REVIEW: Spider-Man Homecoming

Okay, I should probably make one thing clear before we begin; I'm not exactly the most unbiased source for an opinion on anything involving Spider-Man. Spidey's been a part of my childhood for about as long as I can remember and to this day remains my absolute favorite superhero of all time (sorry, Aquaman). Whenever I'm met with something Spider-Man related, my reaction is either immensely positive or resoundingly negative, very rarely does anything fall into that middle ground of "it was okay". It's a property I hold near and dear to my heart, which explains why I find myself so frequently enraged at Sony Pictures' shabby treatment of the web-slinger; as if pitching a standalone Venom movie (which wouldn't feature Spider-Man in any capacity) as a Zombieland-esque comedy wasn't enough, there was that bevy of leaked Sony emails not too long ago, in which we learned that the studio at one point toyed with the idea of reinventing Peter Parker as an EDM vegan who posts about hot power yoga on his Snapchat. Suffice to say, the character would be far safer in the loving hands of Marvel Studios and Disney, far away from Amy Pascal and her terrible, terrible ideas. Which is why I was both hopeful and ambivalent towards the cheekily-named Spider-Man Homecoming for some time. On one hand, my favorite comic book hero was finally joining the MCU in a way that appeared to stick closer to the source material than any previous iteration. On the other hand, this is the third attempt at a Spider-Man series in the past decade (Spider-Man 3 released ten years ago in 2007, in case you didn't feel needlessly old yet today); as much as I love the ol' webhead, I too began to feel the pangs of Spider-Man fatigue. The Marvel formula was becoming more and more noticeable as time went on, Sony was still involved, and (as with Wonder Woman), I was forced to endure a load of tiresome and embarrassing outrage and controversy leading up to the film's release. I expected this to be a perfectly inoffensive, by-the-numbers superhero flick; to my surprise, I not only liked Spider-Man Homecoming, I really liked it.

Set a few months after the events of Civil War, the plot follows Peter Parker (Tom Holland) struggling to live the life of an ordinary teenage kid, despite being able to do whatever a spider can. Under the guise of an internship for Tony Stark (Robert Downy Jr, who is thankfully in far less of this movie than the advertising would have you believe), Peter takes to the streets as the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, hoping to impress Mr. Stark with his do-gooding enough to land a spot on the recently-splintered Avengers. While his heart is in the right place, Pete's overzealousness leads to a run in with an underground weapons ring led by Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton, insert Birdman joke here), otherwise known as the Vulture. Faced with a job too small in scale to attract the heavy-hitters at Avengers Tower, it's up to Spider-Man to keep these advanced weapons off the streets, foil the Vulture's plans, and find a date to his high school's homecoming dance. 

Considering Spider-Man is my favorite hero of all time, it's pretty amazing how soundly the marketing campaign killed what hype I had stored up for this movie. The trailers seemed to divulge the entire plot and the posters painted the whole thing as "Iron Man 3.5: featuring Spider-Boy"; it's no small feat to make the third Thor film look leagues better than Spider-Man, but damned if Marvel's (or more likely Sony's) marketing department didn't pull it off. I was glad to find, however, that all of my concerns were for nothing. Iron Man appears for about a collective ten minutes and the plot still managed to throw me for a few loops here and there; this is very much Peter Parker's story, and that's something that's tremendously important considering this is the character's true standalone debut in the MCU. If there's one thing you don't want to screw up, it's the introduction of Spider-Man, of all characters, into your shared cinematic universe. Luckily, director Jon Watts and company pull it off with aplomb; it's been said that it felt as though someone made a checklist of things we'd seen before in a Spider-Man movie and then deliberately left those aspects out of Homecoming. I couldn't agree more. Despite being reboot number three, this manages to feel like a fresh and original take on the character, all while staying true to what we've come to expect from Spider-Man thus far. There are plenty of moments where Peter has to hide his identity from his friends and family, yet nothing that feels overly trite or done-before. It feels like its own movie, its own take on this property, and that's hugely important considering everything this movie has going against it, just by virtue of existing when it does.

It's also worth mentioning that I wouldn't necessarily consider this an action movie, so much as it is a coming-of-age comedy with some action bits in it. The characters take precedent over web-swinging, wall-crawling fisticuffs, and for as much as the fanboy in me loves to see Spider-Man beat up some bad guys, this is honestly how a proper Spidey film should be done; characters first, action second. The entire thing is very down-to-earth in tone, which compliments Spider-Man's role in the MCU perfectly. Part of me was afraid that the inclusion of details such as Iron Man meant that this film was merely a formality, a prologue to fast-tracking Peter Parker onto the Avengers where he'd face world-wide threats rather than petty crooks and bank robbers. Instead, the movie goes for a decidedly street-level, working-class tone, both with its story, hero, and villain. There's no massive blue beam firing into the sky and no major city is destroyed during the climax; the primary conflict involves Spider-Man trying to stop the Vulture and his cronies from selling high-tech guns on the black market. That's it. It's simple and refreshing and exactly the kind of thing Spider-Man should be dealing with.

