Movie Review: Spider-Man Homecoming
Spider-Man: Homecoming gets lost in MCU-ville
Spider-Man: Homecoming officially welcomes the fan-favorite, teenage web-slinger into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with all the positives and negatives that new relationship can offer. Under the auspices of the MCU brain trust, we’re treated to a cohesive Spider-Man movie that features some great casting and crowd-pleasing moments. But we’re also given a supposedly stand-alone movie that feels chained to past MCU events despite all the ingredients for narrative freedom. It’s not an origin story. So why can’t we just run with the characters? Instead, the film explicitly makes Peter Parker’s initial goal to join The Avengers and get the most out of his Tony Stark designed Spider-Man suit. His concerns eventually change to a more Spidey-centric narrative, but not until after we’ve already lost the thread of the movie. In theory, the contrast between the gloss of the Avengers and the bumbling gung-ho of high school heroics makes for an interesting theme. The price, however, is endless mentions of Spider-Man’s duty as “The Stark Internship.” It’s good to make Peter Parker flawed, it’s bad to make him an incorrigible brat.
Another reason these ideas don’t gel because the mechanics of the plot are shockingly clumsy. Most of Spider-Man’s interactions with criminals are driven through contrived coincidence. The film comes alive the most when he is actively on the trail of the bad guys and acting in detective mode. Even then though, the events don’t crescendo much. His efforts fail and lead to unpredictable problems. In fact, Spider-Man’s rate of failure is so high that the film is a tough watch at times. His real problem is that he wants to be treated like an adult superhero, but keeps messing up. As Spider-Man, he endangers a lot of people and as Peter Parker, he has no trouble sacrificing personal relationships for “the greater good” (a classic Spider-Man conflict taken a little too far here). It’s not unreasonable that he be told to settle down. His only real virtue is his persistence, which just results in more frequent failure, until it doesn’t at the end of the movie.
Admittedly, the filmmakers wring a lot more empathy out of human failure than the super-hero kind. They commit to a high school-aged incarnation of Peter Parker, allowing the film to indulge in teenage melodrama as a form of both conflict and comedy. It works! Tom Holland has mastered an array of bewilderment that will surely make him the Internet’s big crush this summer. But it’s not just his angst that makes the high school scenes click. The details stand out — notice Peter carrying a hall pass on his way to the bathroom, or watching a video in gym class. Some of the film’s best jokes are winning observations about lazy teachers and high school monotony. It makes the contrast to his Spider-Man alter ego all the more exciting, and gives some credence to his Avengers-sized ambitions.
The unique high school shenanigans stand in stark contrast to the rest of the film, which all too often plays like a remixed version of Spider-Man’s greatest hits from other movies. There’s the time he negs a romantic interest to serve the greater good, the time the villain discovers his secret identity, the time that he can’t shoot webs in a fight, the time that he lifts something really heavy, etc. Unfortunately, no matter how much endearing naïveté Tom Holland brings to these conflicts, the audience isn’t experiencing these events for the first time. I genuinely feel that even if this was your first Spider-Man film, you’d pick up on the calculated placement of “iconic” moments. These moments are delivered serviceably, but I wonder which scenes will earn Youtube re-watch status in years to come.
Jon Watts does deserve credit for inserting bits and pieces of his dark personal brand into the picture. The film has perhaps the best hero-villain conversation since Batman and the Joker squared off almost ten years ago. The scene plays out as pure suspense and it’s the only scene that is worthy of Michael Keaton in the villain’s role. I’d be interested to see what Watts can do in a sequel that gives Spider-Man more relatable goals and a better plot to chase them. Just like the actors, he deserves a pass for this picture’s failings.
In the end, my mixed feelings don’t matter. The audience reaction and financial success thus far have guaranteed Spider-Man: Homecoming a high place in the Spider-Man film pantheon. Now that we can get ranking, I’ll give my take. Say what you will about the clunky Amazing Spiderman 2, but at least film was off-the-rails weird. It was a flaming wreck, whereas Spider-Man: Homecoming is a self driving (Audi) car; cool, but lacking something essential.
