Tom Holland responds to Martin Scorsese’s Marvel comments

It was only a matter of time before ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ star Tom Holland would have been asked about legendary director Martin Scorsese’s polarising comments about the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Holland addressed Scorsese directly. “You can ask Scorsese ‘Would you want to make a Marvel movie?’ But he doesn’t know what it’s like because he’s never made one. I’ve made Marvel movies and I’ve also made movies that have been in the conversation in the world of the Oscars, and the only difference, really, is one is much more expensive than the other,” said Holland. “But the way I break down the character, the way the director etches out the arc of the story and characters — it’s all the same, just done on a different scale. So I do think they’re real art.”

Added Holland: “When you’re making [Marvel] films, you know that good or bad, millions of people will see them, whereas when you’re making a small indie film, if it’s not very good no one will watch it, so it comes with different levels of pressure,” Holland continued. “I mean, you can also ask Benedict Cumberbatch or Robert Downey Jr. or Scarlett Johansson — people who have made the kinds of movies that are ‘Oscar-worthy’ and also made superhero movies — and they will tell you that they’re the same, just on a different scale. And there’s less Spandex in ‘Oscar movies.’”

In the same interview, Holland was joined by Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, ‘No Way Home’ producer Amy Pascal and the current chairman of Sony Entertainment Tom Rothman, all of whom are vying for the Spider-Man threequel to receive a Best Picture nod at the next Academy Awards.

“This is a big picture on the big screen at a moment when the big screen experience is fighting for its life. This is a chance for the Academy to strike a blow for the big screen,” said Rothman, while drawing comparisons to the way ‘The Return of the King’, the third installment of Peter Jackson’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ fantasy trilogy, swept the Oscars in 2004. “This is why they expanded the best picture category to 10 films, for exactly this circumstance,” he said.

Scorsese first criticized the MCU in October 2019 when he compared them to “theme parks” and said they were “not cinema.” A few weeks after his initial comments, Scorsese wrote a lengthy open letter in The New York Times to clarify his opinions and move the focus onto how MCU movies can shut out independent cinema. He wrote, “I fear that the financial dominance of one is being used to marginalise and even belittle the existence of the other.”

‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ is now showing in UAE cinemas.