Spider-Man: Homecoming

For those of you not following along at home, I’ve been on a superhero binge, watching all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, only to watch Avengers: Infinity War in the theaters. A good friend challenged me to do this, so here we are at Spider-Man.

Just in case it’s not clear:

SPOILERS AHEAD

Dear V,

Well, you can’t say I haven’t been determined. Here we are — Spider-Man: Homecoming. Two more away from Avengers: Infinity War.

So it took watching this movie to really get why Spider-Man needed to be a teenager. See, I’m old enough to remember Spider-Man on television, both live action and the cartoon, but I never thought about how old he was.

This Spidey, I liked. A lot. Tell you more as I go.

Movie starts in New York where they’re still cleaning up the mess from the first Avengers movie. The government (seems like the new organization under the Sokovia Accords) decides to kick all of the civilians off the job. The “Department of Damage Control.”

Now, obviously, I’m also trying to leave today’s politics out of it as well. Sad thing is when you watch something like this and it feels _plausible_. I wonder how much of that is a cultural thing.

Anyway, the govt department takes over and the head guy gets a little pissed off about it, so when one of his workers shows him a truck full of alien and high tech devices, he decides to keep it and create things out of it. Like weapons. After all, he’s only trying to take care of his family, right?

8 years later…

Out of all these parts, he creates, essentially, Falcon’s wings and from the credits, we learn his name is Vulture. He’s stealing and selling alien weapon technology.

I’ll admit… I kinda thought he was Green Goblin at first, but I don’t have the comic book knowledge of other Spidey-enemies.

This time when they play the Marvel theme song, Spider-Man’s theme song is woven in and I love it 😊

The next scene we see is Happy taking Peter to see Tony Stark who’s upgraded Spidey’s suit. When Peter starts to record on his own (probably a cell phone recording) and he starts narrating what’s happening, we realize he’s narrating his short stint in Captain America: Civil War. Narratively, I loved it — it gives us Peter’s take on what happened as well as shows us a bit more of who he is while giving a short recap for people who didn’t see Civil War. That was rather cool.

He’s supposed to be about 15 — I was guessing 16–17. I loved his excitement about being part of the Avengers — all the texts to Happy were extremely familiar from this end as I know I’ve been excited like that before too.

According to Amazon.com, there is an old version of the LEGO Death Star with 3,803 pieces — yes, exactly that number — but it’s been discontinued and there’s a new version out.

And so, with no Avenger tasks in his future, Peter goes to school. It’s a science and technology focused school which doesn’t really surprise me. We’ve got schools here with different foci, usually science and tech. Kinda wish I’d have gone to one myself.

Just wanted to let you know that love songs don’t start playing when you see the man/woman you have a crush on. You (not you in particular, just a general “you”) do tend to block everyone else out — like watching Stiles and not paying any attention to Derek with his shirt off.

I love that he makes his web mixture in chemistry.

Peter’s being a little obsessive, sure, but wouldn’t anyone be after being a part of something like the Avengers? A part of an actual battle between them? As I stated earlier, he’s just excited and wants to be involved. Can’t blame him here. Plus I get like this when I talk to people I really enjoy talking to as well.

We _do_ get to see Peter’s chest but it’s supposed to be the chest of a 15 year old kid.

When he leaves school, he just swings about the neighborhood like any other friendly neighborhood Spider-Man would and stop people from breaking into cars, robbing stores, etc.

Spidey is just playing ol’ GOOD. Period. I’m sure a lot of that comes from still being a kid. I would consider Spidey an innocent kid — an innocent kid that doesn’t really recognize that there’s shades of grey between the black and the white. Death is a long way off — and I’m sure it doesn’t really enter his mind most times that he’s out helping clean up crime.

Unfortunately, our Spidey runs into the guys who kept the alien tech from the New York incident.

I love the fact that the Sokovia Accords are mentioned in class.

Ok, and here I have to mention the Captain America Fitness Challenge. Getting Cap to do these videos was brilliant. The clip of one having to do with puberty (which, I swear, isn’t all in my head) is hilarious.

There are so many Deadpool references when the girls are trying to figure out who Spider-Man is: is he burned? Is he in Canada with his girlfriend? I LOVE it. I really am hoping for a Deadpool crossover — but Spideypool doesn’t look like it’s happening.

So Peter’s best friend Ned finds out he’s Spider-Man. I have a best friend who is the lead singer of a rock band (Scarlet Revolt) But I watched her grow into that role. I can’t imagine what it would be like to suddenly find out someone I was close to was some sort of superhero.

I love all the questions Ned asks. It had to be growing on Peter’s nerves.

So in gym class, while working on Captain America’s Fitness Challenge, they overhear the girl Peter’s got a crush on (Liz) say that she kinda had a crush on Spider-Man. Well, with some horrible verbal gymnastics, Liz comes to think Peter knows Spider-Man and asks him and Ned to show up at her party. Bringing Spider-Man in attendance as well.