I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about the Vulture, played by the immortal Michael Keaton. There's a host of good performances here (Tom Holland is, as I said in my Civil War Review, the most accurate Spider-Man to ever grace the big screen), but Keaton is by far the best of the bunch. If you'd have told me a few years ago that the absolute best villain the MCU had to offer was the Vulture, I'd have laughed in your face. But the fact still stands that this take on the character is engaging and refreshing, while still staying true to the character's comic book roots. Adrian Toomes is a man who was cheated by the system and is simply looking to provide for his family. While he's by no means a hero (attempting to murder a child is pretty low, no matter how noble your motivation may be), he's far more sympathetic and relatable than I think anyone could have expected. The best kind of villians are the ones who not only believe they're doing the right thing, but whose motivations make perfect logical sense to the viewer. We don't necessarily root for the Vulture, but we completely get where he's coming from. There's a series of very strong-yet-subtle parallels between Peter and Toomes that makes for a genuinely compelling hero/villain relationship, to the point that the best scene in the movie involves Michael Keaton simply sitting at a traffic light. This is exactly the kind of fleshed-out antagonist the MCU is in desperate need of.

Unfortunately, not everything here is ideal. Leading up to its release, a great deal of controversy surrounded the mysterious character of Michelle, played by Zendaya. I won't spoil anything here, but this character just felt utterly pointless. For all the promotion Michelle got leading up to the film's release, I'm fairly certain she ends up having less screen time than the Shocker (and I'll bet you didn't even know Shocker was in this movie). Zendaya gives a poor performance, delivering some of the few jokes in the movie that fall utterly flat; in the end, the plot would be exactly the same (I'd even argue that it would be marginally better) had she been cut out entirely. Her inclusion feels like the result of an executive mandate, either from someone at Sony who wanted to drum up pointless controversy (because clearly that worked so well for last year's Ghostbusters remake) or from someone at Disney who wanted some brand synergy with one of their up and coming Disney Channel starlets. In the end, it just feels like a half-baked cop-out of an idea (and Kevin Feige's statements on the subject all but confirm this character had no other purpose than to serve as a litmus test as to what the studio could get away with).

I also wasn't a fan of the overly-comedic tone at times; don't get me wrong, this is a very funny, sharply-written movie with a number of laugh out loud moments. However, in erring on the side of outright comedy, it feels almost like the film sacrifices some of the heart that is so central to the Spider-Man character. The film gives us a nice, snappy pace that occasionally slows to allow for a quieter moment or two. However, these moments (such as Peter's interactions with his Aunt May, played here by Marissa Tomei) feel somewhat glossed over compared to the more offbeat comedy, so the drama we're clearly meant to feel comes off as not entirely earned. It's easy to make me feel things for Spider-Man, considering what a key role he played in my childhood (and I'm sure in countless others), but Homecoming never really had that Guardians of the Galaxy moment where we're made to realize just how much we actually care about the characters on-screen. Key aspects of the Spider-Man character like his deep-rooted feelings of guilt and dedication to upholding his great responsibility are all but replaced with "impressing Mr. Stark" and, while this does serve a larger character arc for Peter Parker over the course of the film, it still feels like something of an oversight at the end of the day. This film had every opportunity to really hit me where I live, and while one scene near the end came close (thanks entirely to the performance of Tom Holland), I still left the theater feeling very emotionally un-challenged. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing; not every movie has to be Logan, but some of my favorite Spider-Man moments (in both the comics, movies, and cartoons) are when things get real and boil down to simple, raw emotion, rather than just upbeat thwips and quips.

Spider-Man Homecoming isn't perfect, but it just might be the best Spider-Man film of all time; keep in mind, I say this as a nostalgia-addled fanboy for the Raimi trilogy of the mid-2000's. There's a few hiccups here and there (some of the CGI is a little garish, the action isn't anything special, and the cinematography ranges from genuinely great to outright confusing), but I still found this to be a refreshing take on a classic franchise that many assumed was done to death. It innovates where it needs to and shows us some things we've never seen before, totally justifying its existence as the most recent attempt at getting Spider-Man to work on the big screen, even considering the dismal Amazing Spider-Man 2 came out merely three years ago. If you're a fan of the comics like I am, I can't really think of a reason you'd have for disliking Spider-Man Homecoming. I look forward to seeing what Spidey's got in store for us next time, not even counting his appearance in next year's Avengers: Infinity War.