“Who’s Pedro Almodóvar?”

That was Tom Holland’s response in a 2019 interview with a Spanish outlet, after Jake Gyllenhaal, his Mysterio co-star in “Spider-Man: Far From Home,” said, “I’d like to see Pedro Almodóvar’s version of Spider-Man.” The internet was quick to pounce. How could an actor not know one of the world’s greatest filmmakers? Wasn’t there something almost rude about being so unapologetically ignorant? A few people pointed out that Holland was only in his early twenties. They were very much in the minority.

I’ll admit, I found Holland’s supposed faux pas rather refreshing. I like Pedro Almodóvar and his films, but that doesn’t mean everyone needs to know who he is. If anything, I’m wary of people who insist there are certain things everyone simply ought to know. Isn’t it better to admit you don’t know something than pretend otherwise? The film world, after all, is full of people eager to quiz others on their taste and knowledge. Tom Holland, at least, seemed to have no interest in playing that game.

Of course, when you hear a name you don’t recognize, the grown-up thing to do is probably to keep quiet and listen rather than immediately ask who it is. And yes, there was something a little unserious about a Hollywood blockbuster star—even a British one—showing so little interest in European arthouse cinema. But this is Tom Holland we’re talking about. Then as now, he was Peter Parker: a boy with extraordinary powers he handled imperfectly, a strong sense of justice, and a knack for making a mess of things. Peter has always been awkward, and never particularly interested in hiding it. It is part of why audiences have found Spider-Man so relatable. Seen that way, admitting his ignorance outright rather than staying quiet for appearances’ sake feels entirely in character. Holland had accidentally become Peter Parker in real life. He caught some flak for it, but he also reminded us why he is the Spider-Man of his generation. Or at least, that’s how I saw it.

Falling into growing up
The Peter Parker we meet in “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” released on July 29 and seen by 7.5 million Korean moviegoers in its first two weeks, is no longer that boy. And neither is Tom Holland. Peter’s peers are graduating from college and preparing for life beyond it. Holland, meanwhile, is now earning multimillion-dollar salaries and stepping into a central role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) as the previous generation of Avengers recedes. The film takes that added weight seriously, and its opening is suitably somber. After joining forces with Spider-Men from across the multiverse in the previous film, Peter has lost his only family, Aunt May (Marisa Tomei). Then, at his own request, Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) erases him from everyone else’s memory. The loss is entirely one-sided: Peter alone remembers what everyone else has forgotten. He is the only one left to visit May’s grave, the only one left looking at the Instagram accounts of MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon).

Holland opens “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” on a remarkably even keel, with just a hint of his usual playfulness. Reading a letter he has written to MJ, he sounds like someone who has been through something terrible and is more concerned with putting others at ease than himself. But there is something else in his voice, too: the easy warmth of an actor greeting audiences after five years away from the franchise. Whatever has happened, he seems to say, it’s good to be back. Holland’s Peter has always had a lightness about him. It is there in the way he moves, but also in his temperament: solemnity has never been his style. Still, somewhere along the way, the young man who is both Peter Parker and Spider-Man has learned what it feels like to fall. In “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” Holland brings a new composure to the role, even when his face is hidden behind the mask. It suits a hero who has spent his life catching himself on webs of his own making.

“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” brings the same restraint to its romance. Here, the film recalls “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”: in both, technology intervenes in a romantic relationship, leaving one partner with memories the other no longer shares. But Holland plays heartbreak very differently from Jim Carrey. Peter knows he is no ordinary man, and that only makes it harder to accept that he has long since vanished from MJ’s life. When she fails to recognize him, he simply steps back into being another customer at the café. As he orders his coffee, the energy briefly leaves Holland’s voice, his words landing somewhere between speech and a sigh. It is a small but finely judged moment: the more it hurts, the less he shows. What he cannot quite hide is the flash of wide-eyed surprise on his face. Holland makes you believe he has always been this alert to every shift in feeling, even behind Spider-Man’s mask.

Becoming king without a father
Holland’s Spider-Man has made it this far without Iron Man, and by the end of “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” he knows exactly who he is. Asked whether he is Spider-Man or Peter Parker, he doesn’t hesitate: he is both. The certainty of that answer makes it easy to imagine Holland carrying the MCU into its next chapter. Curiously, Holland found himself in a similar position in another film this summer, “The Odyssey.” Playing Telemachus, the son of Odysseus (Matt Damon), he once again caught some flak online after saying in an interview that he had thought of the character as sixteen. There was just one problem: in the myth, Odysseus has been away for more than twenty years, having left home to fight in the Trojan War. If Telemachus were sixteen, he could hardly be the son of Odysseus and Penelope (Anne Hathaway).

Once again, I want to defend Holland. Maybe the Telemachus he saw in Christopher Nolan’s screenplay really did strike him as a sixteen-year-old at heart. And if the director was on board with that interpretation, it seems unfair to say Holland simply got the character wrong. What interests me more is how he put that idea into practice. Telemachus doesn’t have much to do in “The Odyssey.” He isn’t on screen for long, and when he is, he is mostly caught between his mother, her suitors, and the shadow of a father who never came home. Holland seems to understand how ridiculous it would be to give such a character much swagger. So he spends the film carefully suppressing the corners of his mouth, playing a young prince doing his best to look serious. Only when he wonders what his absent father is really like does his face lose all that effort and become simply, unmistakably innocent. Eventually, Telemachus is reunited with his father and inherits the throne. He is given a gold crown that looks oddly flimsy next to the helmets worn by the heroes before him. The coronation lasts only a few seconds, and Holland wears a smile that is just as hard to pin down.

The unease of a man who becomes king without his father. The simplicity of someone who, somehow, seems bound to be all right. Tom Holland has a lightness about him these days that carries a trace of both. In “The Odyssey” and “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” Holland plays characters who live in the shadow of larger men—Odysseus and Iron Man—without quite inheriting their authority. Both are left to find their footing after a sudden absence, just as more responsibility lands on their shoulders. “The Odyssey” has little room for Telemachus to work through that transition. But Holland has had a decade to grow into Peter Parker and Spider-Man, and by “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” that history shows. His Peter knows what is expected of him without falling back on an overbearing idea of masculinity. When he falls short, he turns to others. That is especially clear in Peter’s heartfelt conversation with Jean Grey (Sadie Sink), a scene that helps explain why Holland has become such a compelling figure of growing up. This Peter has the generosity of someone who has made mistakes and the maturity of someone who knows what it is to have been childish. Perhaps that is also how audiences will come to see Holland himself. Watching the newly thirtysomething actor in these two films, just days apart, was one of the rare pleasures of this sweltering summer at the movies.