Tom Holland’s version of Peter Parker / Spider-Man is widely considered to be fantastic. While some people, like my fellow pop culture writer Sam, simply cannot stand him, most find him to be the version of Peter Parker that best captures the essence of the popular comic book character. The actor’s first appearance as the superhero was in Captain America: Civil War where he partnered up with the likes of Iron Man and Black Widow to try and take down Captain America and gang. Fans, like myself immediately fell in love with the joyfulness of the character. He truly felt like a geeky teenager of today. He’s us! This was then carried into Spider-Man: Homecoming, Infinity War and Endgame.
But did you know that the character could’ve been completely different in Spider-Man: Homecoming had fans rejected the version on display in Civil War? In an interview with ComicBook.com, Tom Holland discussed how his work in the third Captain America film also sorta doubled as an audition tape for the public.
“I mean, there was definitely a level of pressure, you know, making these movies. You know that a lot of people are going to see them, and a lot of people, equally, are going to have an opinion. I was very lucky when I did Civil War because I had a chance to audition for the public, you know? I’d got the part and I had auditioned for the producers, and then Civil War was my chance to, kind of, show the world what I was trying to create. And if they didn’t like it, we could change it by the time we got to Homecoming, and if they loved it, which I was very lucky that they did, I just knew that all I gotta do is exactly the same as I did on Civil War, but rather than doing it for 10 days, I need to do it for 100 days in a row.”
Well, thankfully most fans loved the character writing and Tom Holland’s performance in Captain America: Civil War. The rest is history.
While I still find Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 to be the best Spidey movie, Tobey Maguire wasn’t the most convincing of Peter Parkers. He’s fine when it comes to the emotional scenes but doesn’t quite capture the joyous nature of the web-slinger. In fact, I would even say Andrew Garfield is a better Peter Parker than Maguire. But Tom Holland is great, consistently handling the emotional sequences just as well as the comedy and the awkward romance.
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