Thanks to his role as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Spider-Man, Tom Holland is one of the most recognizable young actors on the planet. And while it’s always handy to have a major franchise to fall back on, the key to establishing any sort of longevity in Hollywood is to tackle a variety of different parts in multiple genres to prove that you can handle anything that gets thrown your way.
The 24 year-old won widespread praise for his against-type performance in Netflix thriller The Devil All the Time last year, but Holland currently has two new movies in release, both of which are being widely dismissed by critics, although it should be pointed out that his work doesn’t appear to be one of the many issues plaguing either Cherry or Chaos Walking.
The former marks the Russo brothers’ first non-MCU effort behind the camera since 2006’s You, Me and Dupree, and was once pegged as a potential awards season contender. Instead, the sibling duo have been accused of heavily favoring style over substance in an effort to prove themselves outside of their comic book comfort zone, and the semi-biographical crime thriller currently holds a Rotten Tomatoes score of just 38%.
Meanwhile, YA adaptation Chaos Walking arrives years too late to the party when the craze has long since died down, but then again, it has spent a very long time on the shelf. Production initially wrapped in November 2017, but director Doug Liman was replaced by Fede Alvarez for extensive reshoots, which ended in May 2019.
It finally hit theaters yesterday, and it’s been instantly dismissed as derivative and uninspired, only mustering a 25% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Tom Holland‘s first two 2021 efforts may have stumbled, then, but at least there’s always December’s Spider-Man: No Way Home to look forward to.
