‘Spider-Man’ director Destin Daniel Cretton

**Tonya Mosley** (0:00)
This is Fresh Air, I'm Tonya Mosley.
At the end of the last Spider-Man movie, No Way Home, back in 2021, Peter Parker makes a choice. To save the people he loves, he had everyone on earth forget he ever existed. My guest today, filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton, picks up the story years later in the latest Spider-Man brand new day. Peter, played by Tom Holland, is still Spider-Man, but years after everyone he loves has forgotten about him, and he's living alone. When strange things begin happening to his powers, there's no one in his life who knows him well enough to even know something is wrong.

**Destin Daniel Cretton** (0:42)
What is happening to me?

**Tonya Mosley** (0:44)
Did you miss me, Spidey?

**SPEAKER_3** (0:47)
I'm losing my mind.

**Tonya Mosley** (0:50)
I am totally out of control.
I gotta fix whatever this is right now.
That's Tom Holland as Peter Parker in Spider-Man Brand New Day, and it opened with the biggest debut in box office history. Director Destin Daniel Cretton came to Marvel from a very different kind of filmmaking. His first job out of college was at a group home for at-risk teenagers. He turned that experience into the 2013 film Short Term 12, which featured young actors Brie Larson, Rami Malek and Lakeith Stanfield. Cretton went on to direct The Glass Castle and Just Mercy, about attorney Bryan Stevenson's work Defending Men on Death Row. His Marvel debut was Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings, the studio's first film with an Asian lead and an Asian director. He also created the Marvel series Wonder Man. Destin Daniel Cretton, welcome to Fresh Air.

**Destin Daniel Cretton** (1:47)
Thank you.

**Tonya Mosley** (1:48)
Okay.
23 million people went to see this movie the first weekend, and a movie like this, I mean, it has enormous expectations. There, of course, the studio expectations because this is a franchise, it's a brand. And in many ways, these stories have to carry each other from film to film. But there's something in particular that you have to bring to the film as well, your sensibilities as a director, knowing that you're stepping into an established story. Was there a moment or any time during the beginning of the process where you said, this is the film and this is my stamp, my place in it?

**Destin Daniel Cretton** (2:28)
There were a few moments in the development process where I felt like I now understand the heart of this story.
One was in the writing process, we were trying to really understand what the internal story was of Peter Parker. And I was reflecting a lot on my 20s when I left.
University and when I didn't really have a real direction in life, when a lot of my friends are going off to other things. And it felt like a lot of people were moving on without me. It was easy at that time to feel completely alone. That was around the time that I was working at that group home for at risk teenagers. And when I think about that particular time in my life, I don't know, I just felt like that was Peter. That was this stage where you're looking back at the things and the places that you've been. And you don't know how to define them to move forward. And so to be able to look at Peter and watch him redefine kind of the pain and the things that he's been through, and actually use them as part of the things that make him strong, was a very therapeutic experience.

**Tonya Mosley** (3:49)
I actually want to play a clip. It's a scene where Peter Parker, as we said, he's been erased from the memory of everyone who loved him. And he crashes a house party thrown by MJ, the girl he loved, who was played by Zendaya, and Ned, his best friend, played by Jacob Batalon.
And neither of them knows who he is. It's the first time we kind of see them all together. And it's a real trippy experience, because, you know, of course, he knows, and we know the whole backstory, but they don't know who he is. And Peter is, at that moment, unbelievably lonely, and he loves these two people so much, you know? He's been following their lives on social media, and he's at this party, and he sees MJ, and she speaks first. Let's listen.

**Destin Daniel Cretton** (4:35)
God, there's like 50 people in our apartment. Statistically speaking, that means at least two of them are sociopaths, which is kind of cool.

**SPEAKER_3** (4:44)
Nice flowers.

**Destin Daniel Cretton** (4:47)
Oh, they're a housewarming gift. Really?

**SPEAKER_3** (4:51)