Tom Holland doubts film can match the Marvel's Spider-Man 2 symbiote

Tom Holland thinks a black symbiote suit would be a hard bar for future films. The version in Marvel's Spider-Man 2, he says, came out so convincing that beating it on screen would be difficult.

On the Happy Sad Confused podcast he praised Tobey Maguire's black suit from Spider-Man 3, but he noted that audiences have already seen Insomniac's symbiote. He does not think the same effect is possible without a heavy dose of computer graphics. If a black suit does have to be made, he says he cannot picture matching the game's version without CGI.

The argument over what a symbiote should look like is an old one. Some people want ordinary cloth. Others want a living alien surface, thick and constantly shifting. Insomniac took the second route, and players rated that reading highly.

Recent Marvel films have been moving the other way, away from heavy digital treatment of costumes. Spider-Man: Brand New Day leaned on fabric folds and on how the material moves, and audiences received that warmly.

Marvel Studios has not officially confirmed a symbiote for Holland's Peter. The setup is already there: at the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home, Tom Hardy's Venom leaves a piece of the symbiote in that universe. Whether Holland's character gets it, and when, is still unknown. The actor has made clear that Marvel's Spider-Man 2 raised the bar.