Joe Russo has called Tom Holland the last great movie star, and the timing could hardly be more cinematic. The Spider-Man star is having the kind of year most performers only ever dream about, with the box office practically composing a love letter to his star power. Two enormous films carrying his name arrived within months of each other this year, and audiences showed up for both. Somewhere along the way, one very well-known director decided that watching Holland shine in silence simply would not do.

While the box office kept adding zeros, Russo kept adding reasons, and his explanation for Holland’s old Hollywood glow turns out to be wonderfully specific.

Joe Russo believes Tom Holland is the last great movie star, and he told CBR so with the calm of a man holding the winning ticket. The praise feels well-earned, since Spider-Man: Brand New Day stayed parked at number one for weeks after its release.

“He’s the last great movie star. There’s a vintage quality to Tom Holland that feels like it comes from a time that doesn’t exist now,” Russo said to CBR.

He then added, “There’s lots of great movie stars out there, but [his] energy is different.”

CBR also heard the longer version of the compliment. Russo, who directed Holland through several Marvel films alongside his brother, said the actor connects with audiences in a way very few performers in history have managed. He credited a rare blend of charm and genuineness, in both the man and the work, and described a Peter Parker lifted straight off the comic page. 

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While Tom Holland earns praise for being completely himself, Robert Downey Jr. is busy becoming someone else entirely.

Joe Russo has also settled a theory that kept the internet busy, the one where Robert Downey Jr. plays a corrupted Tony Stark variant in Avengers: Doomsday. The guess was fair, since Downey spent more than a decade defining Stark, and theorists were soon sketching evil Iron Man family trees. Speaking to Empire magazine, Russo dismissed the comparison with the words zero similarities, adding that Victor von Doom should not be treated as another version of a hero audiences already know.

The Russo brothers explained that Downey worked through performance capture, the same technique behind James Spader’s Ultron and Josh Brolin’s Thanos, and said he seemed to have a lot of the same fun with Doom. The filmmakers want the villain to build an identity of his own, which suits a comic book ruler and scientist whose ambition stretches far beyond gadgets and into control itself. Doom is entirely his own man, and Iron Man has no seat at that table. Tom Holland, meanwhile, needs no disguise to hold an audience, which is exactly why Russo calls him the last great movie star.

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