I knew people marveled at the way Christopher Nolan made movies, and it’s clear actors really admire him and want to work with him. What I didn’t realize was the impact his productions have on the other projects his stars work on. That all became very clear to both me and the internet, though, as Tom Holland revealed how he was able to “lay down the law” on Spider-Man: Brand New Day after working on The Odyssey with Nolan. However, while all this is admirable, it also led to the internet dunking on Marvel.
What Tom Holland Told Spider-Man Producers After Working On The Odyssey
With both Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey being released in July on the 2026 movie schedule, Tom Holland has made it very clear that Nolan’s film helped improve his upcoming Marvel movie. During an interview with GQ, he revealed that because he was filming The Odyssey, Marvel had time to hire Destin Daniel Cretton as director and further develop Spider-Man’s next story. He called all this “a tough pill to swallow for Sony”; however, he noted that in hindsight everyone is “grateful that it happened.”
He then spoke about how working with Nolan made him realize something about his work with Marvel:
I think coming from the Marvel space, and I think this will upset Marvel a little bit—his level of preparation is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. There’s not a single question you can ask him that he can’t answer immediately. He’s also quite simple in the way that he works. There are times when they use fancy camera tricks and things like that, but he really does come to set and he finds the shot.
Over the years, people have spoken about it being tough to make a Marvel movie. For example, The Marvels director said it was challenging because there was a “lack of a really solid script.” These films can also go into production without finished scripts; in fact, Avengers: Endgame was done that way.
So, witnessing Nolan's preparation, speed and efficiency impacted how Holland worked on Spider-Man 4. In fact, he came into Brand New Day with a new mentality that he used to “lay down the law”:
I was really able to lay down the law and say, ‘We are not going to come to set and figure it out.’ ‘We need to know why we are making this movie beyond the fact that it’s Spider-Man 4 and they make loads of money and we’re going to just have a big summer. Why are we making this movie?’
Holland went on to say that Cretton was “instrumental” in helping him do this. He also said he was in consistent communication with producers at Sony, and he’d talk to them about what he learned on The Odyssey and how it could help them with this Spider-Man project, telling them:
‘Well, Chris is doing it this way. This is how I think we should be doing it.’
Overall, it sounds like Tom Holland’s work on The Odyssey really helped him when it came to making Spider-Man: Brand New Day the best it could be. However, along with these comments came messages from folks who are dunking on Marvel.
Now, People Are Dunking On Marvel
Now, after hearing Holland speak about how his work with Nolan compared to his work with Marvel, people are criticizing the studio. Many have said they think the actor’s comments were justified, and it highlights a flaw in the process used to make superhero movies. For example, @DanFriedman81 wrote, in part:
The process is bad, the movies are bad and the stars are more than justified in calling out the executives who are responsible. Nolan makes good movies and Marvel makes bad movies and Holland is completely reasonable and obviously correct to suggest that maybe Marvel should try making movies the way Christopher Nolan makes movies instead of the way Marvel has been making movies.
Lots of other people also took this as an opportunity to criticize Marvel’s ways of making movies. Complimenting Holland’s comments and noting how it could impact the MCU, folks wrote:
- I’m dead he walked on that Spider-Man set mad as hell and said yeah we’re changing how we do things around here 💀 -@artinventcr
- Love this. Basically rejecting The Feige Method. The times, they are a changing… -@robertliefeld
- I’m crying he told Marvel they gotta lock in😭 -@DarkOfTheMovie
- If we still have Spider-Man in the MCU and if all the good vibes about Brand New Day end up being true, we'll have to thank Tom Holland a lot. -@HatmadLives
Along with Holland’s comments here, he’s also been open about critical conversations he and Zendaya have had that led to big scene changes in Brand New Day. While he’s been direct about the fact that the film could be better, it’s also clear he has put in the work to make this Spider-Man movie great. It sounds like we have his time on The Odyssey to partially thank for that too, because he made it very clear that working with Nolan changed the way he worked on his new Marvel movie.
So, to see how all of this impacts the films in question, you can see Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey in theaters on July 17 and Spider-Man Brand New Day will swing into cinemas on July 31.
