In the five years since Tom Holland was cast as Peter Parker, he has solidified himself as the definitive live-action Spider-Man. However, Holland still had one critic he had to to please – Spider-Man co-creator Stan Lee.
During a Q&A session on Instagram with James Gunn, the Guardians of the Galaxy director shared the story of how Holland and Lee met for the first time. According to Gunn, he was the one who introduced the two after Holland was initially hired as the beloved wallcrawler in Captain America: Civil War. Lee’s response to seeing Holland was undoubtedly unexpected, but hilarious. “Yes of course! I hear you’re great!” Lee said. “Personally, I don’t see it!” Immediately after, Gunn said they all “died laughing.”
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Thankfully, Lee was joking and he actually publicly praised Holland back in 2018, calling him “a great Spider-Man” and saying that he is “the exact height and age I envisioned when I first wrote Spider-Man”, calling him “my friend Tom”.
Lee untimely passed in 2018 but his Marvel legacy lives on. Last year, Avengers: Endgame went on to become the highest grossing film of all time. While the film marked the end of an era, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is still going strong as it enters Phase Four with Black Widow later this year.
Debuted back in the 1960s, Spider-Man is Marvel’s most iconic character and is still widely featured in plenty of new stories. Having joined the MCU in 2016, Holland has appeared in a total of five MCU films, with his most recent being last year’s Spider-Man: Far From Home. A third Spidey flick starring Holland is scheduled to release in November 2021, which will follow that big cliff-hanger at the end of the film.
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