Spiderman has always been my favourite super hero ever since I started collecting comic books as a kid. It’s ironic really as I can’t really stomach spiders although in a house full of wimps it does fall to me to relocate wayward travellers of the eight legged variety. I don’t know what it is about the hero as it’s definitely not the red and blue spandex but I think something in the Peter Parker character spoke to me of a kindred spirit, a kid out of his depths at school with barely a social circle to speak of. Marvel have since made Peter Parker the next Tony Stark in their comics, with Peter being the head of a billion dollar company, Parker Industries, and good on him, but my Peter will always be the awkward teenage kid trying to fathom his new powers.
Over the years we have all face palmed at Hollywood’s attempts to reboot all our favourite (and some not so favourite) films with Matrix being the latest squeeze of the industry. I can see why some would look at the third Spiderman series in recent years in the same light but for me Spiderman has yet to be adequately represented on the big screen. I was not a fan of the Toby McGuire trilogy with Spiderman 3 being nearly unwatchable (although throughout Kirsten Dunst was a good MJ, queue teenage crush dream sequence). Andrew Garfield’s duology was much better but his brand of Peter Parker was just too cool and polished. Peter is a dweeby awkward kid, Hollywood needed to find a happy medium between Toby McGuire and Andrew Garfield for the premise to really work. In struts Tom Holland in Avengers: Civil War and THWIP! He didn’t get much screen time but in his fifteen minutes or so he’d solidified his claim to the costume indefinitely, just as Robert Downey Jr is the quint essential Tony Stark. He was witty, funny and the characterisation was dead on. From that first view of him as Spiderman, through to the trailers and the posters for his first solo outing, I am really digging the feel of the film and the character performance. Tom is the right age for Peter unlike the twenty year olds pretending to still be at High School that feature in most US dramas. Sure he’s British (national bias much) but his accent is spot on too.
Spiderman: Homecoming is going to be a reboot for sure but so far a reboot not without reason (like the Power Rangers) or without promise (like Total Recall). Are you happy to see Spiderman hopefully getting the film he deserves or had you already found your Peter in the previous two incarnations? How did you feel Tom performed in Civil War? Get in touch with your thoughts @CelebrityCutout.
