Tom Holland Reveals Why Spider-Man Keeps Webbing The Punisher’s Mouth Shut In ‘Brand New Day’

Tom Holland is gearing up for his fourth solo outing as Spider-Man, and this time around Peter Parker is sharing the screen with one of Marvel’s most notoriously foul-mouthed characters. ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ finds Peter living anonymously in New York after the world forgot his identity at the end of ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’, and the pressure of that isolation is already sparking changes he cannot fully control. With the film closing in on its summer release, the press tour has started rolling out new details almost daily.

Joining Holland for the ride are Zendaya as MJ and Jacob Batalon as Ned, alongside newcomers Sadie Sink, Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk, Michael Mando as Scorpion, and Tramell Tillman. The marquee addition, though, is Jon Bernthal reprising his role as Frank Castle, better known as the Punisher, marking his first time sharing a big screen with Holland’s web slinger. Director Destin Daniel Cretton has been teasing that the pairing brings out a different side of Peter than fans have seen before.

Now, in an interview with Fandango, Holland explained exactly how that unlikely team-up plays out on screen, noting that the Punisher’s mouth gets webbed shut every time he tries to swear.

The gag itself had already been teased in the film’s first trailer, which showed Spider-Man stopping Frank mid-expletive by covering his mouth with webbing before he could finish dropping an F bomb. It is a clever workaround for a character whose comic book and television history is built on graphic violence and equally graphic language, none of which fits comfortably inside a PG13 Marvel movie. Fitting Frank into Peter’s world without sanding down what makes him compelling has clearly been a central challenge for the production.

Part of what makes the Peter and Frank dynamic land, according to Holland, comes from his actual friendship with Bernthal, which goes back nearly a decade to when the two worked together on the film ‘Pilgrimage’. During that shoot the pair famously helped each other prepare audition tapes, with Bernthal assisting Holland’s tryout for Spider-Man and Holland returning the favor for Bernthal’s eventual casting as the Punisher.

That history clearly carried over onto the ‘Brand New Day’ set, where Cretton let the two actors ad-lib and riff off each other rather than sticking strictly to the script. Speaking during Fandango’s Big Ticket interview, Holland described the result as an “awesome big brother-little brother, bickering relationship” between the characters, and added that the banter between the two of them is really really awesome. Zendaya backed that up in the same conversation, noting how comfortable the two actors are together on set.

Holland has also addressed the tonal balancing act more directly. He told Empire that the team worked hard to keep Frank Castle authentic to the character fans already know from his Netflix and Disney Plus appearances, even while finding lighter ways around his more violent and profane tendencies. It is a careful needle to thread, especially with Bernthal having just played a notably darker version of the character in the recent special presentation ‘The Punisher: One Last Kill’.

‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ swings into theaters on July 31, and between the new Punisher dynamic and Peter’s mysterious physical changes, there is clearly plenty still being kept under wraps. Marketing has leaned into nostalgia and humor in equal measure, and small moments like the mouth webbing gag suggest the film is not taking itself too seriously even as it tackles a more grown-up version of Peter Parker.

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