Spider-Man: Homecoming Review
Spider-Man: Homecoming features the acting talents of Tom Holland, Robert Downey Jr, Jon Favreau, Laura Harrier, Zendaya, Marisa Tomei, and Michael Keaton as Batman, wait Birdman, no it's Vulture. Man, that's a lot of winged characters for one actor.
Being a superhero film, there's violence throughout. It's pretty mild and there's no gore or blood. As for profanity, it's also mild with most of it coming from the adults and then there's the birdie from Zendaya's Michelle. I'll mention that with the character later. There's also a bit of crude humor involving sexual-related humor. Even though it's tame, I suggest checking out the Kids-In-Mind article if you are taking kids younger than ten to see this film.
If you follow me on Instagram and Facebook, I said that this is best Spider-Man film since 2004 and I'm serious. While I did like Andrew Garfield's first film as it was my first theatrical Spider-Man experience, Homecoming gives me the exact same feel that I have when I watch Spider-Man 2, which came out in 2004. I don't know how this ranks against the Spider-Man films yet, but I guarantee that it's gonna rank high. However, it's not hard to fit this in a six-film ranking. It is hard to fit this in a sixteen-film ranking. As this is an MCU film, it can rank among those sets of films and I have no idea where it's gonna fit there. That's either a testament to how good this film is or how indecisive I am right now.
Peter Parker/Spider-Man
Best. Spidey. Ever. While Tobey Maguire had some great moments in his trilogy, and Andrew Garfield was one of the better elements in his run, Tom Holland owns this. He definitely does. As I said in my opening lines, this is truly a dream come true. I'd find it unlikely that anyone knew that this would happen.Thanks to Tom Holland's amazing acting, he is able to capture the humor, the joy, and the fear that this character has in one fell swing. It was amazing to behold, because not many people are able to do that in these type of roles. I did not anticipate him having a lot of emotional moments, but he did, and he did it perfectly. I was so happy watching him in those scenes, because it reminded me of why I like the character so much.
I'm glad that Tom Holland took a few notes from other famous characters like Marty McFly and Ferris Buller. He didn't copy them, but he took a few notes from those characters and made them his own. It's also clear that Tom Holland took his experiences from going undercover at a high school and applied that to his role here. It just proves that doing those experiences can help you in anything.
As for his tricked out suit, it does seem like the spandex equivalent of an Iron Man suit at times. It's ridiculously overpowering and serves as a crutch for the writers, but I feel that it's even better than an Iron Man suit. Sure, an Iron Man suit is bulletproof, can fly, and shoot repulser beams, but Spider-Man's suit can do much more than is shown in the trailers. It even has it's own AI and settings for combat. By the way, Jennifer Connelly is the voice of that AI. She's also Paul Bettany's wife and of course, Paul Bettany played J.A.R.V.I.S and then moved on to Vision. One has to wonder if she'll get a bigger role in the coming films.
It was also cool to learn more about Peter's webbing. How Peter makes it, where he makes it, and also how long it takes for the webbing to disappear. That was a problem that I had with Spider-Man previously. After Peter's finished using the web line, does he just leave it there? No, it dissolves after a few hours. It's things like that that increase my enjoyment of the character.
Adrian Toomes/Vulture
Before I start talking about Michael Keaton as the Vulture, I want to point out one thing. Towards the end of Spider-Man's first encounter with the Vulture, you are able to see, just for a second, the Vulture's reflection against the moon and it totally reminded me of the Batplane's reflection against the moon in Michael Keaton's very own Batman (1989). I geeked out 100% percent at the sight of that frame. Kudos to Jon Watts for capturing that image very well. Make sure to keep your eyes peeled, because it's not easy to see.Now Michael Keaton was fantastic. There are no other words for him. A lot of critics aren't giving him enough credit and I don't understand why. He's just as good as when Alfred Molina played Doc Ock in Spider-Man 2. Everyone that was involved in creating the character's arch deserves a medal, because they all went the whole the nine yards in making sure that this character was not forgettable, was not goofy, and that is motivations were crystal clear. All things that previous MCU villains have been relentlessly criticized for.
It's because of that care and direction, Michael Keaton's able to take that and make one of the best moments in comic book movie ever. It wasn't in his Vulture suit, but it was a simple scene between Tom Holland, Laura Harrier, and himself. It's absolutely brilliant and Michael Keaton creates a performance that gets you invested from the very start.
Aunt May
Now here's Aunt May. After fifteen years, we finally have our first real Aunt May. Now I know what most of you are gonna say,"What about Rosemary Harris and Sally Field?" Well I don't know if you feel this way, but those actors, even though they both did great jobs, seemed more like Grandma May than Aunt May.
Marissa Tomei's Aunt May is much better in every way. She's more involved in Peter's life and her age makes her feel like an actual aunt. Even though she didn't have a lot of scenes, Marissa Tomei stole every scene she was in. Tom Holland and her had some pretty good chemistry to pull off the aunt/nephew relationship that they have. Marissa Tomei's also brought some humor to the character that previous iterations didn't have. They pretty funny jokes though, but her best part came at the end of the film.
Tony Stark/Iron Man and Happy Hogan
Incredibly small roles for both Tony and Happy. If the marketing makes it seem like Tony's in the film a lot, that is not the case. He's used very sparingly in the film with little amounts of screen time.
