This movie was described as almost a spy movie. I was wondering what sort of unexpected kind of influences and places you went back to for inspirations.

WATTS: I thought there was going to be more references, because there's so many high school movies and there's so many coming of age movies, like that's such a strong genre to be drawing from but there's not as many kids-going-on-vacation-abroad kinds of movies. So, in the end the influences became so much more diverse, which was fun, I could just draw from movies I like, from various filmmakers across Europe. As much as I would love say that, "If Looks Could Kill" with Richard Grieco was the main influence for this movie, it wasn't unfortunately, but that is a movie about a high school trip that turns into a spy thriller.