Marvel and Sony placated fan demands for Spider-Man: Brand New Day by making a cut that fulfilled their wishes – but Tom Holland thought it was terrible.
The franchise lead, who has played Peter Parker since 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, has returned in the fourth outing, and he revealed at the premiere that there were a variety of versions of the film made before settling on the one that’s being released on Friday (31 July).
“What’s really interesting is, we’ve seen loads of different cuts of this movie, and one of the cuts was, they took all of the notes from all of the random people that saw the film, and they changed the movie,” the British actor, who also stars in blockbuster The Odyssey, told Quotable.
However, when he and the film’s producers and director Destin Daniel Cretton watched it, they “hated it”.
“It totally didn’t work – and it’s what the people were asking for,” he said. “But it wasn’t quite what we wanted as the creatives.”
However, he added that they “learnt lessons from that experience”, adding: “A movie can change in a thousand different ways in the edit room.”
Holland previously revealed that he had to “lay down the law” with Marvel and Sony after witnessing Christopher Nolan’s efficient way of working on The Odyssey.
The actor told GQ that Nolan’s level of preparation was unlike anything he’s ever seen, which prompted him to tell Spider-Man: Brand New Day producers: “We are not going to come to set and figure it out; we need to know why we are making this movie beyond the fact that it’s Spider-Man 4 and they make loads of money and we’re going to just have a big summer. Why are we making this movie?”
He continued: “Destin was super instrumental in that, but it was just really great to constantly be calling up the studio and [producers] Amy [Pascal] and Rachel [O’Connor], who I love, and be like, ‘Well, Chris is doing it this way. This is how I think we should be doing it.’”
Holland plays Telemachus, son of Odysseus (Matt Damon), in The Odyssey – but was only able to after asking Sony to delay Brand New Day’s production to free up his schedule.
He said that after “a very uncomfortable conversation” with Sony, they agreed due to Nolan’s good reputation.
“I think one of the reasons why Sony were happy to move is because Chris has that reputation of, ‘This movie isn’t going to go five months over, and we aren’t actually going to lose Tom for two years.’ Any other director, it might have been a slightly different conversation.”
For Holland, though, the decision meant that Cretton could develop the script to make it “the best version of any Spider-Man movie going”, which he said “saved” it.
The Independent’s film critic Clarisse Loughrey said the film was “the best Spider-Man movie in more than 20 years”, writing: “Tom Holland’s web-slinger has never been more authentic to the source material than in his fourth solo go-round, and the entire franchise is better for it.”
Spider-Man: Brand New Day, also starring Holland’s wife Zendaya, Jacob Batalon and Sadie Sink, is in cinemas on Friday (31 July).
