‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ (2017) ****/*****
Spider-Man Once More!
One of the greatest things about all of these Marvel movies coming out is watching the mainstream get to know and love these characters for the first time, which leads to them finally understanding why geeks have been so obsessed with them for so many years. It’s like, if you take what exists on those old comic pages and transfer it up onto the big screen, preserving the tone of the adventures and the hearts of the characters, a light goes off in people’s heads and suddenly their urge to give indoor kids wedgies dissipates. The problem with comic book movies for the longest time was that filmmakers tried too hard to change what worked on the page in order to make it better fit their idea of what a movie should be. They had a formula that worked great already, they just didn’t realize it, and it took Marvel stepping up and controlling their own movies for someone to consistently get the comic adaption right. Now, even when Marvel makes one of their lesser movies, it still ends up being pretty entertaining, because they know the tone of the Marvel adventure tale, they understand the hearts of their characters, and they stick as closely as possible to the things that have been making nerdy kids into Marvel fanboys for decades.
That’s why it was such good news that they were taking the creative reigns of Spider-Man back over from Sony, who never quite got what made Spidey tick. Sam Raimi’s movies had their moments, but their lead roles were terribly miscast, and he got things reversed when he made the day-to-day life of Peter Parker cartoony and weird and the web-slinging adventures of Spider-Man gritty and grim. For Peter, the drama always comes from his personal relationships. Being the hero is the release. Marc Webb’s movies cast the principals almost perfectly, and they got that Peter’s relationships should be dramatic and his superheroing should be silly, but they were drowned in so many lazy plot holes, wrong-headed studio notes, ill-advised attempts at franchise-building, and whatever the hell Jaimie Foxx was doing as Electro that they ended up being way worse than what Raimi came up with anyway. Now, with Marvel in control, with Jon Watts (Cop Car) in the director’s chair, with Tom Holland playing Peter, and with a focused script that nails the tone and character of classic ‘Spider-Man’ stories, finally someone has made a Spider-Man movie that feels right — the kind that you could show to a non-nerd friend in order for them to get the character.
Up to this point I’ve been writing as if everyone reading understands that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, and that he got his special abilities by being bitten by a radioactive spider. Homecoming takes the same approach, and it’s a smart one. This character is such a pop culture icon, such a part of our cultural conversation, that everyone knows the basic beats of his origin. Best to dig right down into character and have fun with what makes him enduring. The first step toward getting that right was getting the right performer, and with Holland we finally have an actor who just feels like Peter Parker. He’s got a real Anton Yelchin quality to him, where he passes as an everyman who’s easy to relate to, but he’s also got a little hint of extra charm that makes him pop when he’s on the screen, which helps him pull off that classic Spidey dynamic where he can be a nerd but still garner interest from the girls. He’s smart-mouthed enough to get Spidey’s youthful cockiness right, expressive enough to hit on the adrenaline-junkie escapist nature of superheroing, but he also has enough pain bubbling underneath his surface to nail the aspect of Peter’s personality that’s angry and frustrated at always getting the short stick — at always ending up as the guy who’s on the outside looking in. Past Spider-Men have been too passive, or too smarmy, and always too old, but Holland balances everything out just right.
On the other side of the fight card you have Michael Keaton playing Adrian Toomes, AKA The Vulture, AKA the bad guy in this movie, and the thing about him that’s great is that he really isn’t that bad a guy. He’s complex, and he’s driven, and that goes a long way to fix the problem Marvel has with making their villains interesting. Keaton’s performance is grounded and real. He’s playing the man and not the super villain. His motivations here are all rooted in very relatable economic concerns, where he’s tired of struggling against a rigged system, and he’s tired of having to worry about the safety and stability of his family, so one day he has enough of getting jerked around by the ruling class and decides to break bad. He’s one part Progressive revolutionary, one part Libertarian boot-strapper, and you probably wouldn’t even dislike him if he wasn’t taking things as far as killing people. If Parker is trying to find his place in the world, then Toomes is trying to solidify his, and their goals come into conflict with one another in ways that make for a much more personal super-powered smackdown than you might be expecting, which is very welcome.
That’s the other thing that Homecoming offers up that many Marvel movies get criticized for not delivering on — a satisfying third act. Sure, the actual action that’s being staged here isn’t all that thrilling in its execution, and it looks as much like cartoony CG nonsense as anything else you’ll find in the superhero genre, but as Parker and Toomes continue to interact over the film, as they learn more about each other and their connection becomes more intimate, their rivalry builds up the sort of personal stakes that these movies tend to lack. The story builds to a big confrontation where Spider-Man has to stop a robbery. That’s it. It’s basically a superhero movie update of a classic train robbery sequence, but because we care about where each character ends up at the end of the film, there’s weight to the outcome, and there’s dread whenever someone is put in danger. This is such a welcome stepping back of scale for Marvel. They should be saving the finales where the heroes have to stop some kind of giant glowy thing that’s going to eat the entire universe for the big team-up Avengers movies, but they tend to make every little story they tell go in that direction. These individual hero stories should be much more about how the protagonists lives could be ruined, and much less about how their entire universe could be disintegrated.
What’s most important though, and what Marvel always gets right, is that these movies introduce us to people we want to spend more time with. Again, Homecoming just gets Spider-Man. It gets the frustration of his personal life, the thrill of his superhero life, the way that he compartmentalizes it all with detached humor. It understands the great relatable tragedy of the character that even though he always tries to do the right thing, he’s always going to end up hurting the people he loves. It gets him at his core, and it surrounds him with a remarkable supporting cast to bounce off of. Marisa Tomei is so warm, and nurturing, and tragically wounded as Aunt May that you forget how annoying and typically Hollywood it is that they had to make the character sexy. Jacob Batalon is so much fun as Peter’s excitable best friend Ned, and he makes so much more sense as the character’s best friend than polar opposite Harry Osborn, who’s a character that’s always felt shoe-horned into Peter’s world in order to manufacture cheap drama. Laura Harrier is sweet and kind, and most importantly believable as the popular girl who still gives nerdy Peter Parker the time of day. Her character is smartly written too. There’s no escapist fantasy nonsense here where the dweeb earns the love of the beauty even after acting horribly just because the story needs him too. The place their relationship is left is very smart, and very honest. It’s great writing for a superhero movie. Also worth mentioning is the singularly-named Zendaya, who steals every scene she’s in as Peter’s angsty and talented classmate Michelle. We’ll hopefully be getting way more of her in the future.
And that right there is how I know that Homecoming is going to be a huge success — that I’m more excited about seeing more of Peter Parker hanging out at school than I am about seeing more of Spider-Man kicking bad guy butt. The kids who fill Peter’s daily life are all great, and there’s more of them than can be mentioned. They’re instantly recognizable, their personalities are quickly defined and diverse, and they’ve got great chemistry together. This film would have been just fine being a teen comedy ensemble about an Academic Decathlon team, but instead it gets the benefit of being attached to one of the most recognizable and beloved intellectual properties of the last century. Past Spider-Man movies have created thrilling action scenarios, or recreated iconic images, but they never did the job of making you want to spend as much time as possible living in the world of the characters, and that’s the secret ingredient responsible for the obsessive nature of comic book fandom. When it comes to the future of live action Spider-Man movies, Make Mine Marvel.
