Why Tom Holland Is The Best Spider-Man
I want to start this article with a disclaimer that this is an opinion piece where I will not only give my opinion on who the best Spider-Man is, but also give my thoughts on the other two versions of Spider-Man that we have had in live-action. What follows is going to be my opinion, and for some of you reading this, it might be controversial. But it is perfectly okay to disagree with the views I put forward in this article. After all, the world would be such a boring place if we all agreed about everything.
Before I talk about why I think Tom Holland is the best we have had in this role, I want to look at all three live-action Spider-Men in order of appearance, which is handy because that also happens to be my rating from worst to best. (Told you this might be controversial.) So, first up, we have Tobey Maguire, the first actor to bring Spider-Man to the big Screen. Tobey had three movies all directed by Sam Raimi.
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When it comes to Tobey, I personally do not like this version of Spider-Man at all. But I wont just leave it at that. I'll break down exactly why I don't, because I feel like that is a much more open thing to do than just say Tobey is the worst because I said so. I could go into great detail about all seven Spider-Man movies to date, but that is an article for another time. This is just about the leading men.
In these movies, Tobey, I feel, is very wooden. Honestly, some of his lines feel forced. But that is just talking about acting, and there is more here that lets this version of Spider-Man down other than just the acting. The version of Spider-Man we got here is not the Spider-Man we know and love. His genius takes a backseat to his awkwardness for three movies, yes his brilliance is mentioned sometimes never really shown. In fact, they outright take one of his earliest moments of brilliance as Spider-Man away from him by giving him organic web shooters. This decision meant we were deprived of seeing him build his own, and it also gave us one of the most pointless and ridiculous scenes in cinema history where he discovers how to shoot his webs, because there is no rhyme or reason that his organic webbing would be triggered by Spidey's iconic had gesture.
These movies also portray Peter Parker as a boring hapless nerd, which is really not true to the character at all. Yes, Peter's a geek and very intelligent, but he's also interesting and a little charming. In the comics, Peter manages to charm the likes of Liz Allen and Betty Brant whilst in high school, whereas Raimi and Maguire would have us believe that Pete at School is a geeky loner with just one friend. All in all, a lot of people liked Tobey and the Raimi movies, and this was likely a combination of casual fans and those die-hard Spidey fans who were just happy the web head was finally on the big screen. But as time went on and a new Spider-Man was cast, a lot of those die-hard fans changed their tune, and the casual fans got more passionate about Tobey. This brings us nicely onto the next Spider-Man, Andrew Garfield.
Andrew, in my opinion, is a far, far superior Spidey to Tobey. This Spider-Man has his genius on full display through both of his movies. We see him build his web shooters. We see him solving equations to uncover the secrets of cross species genetics, and so much more that shows exactly how smart our favorite wall crawler actually is. This Peter, for a lot of people, was too attractive and cool, but I completely disagree. This is the Peter we deserved. He's a little nerdy, as shown with his academic prowess, but he's also smooth and a little charming, which is exactly what Peter Parker is.
Andrew is an almost pitch perfect Spider-Man. He is just incredible in that suit. He wise cracks properly. He uses his intelligence to assist him in a fight. He also builds a believable relationship with the people of New York. We also see his internal struggle with being Peter and Spider-Man play out to perfection without it coming off as whiny.
This brings us to my favorite Spider-Man Tom Holland. Now don't get me wrong, I love Andrew, I do. But Tom encapsulates both sides of the character extremely well. Yeah, there are more MCU overtones in this version with Iron Man being involved, but even still, this version of Spidey shows off everything. We see how intelligent he is early on because not only does he build his own web shooters for his homemade costume, but we also see in science class that he mixes his web fluid on the fly whilst taking his class.
This version of Peter is also shown to be similar to Andrew's in that he is a bit of a geek due to his intelligence but is also interesting and charming because we see that Liz has a crush on him due to this, which is exactly what Peter is like in the comics. So again, Tom is much mote faithful to the character. Tom as Spider-Man is also incredible how he quips and uses humor to unbalance his enemies, but the key point here that we never see from the other two is it is obvious he holds back depending on whom he is fighting, so as not to really hurt anyone. Tom is by far the strongest Spider-Man of the three, and we see this as early as Civil War, when we see him effortlessly block a punch from Bucky's metal arm and hold up an airport terminal. Cap drops on him, yet he manages to hit Falcon without killing him.
The last thing I will say on Tom is that in Spider-Man: Homecoming, we get the greatest Spider-Man scene of all time bar none, and it's based on an incredible scene from the comics. The scene I'm talking about is, of course, when Vulture drops the warehouse on him and we get the incredible scene where he gives his all to lift it off himself whilst motivating himself aloud to both Peter and Spider-Man. This not only shows how strong he is physically and mentally, but also shows him taking the first steps to accepting the duality of his life as Peter and Spider-Man.
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