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Hot take: Tom Holland is the best Spider-Man. While I also really like Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, when Holland debuted as Spider-Man, he was the first Peter Parker to actually feel like he belonged in high school. Part of it was his age. Holland was 19 when he began as Spider-Man, whereas Maguire was 25 and Garfield was 28. Holland also looked a good deal younger and, in the stories featuring him, there was greater emphasis placed on the everyday high school stuff.
Even though Spider-Man is past high school in the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day, I’m optimistic about where Holland and director Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi, Wonder Man) will take the character next. I’m especially excited to see Spider-Man come into his own, finally stripped of the “Junior Hero” status he’s carried for a decade in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
That said, I cannot fathom the idea that Spider-Man: Brand New Day will somehow be better than the best-ever Spider-Man movie, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2.
After the blockbuster success of his first Spider-Man movie in 2002, Raimi followed that up with Spider-Man 2. Now a college student at Columbia University, Peter is feeling pressure from the combined weight of his schoolwork, his low-paying job as a pizza delivery boy, his estrangement from the woman he loves, and the responsibility of being a superhero. It all becomes so overwhelming that he eventually quits being Spider-Man and manages to regain some of his life in the process. That respite comes to an end, though, when his brilliant, kindly mentor, Oscorp scientist Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina), becomes a supervillain as a result of a lab accident. This forces Peter out of his retirement as Spider-Man in order to rescue the city and especially Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), who Octavius has kidnapped.
In the most basic sense, the brilliance of Spider-Man 2 is the cleanness of its storytelling. Perhaps, by 2026 standards, the story is a bit basic, but the genius and endurance of Spider-Man 2 is due to the fact that it’s a straightforward human drama told with one hero and one villain. That’s it. By contrast, each one of Holland’s Spider-Man movies has featured multiple villains and multiple heroes. While I wouldn’t quite refer to them as overstuffed thanks to some smartly distributed storytelling, none have managed to go as deep into their characters as Spider-Man 2 did.
Raimi gets a lot of credit for this, and it’s very well deserved. As good as he was at capturing the web-slinging action of Spider-Man, he tells an equally compelling, deeply human story about an overwhelmed Peter Parker. It’s also worth noting that the movie was written by Alvin Sargent, who, outside the three Spider-Man movies he helped craft, won two Academy Awards for screenwriting for the movies Julia (1977) and Ordinary People (1980), both of which were much more realistic human dramas. Sargent brought that same humanity to Spider-Man 2.
Otto Octavius is especially sympathetic in Spider-Man 2 as a brilliant, determined scientist trying to develop a renewable energy source until an accident kills his wife and permanently fuses metal tentacles into his spine. During the accident, the inhibitor chip that lets him control the AI of the arms is also destroyed, causing them to take over Octavius’ mind. Long before characters like Black Panther‘s Killmonger and Avengers: Infinity War’s Thanos reminded everyone that the best villains make the audience sympathize with them, Octavius was a tragic figure brought to life by a brilliant actor. It’s a lesson that superhero movies seem to have to keep re-learning over and over again.
Most importantly, the movie is just an excellent showcase for the character of Spider-Man, and Tobey Maguire does an astounding job portraying all the character’s vulnerabilities. While I never quite bought Maguire as a high schooler, he was a more than credible college student. He makes you feel the pressure that Peter feels in the movie.
The hallmark of Marvel heroes has always been that they have to deal with relatable, real-life problems. Sure, Spider-Man can save people from a burning building, but that doesn’t help him pay the rent. The best Marvel stories never lose sight of that, particularly when it comes to Spider-Man, and no movie does that better and with fewer distractions than Spider-Man 2. From what can be discerned from the trailers for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, it does look like there is a bit of that human drama element with Peter’s sense of loneliness. But I doubt it’s the focal point. They also show him squaring off with about a half-dozen villains, including the Hand. Tangling with ancient ninjas isn’t quite as relatable as not being able to make rent.
