How does one go about rebooting a film franchise for the second time in ten years? The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) decided to start Spider-Man off small, giving him a minor role in their pseudo-Avengers film Captain America: Civil War. The decision resulted in largely positive feedback (myself included) and certainly helped ease viewers into seeing another Spider-Man reboot. Additionally, Spider-Man: Homecoming has several safety wires (or webs) attached to help the film successfully integrate into the MCU. This is actually where the MCU’s connected universe comes in handy, as it allows Spider-Man’s formal introduction to be alongside familiar faces and settings.
After a cute, humorous home video recap of Civil War’s events, Spider-Man: Homecoming turns to the daily life of Peter Parker (Tom Holland)—high school outcast genius by day, New York’s friendly neighborhood Spider-Man…later on in the day (about late afternoon). The teenage superhero is shown helping out with local city life—ranging from stopping minor crimes to giving an old lady directions. Yet Peter desires to be more than a local superhero, he wants to be an Avenger—fighting galactic foes alongside his boss, mentor and father-figure Iron Man/Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.). Yet Stark doesn’t believe Peter’s ready to be an Avenger, and he’s right as the teen’s immature, wisecracking personality conflicts with his “great” responsibility as a superhero—carelessly allowing criminals to escape while clumsily increasing collateral damage. Can Peter learn to act more responsibly while also balancing his superhero and social life? Who knows, maybe he doesn’t and the film ends super depressing.
Comedy was never going to be an issue with Spider-Man: Homecoming. It’s an MCU film, and there’s yet to be a single MCU film that I didn’t find witty and humorous. A comedic highlight includes an amusing scene involving Spider-Man traversing through a golf course, lightly satirizing how Spider-Man almost always has something to seemingly web sling off. There are also several entertaining scenes involving Captain America PSAs being shown in Peter’s high school (and one more that’s more hidden), with the school’s gym coach casually pointing out, yet not really caring, how the Captain's “a war criminal now.” It’s interesting to see a high school perspective of the MCU’s universe, with one student discussing how she would “F Thor, marry Captain America, and kill Hulk” (yeah, good luck with the latter one). I love how intentionally awkward the writers made the high school’s morning announcements—that, plus the scene where Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) and Peter watch an instructional YouTube video on tying ties, brought me right back to my own high school days.
There are a few noteworthy problems with Spider-Man: Homecoming, the first being its non-veteran supporting cast. The film makes an interesting choice by turning the usual diversity of students Peter interacts with in both the comics and films and turns them all into science whizzes. This includes Peter’s best friend, love interest and even Flash Thompson, who throughout most comics and adaptations has been portrayed as the bullying jock. Here, however, Flash has been modernized into the jerk science rival who’s envious of Peter’s superior skills, even receiving a race change. The problem with the supporting characters isn’t their background changes (which is actually a nice way of updating Peter’s high school life to a more modern setting), but that their personalities aren’t interesting or memorable—coming across as run-of-the-mill trope characters with little else going for them. The best friend is mostly there for exposition, comedic value, navigation and the “average Joe saves the super hero” scene. The love interest is far less engaging than Spider-Man’s previous romances (I really didn’t care if Peter got the girl or not), and Flash is still a typical high school bully. There’s also one other character who, while I didn’t find noticeably humorous or appealing (despite the film’s efforts to the contrary), ends up having a distinctly important reveal towards the film’s conclusion. I’m uncertain how I feel about such reveal, and will just have to wait for the sequel to see how it plays out.
Tom Holland, on the other hand, further proves to be a great Spider-Man. Holland finds an effective balance between comedy and drama, the genius and the teenager—elements the previous Spider-Man was ineffective at stabilizing. It’s worth noting how Holland (who’s in his early 20s) is far closer in age to his character counterpart than both Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield (who were in their late 20s/early 30s when portraying the high school superhero). Holland is gradually setting up to be the best live-action Spider-Man, with his performance hitting its highest peak yet towards the film’s end where he delivers a powerful mixture of fear, tenacity and character growth. Homecoming opts to forgo discussing Spider-Man’s tragic past—not mentioning Peter’s parents at all, while making only a single indistinct nod to Uncle Ben. While I’m grateful Homecoming spares its viewers from a tiresome third retelling of Peter’s backstory, such omission does create an issue, as the film is relying on its audience’s previous knowledge of Spider-Man lore. Someone going into Homecoming without having ever experienced a previous Spider-Man comic, film or show (which, granted, is a rarity), will find themselves confused over what happened to Peter’s parents and Aunt May’s husband. The best friend discovering Peter’s secret does allow for brief, humorous exposition on Spider-Man’s powers, but the discussion is still a bit too vague for properly informing newcomers about Spider-Man’s lore.
