Russo Brothers Talk “Insecure” Spider-Man

As we get closer to the release date of Captain America: Civil War the publicity machine is starting to swing into full gear. We’ve already had the first trailer that sent shock waves through the MCU, but one character we have yet to glimpse is Tom Holland’s Spider-Man. The Brothers Russo (Joe and Anthony) get the honours of introducing the character, and in a recent interview with ComicBook.com the directing duo revealed why Tom Holland was the perfect choice.

“He was my favorite character growing up, so the opportunity to bring Spider-Man to the screen is a dream come true. It’s something that I spent a lot of time thinking about as a kid. We had thought back to the things that excited us about him as a character when we were younger, and one of the most important components of that was that he’s a high schooler burdened with incredible powers and responsibility. That really differentiates him from every other character in the Marvel universe as opposed to other superheroes. For us, it was extremely important that we cast somebody very close to the age of a high school student. The previous films had adults playing a high schooler. We wanted more of an authenticity to the casting. We were very specific about that. We wanted an energy and charisma from the character, an energy, but also an insecurity that would make him fun to watch in contrast to the confident superheroes.”

Holland is the youngest actor to play Peter Parker on screen, while on one hand it seems strange that a teenage character has never been played by a teenager, this is common practice in Hollywood. Those Glee kids were far from teenagers when they started singing them show-tunes. The Russo Brothers also addressed the fact that in the previous Spider-Man movies, the Parker residence wasn’t fitting to the reality of the character.

“…the other films that portrayed where he lived is more… they honored the comic books in terms of the choices. But you go look at the home that Tobey Maguire lived in in Raimi’s Spider-Man was… those were very expensive homes. We wanted to relate it to the reality…

A character growing up with his aunt in New York, a single income family… Where would they live? What would that look like? Where could they afford to live? We asked ourselves all those questions. We try to take a very logical and realistic and naturalistic approach to the character. Again, in combination those are all of the things that we try to do, and of course, to bring our own touches, too.”

Jon Watts (Clown, Cop Car) is handling the as yet untitled Spider-Man reboot, Marisa Tomei has signed up to play the sexiest incarnation of Aunt May to date who might show up in Civil War.