Maybe it’s just a haircut. But when you are Tom Holland, and you have been cast as Peter Parker in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – ready to appear in Captain America: Civil War before shouldering your own solo movie – AND your haircut looks just like the one your character wears in the Ultimate line of comic books… well, you can understand why fans are getting a little excited.
The actor refers to it as "the Johnny Depp look." And he’s right. But the comments section on Tom Holland’s Instagram immediately jumped on the comparisons to Ultimate Peter Parker. As one fan put it:
You werent my spider man but dudeeee you are now
While others basically came up with variations of "Hello, Peter." And there’s no denying that Holland looks very much like modern versions of Peter Parker that readers have familiarized themselves with from the comic books.
Upon further review, he looks a lot like the Peter Parker who confronted Miles Morales as that character was fighting his way through various Ultimate storylines.
Then again it might just be a haircut. Though Tom Holland has to know that when he puts an image on Facebook, it's going to be analyzed by fans looking for any morsel of information on the version of Peter Parker he is working to bring to the big screen. If they do, indeed, go this route, it suggests that Holland’s Spider-Man – or, his Peter Parker, at least – might be closer in tone to the Andrew Garfield Peter, who wasn’t the hopeless wallflower of early Stan Lee and Steve Ditko days. Not that Peter is ever "cool" in the comics. Maybe they are just trying to again modernize a superhero who was first bit by a radioactive spider in 1962, and needs to appeal to a contemporary audience. It’s all in the hair.
We’ll finally see Tom Holland as Peter Parker and Spider-Man in next May’s Captain America: Civil War. Then, he goes back on the shelf until July 2017, when the first Marvel and Sony solo Spider-Man movie hits theaters. Do you think this is our first look at the new Peter Parker?
