Spider-Man: No Way Home star Tom Holland compares his Peter Parker and Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark to Marty McFly and Doc Brown from Back to the Future. Holland plays Spider-Man for the eighth time in the latest MCU epic, this time taking on a crew of Spider-Man villains from all corners of the multiverse.

The multiverse angle of course adds a whole new level to the MCU as it heads into Phase 4. But at the same time, Holland’s Parker remains very much the same character he has been since being introduced way back in Captain America: Civil War. Indeed, No Way Home sees Parker at a personal crossroads as he deals with being outed as Spider-Man while also dealing with the very serious consequences of the multiverse exploding onto the scene.

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Holland obviously has made the character of Peter Parker his own over the course of eight MCU movies, including the Spider-Man trilogy begun with Spider-Man: Homecoming and wrapping up with No Way Home. During his appearance this week on the ever spicy interview-plus-wings show Hot Ones (via First We Feast), Holland had occasion to talk about the things that inspired his take on Parker and pointed directly to Back to the Future’s Marty McFly, noting that Tony Stark is basically Doc Brown to Parker’s Marty. He said:

But the biggest inspiration for me and my biggest goal in playing Spider-Man was I really wanted to be this generation’s Marty McFly. That’s up for everyone else’s opinion. But for me, I’m really proud of what we did. And especially my relationship between me and Downey. To me there’s a lot of similarities between Marty and Doc. And I know that they have deepfaked us and made that happen. Which actually was a huge honor for me. I loved seeing it. So that for me would’ve been the biggest inspiration.

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Marty McFly of course became an iconic character in the 1980s thanks to Michael J. Fox’s depiction in the Back to the Future movies alongside Christopher Lloyd as mad scientist Doc Brown. While some may hesitate to compare Holland’s Parker to such an important film figure as Marty McFly, there’s no doubt that a very Marty-and-Doc dynamic existed between Holland’s Peter and Downey’s Tony Stark, though sadly that relationship came to an end when Stark sacrificed himself in The Avengers: Endgame. Now of course Peter Parker must sort out his problems without the help of his mentor, which only adds an extra level of personal drama to everything going down in Spider-Man: No Way Home.

It remains to be seen of course whether Holland’s Peter Parker has the same lasting impact on pop culture that Fox’s Marty McFly has had. There’s no question that Holland has admirably filled the role of Peter Parker in the MCU, but comparing the character to Marty McFly is indeed a bit perilous considering how essential Back to the Future is to an entire generation of filmgoers who grew up on 1980s popcorn movies. At the very least, one can acknowledge that the McFly inspiration is clearly visible in Holland’s work in Spider-Man: No Way Home and the rest of his turns in the MCU, and that it’s nice for him to shout out the character while also paying tribute to his relationship with Downey’s Tony Stark.

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Source: First We Feast/YouTube

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