We all got a taste of Black Panther and Spiderman in Captain America: Civil War, most of us were happy with what we saw character-wise from the two. Finally we get Spider-man: Homecoming, where we get more than just a cameo appearance of Spiderman in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
But does Homecoming live up to the hype? Do we need another Spider-man franchise? How does this rank with the other Spider-man movies? Let's dig in.
Let’s start with Tom Holland as Spider-man. Holland has the sincerity of Peter Parker; he gets the wit and wisecracks of Spider-man. He is able to play the teeny bopper who has great power but still needs to learn the responsibility that goes with it especially for a high school kid.
Jon Watts, the director, is clearly a fan of the 80s teen dramas like the Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day off, which he references in the movie. Kudos has to be given to Watts and the writing team for not playing down the fact that Spider-man is in actual fact a teenager.
The movie mines this idea in the challenges that face Peter Parker as an individual and Peter Parker as a hero. How does being a school kid who wants to be a hero affect his school performance? How do the adults in his life let him risk his life where he might have to face situations that no 15-year-old has to face?
These dynamics felt fresh for me, cause they kept reminding us that Peter Parker is not an invisible Spider-man. Punch him he bleeds. Whilst bleeding, he still needs to attend school, make sure Aunt May feels safe and try and get the hot girl at school.
Watts sets up the school world, the avenger world and how each affects each other well. The high school world is racially diverse; we see consequences to actions immediately - not in the follow up.
Michael Keaton as the Vulture is brilliant, although how he moves from wanting to get paid to willing to kill a kid to get paid feels a little like an over reach. Yet I love how Homecoming introduces a lot of the villains from the Spider-man universe without making a big fuss.
It's easy to miss who the guys are in the comics if you are not a fan of the animated series or the comic books, but this does not detract from the movie.
My only gripe with Homecoming has to do with the trailer - it gave away too much of the movie, so that when the film reached its climatic fight I thought we were still going to get a second, bigger villain. It felt there was not more outside the trailer.
Even though the end credit sequence hints at an interesting team up for the sequel, I think Homecoming would have benefitted from a bigger bad, aka 2
nd villain, who would test Peter on a different level than Vuture. But maybe that’s for the sequel.
Spider-man: Homecoming may not be Spider-man 2 level yet when it comes to having levels of complexity but it delivers in giving us a fresh young Spider-man who has lots of heart and cool action. It's a start of a very promising character arc.
I'm sold on Tom Holland and looking forward to seeing what the young man becomes and how he develops the character of Peter Parker over the new trilogy.
This movie is already above the Andrew Garfield movies - the question is will the franchise ever eclipse Raimi’s Spider-man 2? I think it has the potential to.
Rating ***1/2
*junk **almost bearable ***now we cooking ****almost perfect *****classic ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++