Well, the party doesn’t go as planned and Peter, dressed as Spidey, sees something go boom in the distance and decides to go find out what it is, leaving Ned at the party alone. Turns out to be someone trying to sell a high tech weapon — a couple of the guys we saw before. Spidey tries to stop them but Vulture swoops down and drops him in a river.

Iron Man comes to save him — well, one of Iron Man’s convoy actually — and tells him to just stop and be a “friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.”

On his way home, Spidey finds a piece of high tech and takes it with him to show to Ned. I think Ned kinda keeps us grounded to the fact that Peter is just a teenager — and a young one, at that.

Ned plays around with the suit that Stark gave Peter and removes a tracking and blocking program — a “training wheels” program, if you will, and Peter discovers that the suit can do far more than he could do alone.

This film is much more light-hearted and focuses more on Peter and his school life rather than being Spider-Man. Unlike the rest of the Marvel Universe movies where the focus is more on how the main characters got their superhero powers, this movie focuses on Peter, with only a simple statement as to how he became Spider-Man: “I was bitten by a spider.”

So when Ned’s disables the tracking program and unlocks the advanced features, Peter starts trying them out. When a tracking device he put on one of the bad guy’s cars give him a location near D.C., he goes with his school’s academic decathlon to the nation’s capitol to find out what’s going on. He sneaks out at night and finds out Vulture and his crew are trying to steal alien weaponry from a truck headed to a damage control repository.

In trying to stop Vulture from stealing the truck, Spidey accidentally gets stuck inside the truck and placed in a vault that won’t open til the next day.

So “Suit-Lady” gets a name, Karen, and he spends the evening talking to her about this girl he loves.

The most unbelievable part of the movie is when he doesn’t get into trouble leaving the secured area. But I love that he obsesses about Liz the whole time. For him, it’s cute. She’s his first crush (or so it seems).

Either while he’s fighting with Vulture or struggling to get out of the damage control vault, he learns that the small pink object that was the power source of the high tech weapon he found, he learns that it’s explosive under certain conditions, pretty much the exact conditions his friend, Ned, and the others are under at that moment

When the pink object explodes, it nearly tears off the top of the Washington Monument where the teens currently are visiting. And of course, Spidey saves them in the nick of time.

I feel like I’m just recapping the movie at the moment and not really giving you how I felt. Let’s stop the actual recap and just talk about how the movie made me feel for a bit.

I didn’t know how I’d take to this new Spidey as I had enjoyed the previous Sam Raimi movies. I think Tom Holland did a more than marvelous job of portraying what it would be like to be a teenage superhero. I liked him just as much out of the Spidey-suit as I did in it.

The best lines for me were:

PETER: I wanted to be like you.

TONY: I wanted you to be better.

This is strong stuff here coming from a man that Peter admires the hell out of.

And…

TONY: If you’re nothing without the suit, then you don’t need to have the suit.

As I said, those are some pretty tough words from a mentor, someone Peter looks up to.

When Peter asked Liz to go to Homecoming with him, and she said yes, I wondered if I’m as bad of a secret keeper as he is. And then I was like, yes, yes I probably am.

After Tony chastises him, Peter goes off to do teenager things which is what Tony wanted him to do all along.

My niece wants to grow up so quickly. She’s in her pre-teenage years. We tell her she just needs to sit back and enjoy life, but that’s hard when you’re always wanting the next thing that comes along.

And I think Tony knows that and he wants Peter to have as much of his teenage years be normal as he can.

Anyway on the day of Homecoming, Peter learns that Liz’s dad is Mr Toombs, i.e. Vulture, the bad guy. He also learns that Toombs is going “out of town” that evening. However Toombs also recognizes Peter (I’m sure Superman would say it was because he wasn’t wearing glasses) and threatens him in an attempt to get Peter off his back.

And Peter sneaks out during Homecoming, choosing to go track down the bad guy, Ned on the radio.

He also chose to save Vulture’s life — which shows his character.

I could have sworn that Happy was sending out a decoy plane — in fact, I’m still not sure he didn’t. He was looking at the shipping manifest and read off Cap’s shield and Thor’s _belt_, something we’ve never heard of in reference to Thor.

Both Tony and Happy congratulate and thank him for saving the plane, but you never hear anything about a salvage operation. I would not be surprised if the plane was a decoy and it was because of Peter’s bravery that Tony decided to make him an Avenger.

There’s just something wrong there — I expected… something.

I know I would like to see a Spider-Man/Deadpool crossover, but anything with regards to Spideypool? With Peter being this you, that’s out.

Overall this was a very fun lighthearted movie and Tom Holland did an excellent job.