Spider-Man: Brand New Day released its first trailer earlier this week, and now Tom Holland is revealing more about what fans can expect from the web-slinger's long-overdue MCU return.
After Sam Raimi and Marc Webb's movies, Jon Watts was tasked with reimagining Spider-Man for the MCU without treading over familiar ground. That meant no Uncle Ben and having to move away from those iconic New York City web-swinging scenes. Closer ties to the Avengers also led to much grander adventures.
With Spider-Man: Brand New Day, filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton is taking the hero back to his roots. That means a street-level story set in Manhattan, with a whole host of comic book bad guys. We'll still see some familiar faces from the wider MCU, but this movie is clearly a different beast.
In his first interview since the trailer dropped, Tom Holland revealed that he sees Spider-Man: Brand New Day as "a fresh start." He added, "I think what Peter Parker is going through post-Spider-Man: No Way Home is really profound and unique to the superhero genre."
"I think that we have villains that are really new and fresh and interesting. The action is absolutely out of this world," the actor continued. "The thing I'm most excited about with Brand New Day is I think more so than any of our previous movies, New York is really a key character in the fabric of this movie."
Holland went on to say that a big part of this story is the franchise's leads "[finding] their identity and [becoming] adults," and in Peter Parker's case, that's all about "evolving" and "learning to really like find an identity."
"I think my favourite thing about Peter Parker is that he is always selfless," he enthused. "Everything that he does is for other people, and particularly in this movie, he is making the ultimate sacrifice to try and protect Ned and MJ. And that is having a really catastrophic effect on not only his personal life, but also his health."
"I think that is something that we've never dealt with in a Spider-Man movie before. And I think that it's just a really cool thing for us to explore."
So, it seems the implications of Doctor Strange's spell in Spider-Man: No Way Home are a big part of why he's undergoing a metamorphosis, of sorts. We know that's going to include organic webbing, but based on a very intriguing shot of his eyes, Peter may become more spider than man.
That could mean we'll get Man-Spider's MCU debut, an undeniably wild place to take this character as he embarks on his next MCU-set trilogy.
You can hear more from Holland on Spider-Man: Brand New Day in the player below.