Tom Holland Says the Spider-Man Games Set the Bar for the Symbiote Suit

Spider-Man 2 set an awkwardly high visual benchmark

Tom Holland believes Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 set a formidable benchmark for a live-action black suit. Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, he questioned how filmmakers could create something comparable without relying on CG.

As our sister site IGN Middle East reported in its coverage of Holland’s comments, the actor framed the subject as a hypothetical challenge. He was discussing what might happen if his Spider-Man ever received a black suit, rather than revealing an existing Marvel plan.

Insomniac Games gave its symbiote a glossy, living quality, complete with tendrils and transformations. Games can make an alien costume writhe across Peter Parker’s body without worrying about fabric, gravity, or an actor trying to find the eye holes. Live-action filmmaking has fewer convenient superpowers.

Holland also praised Tobey Maguire’s black suit in Spider-Man 3. That practical costume took the simpler route: it looked like a darker Spider-Man suit rather than an organism constantly moving across its host.

The cloth-versus-goo choice decides how much CG is needed

A cloth-like black suit offers the clearest practical route, while Insomniac’s more alien design would depend heavily on CG. Both approaches have appeared across Spider-Man stories, but they create very different versions of the symbiote.

The simpler interpretation follows the sleek comic-book silhouette and lets the costume’s influence emerge through Peter’s behaviour. The more fluid version treats the symbiote as an active creature, with tendrils, changing textures, and movement that cannot be produced by static fabric alone.

Holland’s previous Spider-Man suits have frequently been augmented or replaced with CG, particularly during action sequences. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is leaning into more visible physical detail, including wrinkles, moving fabric, and the outline of Peter’s ears beneath the mask. A heavily animated symbiote could pull the design back towards the polished digital appearance that practical details help avoid.

The MCU has a symbiote thread, but no confirmed black suit story

The MCU has left a symbiote fragment in play, but Holland’s comments do not confirm that Peter Parker will wear it. Spider-Man: No Way Home ends Tom Hardy’s brief MCU visit with a small piece of the Venom symbiote left behind.

That unresolved scene has kept the possibility of a future Venom symbiote story alive. Marvel Studios and Sony have not announced a black suit storyline for Holland’s Spider-Man, however, and his careful use of hypothetical language keeps this firmly outside announcement territory.

Avengers: Secret Wars offers another source of speculation because Spider-Man obtained the black suit during the original Secret Wars comic event. Marvel’s film adaptations regularly rearrange comic plots, so the shared title does not guarantee that the MCU will repeat Peter’s costume story.

Holland has identified the real creative problem before Marvel has publicly committed to solving it: Insomniac made the symbiote feel alive, and a film version must either embrace extensive CG or choose a more restrained practical design. The game has already made either decision easy to scrutinise.