Last week Marvel and Sony confirmed that the third Spider-Man is a teenage Peter Parker who will be played by Tom Holland. Since then, Marvel creative brass Kevin Feige has lifted the lid on some secrets pertaining to the Spidey standalone movie due to arrive in 2017.
This new version will borrow from the early era of Spider-Man comics, and take place when Parker is still a budding student. And there's one filmmaker whose experience tapping into the teenage psyche is poised to be a big influence. “It’s the soap opera in high school, and those supporting characters, that are interesting,” Feige told Birth.Movies.Death. “Just as we hadn’t seen a heist movie in a long time, or a shrinking movie in a long time, we haven’t seen a John Hughes movie in a long time. Not that we can make a John Hughes movie - only John Hughes could - but we’re inspired by him, and merging that with the superhero genre in a way we haven’t done before excites us.”
The ages of Spider-Man's previous incumbents Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield meant the last two versions skipped over the drama that comes with being a teenager. Whereas the new film will focus on the risks and challenges that stem from being a scrappy youngster. "Stakes don’t need to be end of the world," Feige adds. "Oftentimes, in our films, it is, and in our future films Thanos doesn’t work small. But sometimes the stakes can just be ‘Will this little girl grow up to be healthy and well put-together, or are there too many issues for her to overcome?’ That’s HUGE! That overrides a threat to reality itself."
"And I think Spider-Man straddles that line in a fun way in his comics. What we wanted was a movie where the stakes could be as high as ‘This bad person is going to do this bad thing, and a lot of people could die’ OR ‘You don’t get home in time and your aunt is going to figure this out, and your whole life is going to change."
Of course, that doesn't mean that Holland's Spidey won't face the types of villains we've grown accustomed to seeing him battle. Feige references the webhead's prolific back catalogue of rogues, dubbing it an "advantage" to have so many baddies to choose from. Expecting another Doc Ock or Green Goblin? You shouldn't be. As he went on to confirm, “right now we’re interested in seeing villains we haven’t seen before."
Before we see Spider-Man battle that fresh threat, he'll make his MCU debut in Captain America: Civil War which opens on May 6, 2016. The untitled Spider-Man solo movie, directed by Jon Watts, is targeting a July 27, 2017 release.
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