My friends and I finally got to see Spider-Man: Homecoming this weekend, and I think it’s testimony to the word of mouth on this film that the theater was still packed on a Saturday morning a month after the premiere.
While much of it has been spoiled by now, this movie is basically about the teenage Peter Parker and his largely unsuccessful attempts to be a “real” superhero with the aid of the fancy high-tech costume Tony Stark gave him to use in Captain America: Civil War. In the process he is also trying to negotiate his life as a high-schooler and get to his school’s homecoming dance. But in his patrols, Spider-Man encounters an organization using technology captured from the Chitauri aliens in the first Avengers movie, and is forced to deal with their leader (Michael Keaton), who was the head of a salvage company that got removed from the Chitauri cleanup by a government contractor owned by none other than Tony Stark. In this way there’s a certain symmetry between the hero and main villain, in that they’re both talented engineers, but operating on a small scale compared to Stark and other major movers, and they’re both end-users of someone else’s advanced technology. Eventually Peter is forced to deal with this fact and take stock of his own resources.
I really liked this movie, but as Marvel movies go, it didn’t have the same impact on me as the two Guardians of the Galaxy movies. My friends and I discussed this and came to the conclusion that the pacing was a bit… rushed. There was just so much action going on it was a bit much to keep track of.
Even so, the human elements of the movie are where it worked. Peter (Tom Holland) is given a strong supporting cast in best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon), potential love interest Liz (Laura Harrier) and not-quite-love-interest “MJ” (Zendaya), characters who intentionally don’t resemble their inspirations from the original Marvel comics. Keaton’s villain is in some ways sympathetic, and unlike some other comicbook movies, the solution doesn’t necessarily lie in killing him.
And while Sony/Columbia Pictures still owns the movie rights to Spider-Man, Homecoming is for all purposes a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, with the principals from the Iron Man movies appearing along with a running gag featuring Captain America. Holland is apparently signed for a six-movie deal that includes not only two more solo movies but three other movies where he will do more crossover appearances. Which would be great. Even in his short appearance in Civil War, it was clear that the new team got Spider-Man in the way that Patty Jenkins got Wonder Woman, whereas the previous Sony movies were each incomplete in their own way. The Tobey Maguire movies were great at conveying Peter’s earnest heroism but not Spider-Man’s wit, while the Andrew Garfield movies were pretty much the opposite. (Plus, any comicbook movie that ends with the superhero fighting Paul Giamatti is by definition anti-climax.)
In comparison, Tom Holland is the total package, with the physique to portray Spider-Man’s look and powers and the skills to portray all sides of his personality. Plus, he’s young-looking enough to where he could be convincing as a teenage superhero for most of that movie deal. Given what I’ve seen so far, Marvel will probably have no problem making Holland the star for their next phase of movies.