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Den of Geek: What kind of a challenge was it to be handed the baton right after the events of Infinity War and Endgame, and how much advance knowledge did you have of what was happening there and how it would change the universe that you were working in?

It must have been odd filming a movie with a character who most people thought was dead.

As you were developing the movie did the script go through a lot of changes as a result? Because the Russos were tinkering with the Avengers movies at the same time and changing things around as they went.

I know that they changed things along the way as those films were developed, but the major building blocks were always in place and we worked with those in mind. We knew where Endgame was going to end essentially. So we knew that we would be picking up right after that. And even though details changed along the way, it didn’t have a massive effect on our development process.

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One thing I didn’t know until I saw Endgame, I didn’t realize that Tony was going to look at that photo of him and Peter Parker, and that was going to be the one last little thing that sort of pushes him over the hump to start investigating how to travel through time. So, when I saw that at the premiere it was pretty moving.

A little bit.

Was it fun to take Spider-Man globe hopping? Which country did you get to spend the most time in?

London was our home base, so we spent probably the most time in London, but we were in Prague and Venice for quite a while, which was really exciting. It’s always challenging, logistically, to be shooting on location. Especially in somewhere like Venice where literally everything is on a boat, and that really keeps you on your toes. So it’s a fun logistical challenge. But I think it also gives the film that sort of road trip, on location feeling that you can’t get in a studio in Atlanta.

Mysterio has such a great sort of classic look to him. Did that go through a lot of experimentation before coming back to a more traditional look?

You know, it’s funny. Ryan Meinerding, who’s the head concept artist at Marvel, his very first rendering of Mysterio was very true to the comics, and it looked great. But I think everyone felt like, “Oh, well, we need to explore more avenues. You know, try a more grounded look, try a look that feels like he’s a traveler from another dimension. Something that feels more like a spacesuit. Is there other ways to interpret the fishbowl helmet?” So we went through a lot of ideas just sort of exploring what it could be. And at the end we just went right back to his very first sketch and we were like, “You know, that’s a pretty classic design. We don’t want to mess with that.”

There are some great moments in the film that look like they’re ripped right out of a comic book. Did you look at specific comics for inspiration for that?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, Mysterio comics are some of the most striking designs in all of the history of Spider-Man comics. There are so many great frames that we used as a jumping off point.

You’ve done different variations on classic Spider-Man tropes in both these movies. A very different Aunt May, a different take on MJ and so on. If you go into a third film, is that something you want to stick with?

Well, yeah. I mean, you try to reinvent it without going too far off book, hopefully. And you know not all fans will necessarily agree with the choices you make, but I’m just trying to, hopefully, show people something that they haven’t seen before.

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Do you have ideas about who you’d like to see as a villain or villains next time?

Spider-Man has the greatest rogue gallery of all time, so we still have a lot of options on the table here. But I like to think about it one movie at a time.

Don Kaye is a Los Angeles-based entertainment journalist and associate editor of Den of Geek. Other current and past outlets include Syfy, United Stations Radio Networks, Fandango, MSN, RollingStone.com and many more. Read more of his work here. Follow him on Twitter @donkaye