Tom Holland pinpoints what separates Nolan’s The Odyssey set from Spider-Man sets

If you've wondered what it's actually like to work with Christopher Nolan versus the Marvel machine, Tom Holland is in the unusual position to spill the beans right now. He's just come off Nolan's ambitious The Odyssey and is about to swing back onto screens in Spider-Man: Brand-New Day, and let's just say he's noticed a few stark differences on those sets.

Nolan's script barely changed at all between his first read and the released film.

Nolan vs. Marvel: Two Very Different Worlds

Speaking on 100 Questions with Tom Simons, Holland makes it pretty clear: Nolan runs a painstakingly organised ship. If you're on one of his sets, you know exactly what you're doing and when — everything is mapped out down to the last detail before a single frame is shot. The script? Locked. No last-minute rewrites, no improvising entire scenes because something isn't working.

And the big sequences? Mostly done practically, right in front of the camera, using animatronics and clever staging rather than just handing it all over to the visual effects department. Honestly, you do sort of want to see how he'd shoot Spider-Man without a bit of CGI, but apparently Nolan has his ways.

In contrast, Marvel's approach is… let's say, more relaxed.

There's still a lot of prep (it's Marvel; it's not chaos), but Holland points out that you might turn up to set with scenes still being written, or sometimes even with no script at all, and you're expected to improvise your way through.

For a bloke who's been in as many blockbusters as Holland, that's apparently just "part of the job."