When Spider-Man: Homecoming premiered last week, I was hesitant to watch it. Maybe it’s my personal bias toward Andrew Garfield in the previous reboot. Or the idea of watching yet another rendition of Spider-Man. I ended up watching it anyway, and was pleased that it was different from the other ones. Plus the fact that uncle Ben didn’t have to die for the nth time.
Kidding aside, it was a good tie-in movie to the Avengers franchise. Tom Holland isn’t my favorite Peter Parker of all time, but he’s also the only one who passed as a sophomore student compared to Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire. And he’s a completely different character from them.
That said though, Tom’s Peter Parker (obviously) didn’t please a lot of people.
Let’s backtrack to Tobey’s Spider-Man trilogy. Many would attest that he’s “the original Spidey,” mostly because they’ve grown up watching him. This argument expanded to Andrew’s portrayal in The Amazing Spider-Man films and now with Tom. The Washington Post also proved how Tobey’s franchise was allegedly better with their ranking of all six Spider-Man films. (Minus the recent one.) I even saw friends and acquaintances putting up polls on who’s the better Spider-Man among the three, and got mad when Tobey wasn’t leading the race.
So yeah, this isn’t a joking matter to some people. Then again, everyone’s entitled to their own favorites (like me with Andrew). However, it also doesn’t mean that we should be stuck in the ’00s and not give Tom a chance as the new Spider-Man.
This was the same concern raised when people complained that the live-action remake of Mulan wasn’t the same as the animated one. It’s that nostalgic feeling that’s keeping viewers from accepting reboots with different executions; weighing the cons first before anything else.
To give you perspective on why Tom worked as Spider-Man, Vox noted how the Marvel Cinematic Universe has an understanding of the character. They managed to portray an effective high school student who’s just going through the motions of teenage years, while balancing superhero duties.
Plus, they didn’t need to reestablish his origin story in Homecoming and just show how he becomes part of the Avengers. Because let’s face it, how many times would we want to see Peter get bitten by a radioactive spider again?
Overall, Spider-Man: Homecoming is a promising movie that Marvel fans should see. Put your biases aside and see how different the three actors were as Spider-Man, and what made their portrayals work. No need to compare because that’ll just ruin the movie experience.
Screengrab from Spider-Man: Homecoming
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