Destin Daniel Cretton says films were his window to the wider world. Growing up in Maui with five siblings and limited television, he and his brothers and sisters spent their time inventing their own stories, staging plays and choreographing fights. A turning point came on a family trip to California when his grandmother handed him her VHS camcorder.
He began documenting the vacation, visited Hollywood and theme parks, and returned home energized to make movies nonstop. Watching films with his family became a form of travel, he says, a way to understand other cultures and everyday life beyond Hawaii.
What stayed with him was not how different people seemed, but how similar their emotions were. Cretton’s early career drew from real-life work.
Destin Daniel Cretton and Spider-Man: Brand New Day
After college, his first job was at a group home for at-risk teenagers, an experience that led to his 2013 feature Short Term 12 with Brie Larson, Rami Malek and LaKeith Stanfield. He later directed The Glass Castle, adapted from Jeannette Walls’ memoir, and Just Mercy, about attorney Bryan Stevenson’s work with Death Row clients.
He made his Marvel debut with 2021’s Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings and created the Marvel series Wonder Man. He now directs Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
Interview Highlights
On relating to Peter Parker’s isolation in Spider-Man: Brand New Day
Reflecting on his twenties after university, Cretton recalls feeling directionless as friends moved forward. Surrounded by people who appeared confident and thriving, he often felt alone in the midst of it.
On working in a home for at-risk teens
He describes the job as the most challenging and rewarding experience he had at the time. It quickly revealed how sheltered he had been.
Many of the teenagers, shaped by painful pasts, were mature in ways he was not, and managing that reality was humbling. With a communications degree and few early prospects, he made one short film a year while holding a series of jobs to pay the bills, including working at the group home, teaching high school video production, handling hotel media setups and shooting weddings.
On treating filmmaking as a hobby before it became a career
With a communications degree and few early prospects, he made one short film a year while holding a series of jobs to pay the bills, including working at the group home, teaching high school video production, handling hotel media setups and shooting weddings.
On directing Shang-Chi and stepping onto a set where most people were Asian
He says he did not realize what he had been missing until he found himself in a workplace where colleagues understood his grandmother, his upbringing and Asian culture. What once felt compartmentalized, including growing up in Hawaii, became part of his filmmaking on that set, which felt comfortable and familiar.
On his complicated bond with his father
Cretton notes that many of his films, in some way, trace back to his dad, a passionate man who could also be dark and angry. Navigating those emotional highs and lows as a child sharpened his sensitivity to others’ states of mind.
As a director, he believes he can sense what actors need when they arrive on set and help calm tense moments. He calls his father both wonderful and troubled, and says he is grateful for him.
On recurring themes in his work
Family and community form a throughline. In Spider-Man: Brand New Day, he says those ideas are central.
He is drawn to what happens when a person is distanced from the people who know them best and how essential it is to remain connected to the circles where one can be fully oneself. Family and community form a throughline.
After college, his first job was at a group home for at-risk teenagers, an experience that led to his 2013 feature Short Term 12 with Brie Larson, Rami Malek and LaKeith Stanfield. He later directed The Glass Castle, adapted from Jeannette Walls’ memoir, and Just Mercy, about attorney Bryan Stevenson’s work with Death Row clients.
He made his Marvel debut with 2021’s Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings and created the Marvel series Wonder Man. He now directs Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
In Spider-Man: Brand New Day, he says those ideas are central. He is drawn to what happens when a person is distanced from the people who know them best and how essential it is to remain connected to the circles where one can be fully oneself.