Tom Holland isn’t known for being a movie buff, even though he’s a movie actor. What he is known for is being a cheerleader — not only for Marvel and Spider-Man, but for anything he likes. He’s only too happy to name his favorites, which he was happy to do in 2017 when Spider-Man: Homecoming came out.
What’s interesting about this interview in hindsight is how Holland’s choices have some kind of connection with Marvel and/or they foretold his own future. Maybe that Spider-sense is stronger than we thought.
Tom Holland names milestone movies
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Asked what the first film he saw was, Holland responded, “The first movie I ever saw in the cinema was Star Wars – the one with Ewan McGregor.” Since there were three of those, the interviewer asked Holland which one that was, but Holland couldn’t recall.
Given that Holland was 3, 6, and 9 when the prequels came out, fuzzy memory is understandable. Later on, Star Wars would be owned by Disney, whom Holland sometimes works for.
Holland was also asked what his favorite movie was, and he named Primal Fear, the 1996 legal thriller that was the big breakthrough for Edward Norton. Richard Gere was the lead, playing an attorney charged with defending an altar boy (Norton) who is accused of murdering a Catholic archbishop. This is an intriguing answer because Norton was infamously and briefly in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) with his one and only turn as Bruce Banner in The Incredible Hulk.
What is Tom Holland’s favorite guilty pleasure?
Holland named his guilty pleasure as Just Friends, a 2005 movie starring fellow Marvel hero Ryan Reynolds. Fifteen years ago, Reynolds wasn’t known so much as a mile-a-minute snark machine, but a guy who starred in lowbrow comedies like National Lampoon’s Van Wilder.
Just Friends was sort of a gender-flipped She’s All That, with Reynolds as a man who was fat in high school but became a slick, thn stud after graduating. In the movie, Reynolds visits his hometown for Christmas, trying to reconnect with his high school crush, played by Amy Smart, who loved Reynolds, but only as a friend.
Now that he’s thin and hot, he figures he has another shot. But it turns out to be not that simple. The movie didn’t make a big splash at the time but has gained a following as one of the better Christmas comedies of the 21st century.
Holland told Yahoo that Just Friends was his and his mother’s “favorite Christmas movie” and he estimated he’d seen it about 20 times. Reynolds is not known to have reacted to Holland’s praise, but another star of that movie, Anna Faris, did.
“That’s so kind!” Faris replied. “I haven’t met him, but I can’t wait to get a compliment from him, because I would love to compliment him back.”
Tom Holland predicts the future
Holland is not known for forecasting the future, although he is a bit infamous for ruining the present with multiple spoilers of Marvel movies. However, his answers in the Yahoo interview proved prescient in several ways.
First,. Holland ended up working with Ewan McGregor on the movie The Impossible, where Holland played his young son in the film about a family struggling to escape disaster from the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004
Asked what actor he most wanted to work with, Holland said Jake Gyllenhaal, and of course, he got that wish in Spider-Man: Far From Home.
Asked what director he most wanted to work with, Holland said Martin Scorsese. He hasn’t gotten that wish yet, although Scorsese made waves of his own last year when he said Marvel movies were “not cinema.” However, Scorsese did work with another Spider-Man, Andrew Garfield in the film Silence, so hope springs eternal.