Zendaya is a better Spider-Man than Tom Holland

So the other day my so called "friend" made me watch The Greatest Showman, fully knowing that I hate musicals. And I thought it was fine. Not the worst musical I've ever seen. They actually manage to tell the story through the songs for a good chunk of them, even if it's mostly through montage. It's basically X-Men Origins: Wolverine but if William Striker was the protagonist. But that's not really the point.

The point is that there's this one scene that I genuinely liked. It's this scene where Zendaya and Zac Efron are singing about falling in love or whatever, and they are swinging around on these like trapeze ropes. The song is pretty generic and the actual physics of the ropes doesn't really make any sense. But what is cool is the choreography. There's all this crazy rope work going on. I'm sure there are stunt people involved, but it looks like Zendaya is doing a good chunk of the choreography. And it is way cooler than any web swinging in any of the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies. On top of that, Z&Z are falling in love while doing this elaborate rope dance thing. It's super romantic, and pisses me off, because to this day we haven't had a romantic swinging scene in any Spider-Man movie. There's this one pretty romantic scene in Amazing, where Andrew and Emma Stone are making out, and then he's like, "let's get out of here," and we get one shot of them swinging together. That's it. One shot. You have this great opportunity to do a whole romantic scene where they are swinging around, kind of like the "can you read my mind" scene from the first Superman movie. But in 9 Spider-Man movies, we've never gotten a romantic swinging scene. In Far From Home, they make a point of establishing that Zendaya doesn't like web swinging, despite having no problem with it in Greatest Showman. And this isn't even the only case of Zendaya doing Spidey-like things.

Which brings me to Euphoria. So Euphoria is a great show. It's another edgy teen drama about sex, drugs, and rock and roll. There's a good amount of HBO's, [look how R-rated we are]-isms, but, it is also very well made. For one it's really refreshing to see Zendaya give a truly great performance and take on darker more interesting subject matter. She is truly wasted on this Disney garbage. The other thing that elevates this show is the filmmaking, specifically the camerawork. Whenever the series creator Sam Levinson is directing, there's always these crazy elaborate camera shots. Like in one episode at a carnival, there's this crane shot that follows two of the characters getting in line for the ferris wheel, then goes all the way up and meets them in the air, already on the ride. Season 2 has this elaborate forth wall break, during this abstract sequence where one of the characters is imagining that they are on a movie set. The camera passes a mirror, and for a brief moment you can see the real camera crew wearing Covid masks. Most importantly, in the second episode there's this sequence where to illustrate Zendaya's high, they do this crazy spinning hallway oner. Zendaya's crawling around on the ceiling while everyone else is on the floor like normal. How did they do such a crazy shot you ask? CGI? No, it's all real. The built this crazy rotating set and just strapped these extras to the floor while Zendaya's crawling all over the place. It's fuckin' nuts dude. And far more elaborate and impressive than anything in a Spider-Man movie since the Raimi films.

In addition to these much more impressive sequences in other properties, Zendaya is good actually. I'm not necessarily a huge fan of hers. I never really watched Black Kim Possible, or whatever her Disney sitcom was called. Although, come to think of it she did a good amount of grappling in that show too...

In any case, she's one of those celebrities that makes it feel unfair to be an average person. She's absolutely stunningly beautiful, but on top of that she's a talented actress, she can sing, she can dance. She's funny and charming too, and can still somehow come off as relatable. But after seeing how great she is in Euphoria, I think Zendaya might just be one of those rare people that is exactly as cool as she thinks she is. On the flip side, I think Tom Holland is really great in the role of Spidey but is rarely given the opportunity to showcase his talents. In behind the scenes clips you can see that Tom is really good at gymnastics and the physicality of the character, but in the final movie there's so many layers of CGI and green screens that you can't tell what is him and what is built in a computer. It was a similar problem with Andrew in Amazing. They did these practical swinging effects, which look awesome in the BTS footage, but is so over edited in the final movie that you can't even tell. These Marvel flicks are so overproduced.

In conclusion, Zendaya has done both better web swinging, and wall crawling sequences in non-Spidey movies, than anything that appears in the mainline Spider-Man franchise. On top of that, these sequences are far more elaborate and impressive than the majority of effects in said Spidey films. Disney and Marvel are wasting the talent of Zendaya on their mediocre Spidey flicks, and they are wasting the potential of the character with bland generic CGI, when practical stunt work can be more dynamic and compelling.