Homecoming ingeniously utilizes Peter’s Stark-created suit to grant the superhero an array of both modern and golden age abilities. The modified suit brings back Spider-Man’s classic web wings, though they’re more than just aesthetic choices here as they allow the superhero to briefly glide like a flying squirrel. The suit also grants him over 500 different web styles, including rapid shot, web grenade, and web Tasers (now all I need to see is a web boat, web wrecking ball, and web parachute and I’ll be very satisfied). The film gives more focus towards Spider-Man’s espionage and pre-planning activities, though they are, unfortunately, often interrupted by some inconvenient event. Homecoming does seem to severely nerf Spider-Man’s Spidey Sense or at least have it where Peter’s yet to develop good enough reflexes for it, because he certainly gets hit/ambushed a lot by attacks the Sense should have easily allowed him to dodge.
MAJOR SPOILERS BEGIN: In my notes, around two-thirds into the film, I wrote down the following sentence: Michael Keaton plays his role exceptionally well, unfortunately, he doesn’t get enough screen time/presence to show off his skills. I shortly after crossed out the sentence, leaving a note to its side stating; “Good Twist”. Keaton’s role as Adrian Toomes/Vulture is a unique take on the Spider-Man villain. Here he’s a business man who’s been screwed over by higher authorities and decides to start his own weapons black market to make a profit. The man has a temper and is dangerous when provoked and/or interfered with, yet never comes across as sadistic or vile. In fact, the character almost comes across as sympathetic, showing care and fairness to his workers (who, in turn, show loyalty and respect to their boss), in addition to being completely devoted to his wife and daughter. Instead of immediately killing Peter after learning his secret identity, Adrian chooses to spare the boy’s life for saving his daughter earlier, telling Peter to simply stay out of his business. Hell, he doesn’t even tell Peter to stay away from his daughter, but instead to go have fun with her; “but not too much fun.” It’s a great villain scene, with Adrian showing a genuinely humane side (a complete rarity for an MCU antagonist), while equally showcasing just how dangerous he is: threating to take Peter and everyone he loves lives if the boy interferes again. The scene is wonderfully intense and grounded, making Peter feel like the actual kid he is as Keaton effectively pulls off the intimidation. It’s the humane, relatable qualities to Vulture combined with Keaton’s performance that bumps the character right up to the top of the MCU villain tier list. MAJOR SPOILERS END
The review has been a rollercoaster of positives and negatives towards Homecoming, but the real question remains: where does the film stand in terms of the previous Spider-Man films? For someone who has enjoyed all the Spider-Man films to a certain extent (which, yes, includes Spider-Man 3, jazz scene and all), Homecoming is better than both Amazing Spider-Man films and Spider-Man 3, yet not on the level of the 2002 origin story and its superior sequel (which remains the best Spider-Man film to date). An element that makes Homecoming superior to the Amazing series is how it doesn’t try contending with its predecessor franchise, but rather goes its own distinct path alongside the MCU universe. I haven’t even written about Robert Downey Jr.’s performance, whose amount of character development since Iron Man has been staggering (can you believe the same self-centered playboy billionaire in 2008 is now the responsible father-figure leader to Peter). I will note, however, that his final scene is quite perplexing, as it completely contradicts what happens in Civil War (a film that takes place only two months earlier). Nonetheless, Homecoming offers a warm, enjoyable return to Marvel’s friendly neighborhood web slinger, though it still misses out on the most important piece of its lore: J.J. Johnson demanding for PHOTOS OF SPIDER-MAN!