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.

REVIEW: Clown

I feel as though, for as prevalent as the "killer clown" trope tends to be, the number of notable horror films actually featuring killer clowns is more than a little lacking. Just to name the big ones, there's the 1990 It miniseries, Killer Klowns From Outer Space, and... that's about it. I suppose you could also include Poltergeist if you really wanted to, but even that's a bit of a stretch. It's something I've always found a little surprising; coulraphobia is a pretty common fear, ripe for exploitation. Even if someone isn't necessarily "afraid" of clowns, it's not exactly difficult to make them into something reasonably creepy, at the very least. But alas, the vast majority of killer clown movies tend to end up as nothing more than straight-to-video trash you find in those "25 Horror Movies for $5" value packs. This is part of the reason I was so intrigued by Clown, a 2014 independent horror film produced by Eli Roth and directed by Spider-Man: Homecoming's Jon Watts.

Coming off like an absurdist twist between The Shining and The Fly, the plot focuses on an ordinary real-estate agent by the name of Kent McCoy (Andy Powers). Due to a double-booking incident, Kent and his wife (Laura Allen) find themselves without a clown for their son's birthday party. Thinking quickly, Kent happens upon an old clown suit in the basement of one of the properties he's selling. Setting his dignity aside for his son's special day, Kent dons the suit, nose, and rainbow wig to entertain the kids, seemingly saving the party. The next morning, however, Kent is shocked to discover that, for whatever reason, the clown suit won't come off. The wig has attached itself to his head and the goofy red nose causes him physical pain whenever he tries to remove it. It isn't long before Kent begins to realize that he is physically turning into a clown; his skin begins to turn chalk white, his feet grow longer, and the wig begins to replace his real hair down to the roots. On top of all that, we learn that the clown suit was in fact not a clown suit at all, but rather the skin of an Icelandic demon known as a "Clöyne", which used its colorful appearance to lure children to its cave before devouring them whole. It's up to Kent to discover a cure for his monstrous condition, before the demon's hold (and his newfound hunger for children) overwhelm him for good.

Right from the premise (and the movie's opening, which features a soundtrack of children screaming over vintage depictions of happy clowns), it's plain to see that this isn't a film that takes itself entirely seriously. There's a modicum of self-awareness that comes with a story about a man becoming a were-clown, and I'm glad to see that the filmmakers understood this. There's a good mixture of genuine suspense and pitch-black comedy to be found here, but I almost feel as though the end result is a bit uneven, to the point that some of it comes off as a bit too mean-spirited at times. Mixing genres such as horror and comedy can create a great sense of juxtaposition if done well, but it requires a delicate touch. If we actually end up taking something seriously, only for it to be undercut with a joke moments later, than the tone comes off as inconsistent, and the respective elements of the horror and comedy genres end up blending about as well as oil and water. There are moments where the film really does go for a serious, straightforward tone and, to the credit of the filmmakers, it honestly works quite well as a legitimate horror film. There's a good deal of stomach-turning body-horror that comes with seeing a man fuse with a musty old clown costume, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't cringe more than a few times during Kent's vain attempts to remove it.

Things get even more dire during the second act, when we see our main character, who began as a totally ordinary guy, take on the appearance of a homeless addict. It honestly comes off like a John Wayne Gacy-esque metaphor for a pedophile trying to avoid temptation before finally giving in; watching Kent struggle against his newfound demonic hunger is really quite tragic and unpleasant in a very strong, effective kind of way. Despite the absurd premise, I honestly feel like this could have worked as a 100% serious, straightforward horror film. But this genuine sense of tension and unease is undercut by all of the dark visual humor. We watch an ordinary family man tearfully submit to cannibalistic urges after accidentally murdering a small child, but we also get to watch a laughably fake severed arm ride a tidal wave of blood down a Chuck-E-Cheese fun slide. The dark elements are too dark and the silly elements are too silly; rather than contrasting, they just end up cancelling each other out, and by the time the climax rolls around, it just feels like generic schlock with absolutely nothing in the way of emotional stakes.

Now for all my griping, I still have to hand it to the filmmakers for such a delightfully twisted concept. I'm not quite sure what it is, but the idea that someone can turn into a clown (implying that clowns are inhuman) just makes me smile deep down inside. Making it so that the first clown was really a Nordic demon who lured children away from their villages with promises of sweets and capering is just the icing on the cake. I'm such a sucker for this kind of revisionist folklore, since it gives storytellers such a wealth of opportunity to play around with the established iconography of our collective culture. It's the kind of element I enjoyed the most in films like Krampus and Rise of the Guardians; by putting a unique twist on something so immediately recognizable, we're able to further immerse ourselves in the world of the film. As one might expect, this is the part of the movie that works the best. The first two acts build up a really strong sense of tension and intrigue that, along with the existential dread of Kent's situation, completely make this film. 

Unfortunately, the final act is where it all falls apart. All of the characters stop making sense and Kent himself turns into a generic, brainless movie monster. While everyone's characterization suffers during the final act, none are worse off than Kent's wife, Meg; this may come off as nitpicking, but it seriously cannot be understated how utterly loathsome this character turns out to be. For the entire movie, she's played a relatively inoffensive role, concerned for her husband and protective of their son (Christian Destephano). In the final act, she becomes the most unlikable excuse for a protagonist I think I've ever seen; not only does she endanger and abandon her child numerous times during the final battle, but she's also totally prepared to sacrifice an innocent little girl in an attempt to sate the demon's hunger. And that's to say nothing of how she completely abandoned poor Peter Stormare at a crime scene for no reason (even though we know he's innocent, there's no way that someone who looks like Peter Stormare is found holding a bloody axe near a bunch of mutilated kids and gets away with a happy ending). This kind of character assassination is just a symptom of a much bigger problem that befalls so many great ideas; the filmmakers wrote themselves into a corner. They had this amazing idea about a man who slowly turns into an evil clown, but they had no idea how to end it. So the end result is just a series of flaccid, pointless sequences that feel like a hurried attempt to just end the movie without any loose ends. The plot ends up stretched paper thin and what was once a really engaging, original horror film ends up feeling like anything but.

I wanted so badly to like Clown. And in some ways, I really do; I like exactly two thirds of it. The final act is exactly the kind of shallow, poorly-written dreck I had hoped it wouldn't be. In its defense, I've seen far worse (and I'm willing to bet that out of all the independent killer-clown movies that have come out in the past 20 years, this is likely one of the absolute best), but it still stands that "not bad" is really the most Clown can aspire to. If you're looking for something that comes agonizingly close to joining such films as Trick R Treat and The Babadook in the realm of cult classics before nosediving back down into the land of inconsequential schlock, give Clown a look. For what it's worth, I had my fun with it, even if I don't really see myself revisiting it any time soon. All in all, it may be somewhat forgettable, but I'd be hard pressed to call it regrettable.