Credit: Sony Pictures

Tom Holland is back as Peter Parker in Spider-Man: Brand New Day after a desperately long wait, and this is as enormous as it feels. It is his fourth solo Spider-Man film, for crying out loud. After everything the last film left open-ended, fans are eager to know what on earth comes next. No pressure, then. As if Marvel would let him have an easy time anyway.

Mind you, Holland has barely had a chance to put his feet up. He has gone from one huge production to another, including Christopher Nolan’s recently released The Odyssey. Blimey! Ancient mythology and Spider-Man in a span of less than a month? That’s quite the run, Tom. Well done!

But Holland is still so closely linked with Peter Parker that people sometimes overlook the rest of his career. Oh, come off it, he has done far more than swing around New York. He has taken on serious drama and emotionally demanding roles too. The range is impressive.

And wouldn’t you know it? Netflix has several of those performances ready to stream. Now, let us warn you that some may catch you completely off guard, so be prepared. Another Tom Holland marathon after Brand New Day? Now we’re talking.

What to watch before Spider-Man: Brand New Day:

Spider-Man: Homecoming (Jon Watts, 2017)

Starting with the obvious choice, and now this is where Tom Holland stopped feeling like the new Spider-Man and properly became Spider-Man. Those who get it, get it. Peter Parker has had one tiny taste of life with the Avengers, and now the school doesn’t matter to him. Algebra? Chemistry? Please. He reckons he is ready for the serious business now. Saving the world… All of it. But Tony Stark tells him he is not ready. Peter, naturally, has absolutely none of that.

Holland beat thousands of actors to the role, and kudos to him; you understand why almost immediately. His gymnastics background gives Spider-Man that springy physicality, but Peter Parker is the real triumph. He is desperate to impress and is hopelessly out of his depth. He keeps trying to behave like a grown man and makes an almighty hash of it every single time.

The Devil All the Time (Antonio Campos, 2020)

Now, this is where Holland makes it clear that Spider-Man is not the limit of what he can do. He plays Arvin Russell, a young man who grew up with grief and surrounded by people who use religion to excuse monstrous behaviour. The story is bleak, but Holland never lets Arvin look miserable.

His performance is all restraint. Arvin does not swagger about like some invincible hard case. Oh, come off it. Holland keeps him wound tight, as though everything he says has to force its way through years of buried anger. Even the Appalachian accent matters because it cuts him loose from Peter Parker completely. You stop watching Tom Holland, the Marvel star, and start watching a frightened young man who has learnt that kindness may not be enough to save him.

The Impossible (JA Bayona, 2012)

Would you believe The Impossible was Holland’s first feature film? It might feel like we’re joking, but we’re not! He plays Lucas, a teenage boy separated from most of his family after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The plot gives him no easy route into the audience’s sympathy, either. Lucas starts off wrapped up in himself. A normal boy, in other words. Then the wave hits, and childhood is over before he has had time to understand what happened.

Holland is astonishing in the film. No grandstanding. He lets Lucas look frightened and selfish before courage begins to emerge. That makes the change land with real force. Holland met the real Lucas before filming, and you can feel the care in the performance. His Billy Elliot training helped with the physical demands, but, honestly, that is only half the story. The panic in his face does the damage. Good grief, most actors wait years for a debut like this.

Uncharted (Ruben Fleischer, 2022)

After all that anguish, here comes Holland as Nathan Drake in Uncharted, standing behind a bar and nicking their jewellery while they are not looking. Now we are talking. This version of Nate is younger than the character from the games, which caused plenty of fuss when Holland was cast. He is not the finished adventurer yet. He is a lad performing with confidence because if he didn’t, that would be admitting that he has absolutely no idea what he is doing.

Holland’s Nate talks an excellent game, but the moment real danger arrives, you see the panic. There it is. That is the Tom Holland sweet spot. He carries the action, especially during the cargo-plane sequence, but he never allows Nate to become nothing more than a stunt machine. There is loneliness beneath all that cheek. His missing brother is the centre of the performance. The film may be enormous nonsense at times, and let us be honest, it absolutely is. Yet Holland gives the whole adventure a pulse.

The Lost City of Z (James Gray, 2016)

And here is a Holland performance people seem to forget, which is a bit much because he absolutely nailed it. He plays Jack Fawcett, the eldest son of explorer Percy Fawcett, a boy who grows up watching his father choose the Amazon over his family. Jack’s anger hardens over the years, but then something begins to change. Resentment slowly gives way to fascination, and the man he spent his childhood blaming becomes the person he most wants to understand.

But Holland never announces the resentment to the room. He just lets it be there, and quite frankly, that takes nerve. He was still widely known as the fresh-faced Spider-Man when the film was released, yet there is no trace of Peter Parker here. Jack feels older than Holland was, worn down by a childhood spent waiting for somebody who never stayed. Blimey, Holland makes that decision hurt.