Age has always been a tricky subject for Spider-Man on film. The character is a high-schooler, but because of the multi-film contracts inevitably involved with Peter Parker, coupled with Hollywood's penchant for casting twenty-somethings as teenagers, the actors who play him tend to be ten years his senior. Both Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield were in their thirties when their respective final instalments came out, yet in the films themselves they'd just graduated high school. Marvel are toning this back majorly. Not only is Tom Holland nineteen, much younger than either of his predecessors, his version of the character is going to the ripe old age of fifteen. This means that, rather than using high school for the character set up and quickly moving on to Peter just being a struggling college student/basically an adult, the Marvel version will be based in school This allows for Spidey to be a totally distinct hero - rather than dealing with the regular pressures of real life, he's dealing with the pressure of real life as a teenager, something that hasn't really been explored directly in superhero cinema yet (aside from maybe Kick-Ass, although that's hardly suitable for children).
