A new Spider-Man is swinging across cinema screens, this time without origin stories and radioactive bug bites.
Big-time superhero Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), aka Iron Man, doesn’t even want to hear how the teenage wall-crawler (Tom Holland) pulled together his low-rent first costume in Captain America: Civil War. All Stark — and the audience meeting this fresh-faced Spidey — needs to know is that the kid’s got skills.
“Let’s just go and fight with Captain America and Iron Man and Black Widow and Vision," says Erik Davis, managing editor for Fandango.com and Movies.com. "That’s what we want to see, Spider-Man thrown into the middle of (the action).”
Holland’s web-shooting youngster is one of the breakouts in Civil War, which raked in $179.1 million
and ranks as the fifth-biggest opening ever. The character's introduction leads into Spider-Man: Homecoming, slated to hit theaters July 7, 2017.
It marks the third take on Spidey in 14 years, following Tobey Maguire’s three movies and Andrew Garfield’s two. While Maguire’s character didn’t match the sarcastic nature of the comic-book do-gooder and Garfield's was older and leaned darker, Holland’s hero is "in over his head and always cracking jokes,” says Davis. “He feels like the product of fan demand.”
Unlike the other two, who “did not make the most believable high school students,” the 19-year-old new guy is an actual teenager, says Uproxx entertainment writer Mike Ryan. “Holland brings a genuine youthful exuberance.”
Holland was nervous and "felt really rushed" doing Civil War, he told USA TODAY in November, but he's "honored" to have the Spider-Man mantle. "The most frustrating thing is that I feel like I'm ready to start filming (Homecoming) but we've got ages yet."
Spidey’s appearance in Civil War also solved a storytelling problem.
The conflict of Cap vs. Iron Man was becoming complicated and overly serious, says Anthony Russo, who directed Civil War with his brother, Joe. Inserting Spider-Man, his attractive Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) — whom Stark immediately flirts with — and lots of banter allowed the directors to modulate the tone and have a featured player without “all the emotional baggage these other characters have while their family’s getting torn apart.”
“Tony’s character is a narcissist and even though he’s trying to keep the Avengers together, he doesn’t want to lose this fight,” Joe Russo says. “So it’s very interesting that he targets a 15-year-old kid who’s incredibly powerful to help him out."
Spidey takes his licks and gets a few great lines in — from being wowed by taking on Cap (Chris Evans) to making everybody feel their age by calling The Empire Strikes Back an "old movie" — but those brief moments are almost “his own solo movie,” says Davis.
"There are no leftovers. Everything he does and says drives that version of the character forward.”