As usual, Robert Downey Jr. makes the most of the time that he has. It was great to see him cracking jokes again. Throughout Civil War, he didn't crack a lot of jokes, if any, so seeing him be funny again was great to see and even though I'm on Team Cap. Part of my enjoyment of Tony was seeing him back together with Happy again.
Oh how I've missed Jon Favreau. We haven't seen him for such a long time. I believe the last time that we last saw him was back in Iron Man 3 when he got blown up by that Extremis guy. It was glad to see him banter with Tony again and also make fun conversations with a teenager that's a bit like Tony in some ways. Seeing Tony and Happy together again makes me feel like I want to see an Iron Man 4. I know they seem to have stopped at three, but it could happen.
Ned/Liz/Flash/Michelle
Now I'm gonna talk about Peter's entourage and Flash in this section and you'll notice that these characters are the point where I started to have problems with the film. All of them weren't needed, outside of Liz, but I'm gonna kick this off with Ned.
Ned was such a dull and unfunny character. None of the jokes he said were funny. They were lousy and forced attempts at humor. More than that, Ned wasn't a great friend to Peter in general. He was very selfish at times and it didn't feel like he cared about anything that Peter was going through and he often almost spilled the beans on the fact that Peter was Spider-Man. Even I'm good at keeping secrets and Ned didn't seem like he was even trying to be discreet in anyway. Sure, he helped Peter in some situations, but it wasn't enough to redeem him. Not only was Ned unnecessary, but he could've been replaced by a better character and actor.
Liz on the other hand was pretty good. She served as both a break from Peter's usual love interests, Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy, and used a new character. Laura Harrier's performance is why I enjoyed the character as much as I did. I expected that she'd be a sidelined love interest who didn't do much in the film. She was, but her character had such great scenes and the actors had very good chemistry between each other. I believe that Michelle was likely a character that will have a bigger story going forward. As to what that future may be, I don't think that it's clear.
In every film that's set in a High School, there's always a character that is the contemporary antagonist to the main character. Flash Thompson has been in the comics and Spider-Man films before, but they've never given the character a real purpose outside of being the bully. Sure enough, Tony Revolori's interpretation of Flash is no different from the previous iterations. He's the same as before. Only this time, he makes fun of Peter's name in the most inappropriate way possible. I know that this character has some interesting storylines in the comics, but I didn't see the purpose of having the character here.
I'm kinda getting sick of Zendaya. She seems to be in everything nowadays. I feel that her casting here is an obvious choice. Marvel's owned by Disney and almost all of her filmography includes Disney related films/TV shows. Her casting here seemed like a way to prop up her career.
I enjoyed her first few scenes and some her lines were actually hilarious, but after she flipped the birdie to Peter at the Homecoming dance, I resigned from liking the character. It wasn't funny and it was too much edginess for what's supposed to be a high schooler in her sophomore year. I hope against all hope that she's not Mary Jane, because that would make the romance angle really weird. Even more than it was in Sam Raimi's trilogy.
I enjoyed her first few scenes and some her lines were actually hilarious, but after she flipped the birdie to Peter at the Homecoming dance, I resigned from liking the character. It wasn't funny and it was too much edginess for what's supposed to be a high schooler in her sophomore year. I hope against all hope that she's not Mary Jane, because that would make the romance angle really weird. Even more than it was in Sam Raimi's trilogy.
Action, Effects, and Score
It's not the constant knuckle for knuckle exchanges that was in Sam Raimi's films, but there were some really intense action scenes in Spider-Man: Homecoming and I loved every second of it. The other half of the action sequences were Spidey webbing people up, which I also enjoyed. His confrontations with the Vulture were also fun, even though it was hard to focus on what the characters were doing. That's due to the cinematography more than anything else. I'm glad that there weren't a lot of action scenes. They didn't do too much to make it overwhelming, but they did enough to make sure that there wasn't any at all.
The Vulture suit looked believable and way cool with all the VFX and original designs coming together to make one cool-looking, easily-attachable gadget that was able to go toe-to-toe with the wall-crawler.
Taking a few elements from the 1966 theme and molding it with his own beats creates one heck of a good score. It's all things a score should be. Fun to listen too, fits the hero's persona, and is able to blend into the film really well.
I could've used a bit more balanced score. It's a little over an hour and two minutes. That means that there's an hour and fifteen minutes worth of film that doesn't feature the score and there were a few scenes where I thought that the score would've made those scenes way better. But hey, small gripe against an otherwise fabulous score.
Grade: B+
I don't know what Sony's thinking with making their own films that don't feature Spider-Man and doesn't connect to the MCU. They're thinking about starting their own Marvel Universe with making an R-rated Venom movie, starring Tom Hardy, and a Silver and Black movie. It doesn't make any sense. Does that mean that this deal between Sony and Marvel will end?
I hope not, because they've got something pretty good going here with Spider-Man now in the MCU. If you're a Spider-Man fan, see it. If you're an MCU fan, see it. If you're don't fit in either category, you should still see it. It doesn't require that you see these other films, though that's recommended.
Though I didn't see it in 3D, I don't believe that seeing this film in 3D is necessary. The film's very good on its own that it doesn't need the 3D. I leave it up to you if you want to spend the extra dollars.
So that's my review of Spider-Man: Homecoming. If you saw it, what did you think of both the film and my assessment of it? If you haven't, do you now plan on seeing the film now? Write those thoughts in the comments section below, share this with your friends, and let me know what film you'd like me to review next. Thanks for reading, I'm the Film Fanatic, bye-bye.
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