The influence has been building for a while. Director Destin Daniel Cretton had already said publicly that the Insomniac games were a "great influence" on Spider-Man: Brand New Day, with the stunt team reportedly pulling screenshots of specific moves from the games and bringing them into rehearsals to see what they could physically recreate. Now Tom Holland himself has put that on record, and it lands differently hearing it from the guy actually throwing the punches on screen.
On the red carpet at the Brand New Day premiere, Holland was asked what he most wanted to bring from the games into the film. His answer was immediate.
What Holland actually said
"A lot of the finishing moves," Holland told the interviewer, before going further: "I was actually playing the game last night. Couldn't sleep last night, I was so excited about today. Just trying to figure out what I was going to do, and I was like, I'm just gonna throw the game on and have some fun. And yeah, for me, a lot of those finishing moves... A lot of our stuff was influenced by that stuff."
Here's the thing: this is not a vague "the games are great" PR quote. Holland is describing booting up the game the night before a major premiere and using it as active preparation. That is a specific, practical relationship between the Insomniac titles and the MCU version of the character.
Why Insomniac's finishers translate so well
Insomniac's combat system in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is built around momentum and spectacle. The finishing moves are designed to feel physically grounded while still being visually spectacular, which makes them unusually practical as stunt reference material compared to, say, comic book splash pages or animated series clips.
The stunt team's approach of screenshotting specific finishers and stress-testing whether they could be performed practically is a smart workflow. Games have been used as visual reference in film production before, but usually for environments or costumes. Using them as movement and choreography reference is a more direct translation.
What most players miss when they're chaining combos in the game is that those animations were built to look plausible under real physics. That is exactly what makes them useful on a film set.
The feedback loop between games and film
This is a genuinely interesting creative loop. The Insomniac games were themselves influenced by Holland's MCU portrayal of Peter Parker, particularly in terms of personality and the younger, scrappier energy of the character. Now the films are pulling movement and combat language back from the games.
Cretton and Holland are both pointing at the same source material, which suggests this was a deliberate creative decision rather than a coincidental overlap. The stunt team had screenshots. Holland was playing the game the night before the premiere. That is a coordinated reference pipeline.
For players who have spent time with the Marvel's Spider-Man 2 guides and know the combat system inside out, watching Brand New Day with that context is going to hit differently. You will likely recognize specific finisher animations translated into live action, which is a genuinely rare experience as a gamer.
The film is in cinemas now. Keep your eyes on those finishing sequences.
