A Twitter User Asked About Spider-Man: No Way Home, And There's One Thing About Tom Holland That I Can't Stop Staring At

Did you ever notice something in a scene, and no matter how many times you watch, it never stops bothering you? It might be the reaction of an extra in the background of a scene, or the way that a line is delivered in an otherwise perfect sequence. Well, a popular scene from Spider-Man: No Way Home recently was brought up on Twitter, and the question about the scene went viral. But there’s something else about the scene that drives me crazy, and now I need to point it out to all of you. 

This doesn’t have anything to do with the cemetery scene in Spider-Man: No Way Home, which bugs me because it so clearly was filmed on a Georgia soundstage. Instead, the viral Tweet brought up the moment between Tom Holland and Benedict Cumberbatch during which Peter Parker tells the Sorcerer Supreme to reverse the spell and make the world forget who Spider-Man is. It’s a touching scene, one marked by extreme sacrifice by our main hero. He’s informed that this reversal will mean that his closest friend and his true love will forget who he is. But this is what’s necessary to stop the Multiverse from crumbling (in this instance). 

And yet, I can’t stop focusing on the weird way that Tom Holland holds his arm straight the entire time, pulling complete attention away from the impact of the scene. Here, watch it for yourself. It’s like Holland fell into a classic Spider-Man pose… and then just held it for an unnaturalistic amount of time. It’s awkward. It looks uncomfortable. And it pulls me out of this scene every time that I watch it. 

Maybe he’s balancing? I almost wish he was clinging to a wall with that hand. But he’s simply perched. And it appears that Tom Holland struck that pose, then held it. And held it. And held it more. Every time the camera cuts back to him, I expect the arm to drop. But nope. Even when Doctor Strange tells Peter to “call me Stephen,” the damn arm is sticking out at a 90-degree angle. It’s unnatural. And it bugs the shit out of me. 

Now, this doesn’t distract from the overall quality of Spider-Man: No Way Home, which I still consider to be one of the best Spider-Man movies ever made. And I rank Tom Holland high on my list of individual actors who have played Spider-Man, be it because of the costumes that he got to wear, or the villains he got to fight in his movies. But every once in a while, an actor makes a strange choice in a scene, and it remains in the scene through the edit. So when this scene went viral on social media, I found myself staring at that stiff, rigid, awkward arm all over again. And now, you will too.

What’s next for Tom Holland? He has been teasing the future of Spider-Man 4, but also ensuring fans that after the success of Spider-Man: No Way Home, they need to do something that lives up to the legacy of that movie. It’s going to be hard to top uniting all three on-screen Spider-Man actors in a Multiversal movie, but possibly a street level Gang War movie that has Daredevil and The Punisher involved would move the needle. 

We shall see what comes of Tom Holland’s future in the MCU… and it he can keep his left are at ease.