You might have heard this already, butTom Holland’s third soloSpider-Manmovie is gonna' be kind’ve big. The type of big where the multiverse gets mashed together, Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) gets involved,Alfred Molinasomehow returns as Doctor Octopus, and more likely than not, two different generations of Peter Parkers—Tobey MaguireandAndrew Garfield, that is—show face as well. The type of big where Hollanddescribes the scriptas “the most ambitious standalone superhero movie ever made.”
It all sounds super exciting to the part of me who enjoys when the big muscular action figures get smashed together, the part that takes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with an uncritical eye because the booms, the kapows, and even the zlonks are very, very good. But it’s also kind’ve a bummer as a fan of Spider-Man, a character set to star in the “most ambitious standalone superhero movie ever” who the MCU has never given a chance to stand alone in the first place.
To be clear right up front, Tom Holland is a great Spider-Man, and not just because he can casually do a back-flip for real, and not just because he contributed the"Umbrella" lip-syncto the modern art canon. (Although both things aredefinitelycontributing factors.) Holland just understands the inherent vulnerability of the character. Peter Parkers' peers gained their superhuman status through the benefits of being a billionaire tech genius, receiving body-altering super serums, getting raised as an international assassin, or quite literally being a god. Spider-Man is the result of an Avengers' worth of powers being hoisted, at complete random, on to a kid; the iconic “with great power comes great responsibility” line applies in particular to Spider-Man because those two core tenets arrive in his life at the exact same time. He has to accept he can hold a building over his head at an age most of us can’t even decide on a personality for more than a week. Holland’s performance is best in moments when the weight of the MCU overwhelms the human side of Peter; his unabashed fear after Vulture (Michael Keaton) buries him under debris inSpider-Man: Homecomingor, more well-known, the devastating simplicity of “Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so good” inAvengers: Infinity War.
But the MCU still hasn’t given Spider-Man a movie that feels as personal as Holland’s performance. The character’s on-screen journey since 2016 has almost solely revolved around how he feels about bigger characters. He was brought into the franchise as part of an event film,Captain America: Civil War, with the main goal of impressingRobert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark. That throughline carried over into directorJon Watts’Spider-Man: Homecoming—still the MCU’s best Spidey movie thanks to the Vulture storyline—and through toSpider-Man: Far From Home, a movie haunted by Tony’s ghost. Anything that felt wholly unique to Peter Parker’s journey—his earnest misfit awkwardness, his incredibly innocent high school romances, even his undeniable New York-ness—has to compete with the bigger picture. We essentially skipped over Peter Parker becoming Spider-Man and straight into Spider-Man becoming an Avenger; he became the heir to Tony Stark without ever really becoming the first Spider-Man.
New York really is a big part of that, silly as it sounds. It’s insane to me that the MCU so quickly took Spider-Man out of the Big Apple, following up a film that barely felt like it took place in the city with a European romp. It’s not that Spider-Mancan’twork in another city, but New York is a vital part of Peter’s history. The “Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man” moniker is indicative of a certain New York-ish loyalty to your block, a very small, specifictype of protectiveness that Spider-Man possesses, a saving-a-cat-from-a-tree vibe rivaled only by the big man in blue over at DC. We’ve gotten so little of that smallness in Holland’s MCU tenure because his Spider-Man has to be plug-and-dropped wherever the larger story needs him. Instead of being tied to a specific ethos or location or personality trait, he’s not really tied to anything except the idea of another movie. The ultimate indignity, considering his superpower is basically tying himself to stuff.
For many reasons, I think often of the one time I got to speak to the lateStan Lee, about the role New York played in breathing life into characters in a way DC wasn’t. “When I was writing the stories, I lived in New York. It enabled me to makes things seem a little more relevant, perhaps,“he said. “I wanted Spider-Man to live in Forest Hills, not in Metropolis or Gotham City.”
It seems like such a small thing, but there’s none of that specificity to the MCU’s Spider-Man. Most of his charm comes from Tom Holland himself; the character comes from a vague, personality-free New York, mostly reacting to world-threatening events instead of illuminating who this Peter Parker actually is. The most exciting thing the MCU could’ve done with Spider-Man is announced a self-contained story with a single threat—thatFar From Homecredits cliffhanger is a good start!—because, appropriately enough, the best Spider-Man stories are small stories. Instead, it feels like Spider-Man’s greatest struggle is to be the star of his own “standalone” features. The only thing we know aboutSpider-Man 3is that it features many, many other people, a sign that Marvel Studios sees even its most foundational characters as a single strand of a very crowded web.
