Movie Review! "Spider-Man: Homecoming!"

Spider-Man: Homecoming!

They got it right this time!

As someone who has been growing up and living with superhero movies and has seen five, yes, FIVE other web-slinger movies come and go, this was the best one by far.

Yes, Spidey.  Yes, it was.

Now before I get into why I loved this movie, I want to admit something to you.  I don't read comic books.

"But Shane, how can you be taken seriously as a critic of the movie if-"

Look, voice-in-my-head-that-I-personify-on-my-blog-for-comedic-effect, I may not have the most comprehensive knowledge base on Spidey and his history and incarnations, but I grew up with "The Amazing Spider-Man" cartoon and watched FIVE other Spidey films peter out and vanish so listen, punk,

I will sic Tim Burton's Batman, Michael Keaton, on you!
(Wow, Batman & Vulture.  Nice resume, Dude.)

With that out of the way, to my review!  I instantly knew I would like this movie when a version of the classic Spider-Man theme was used over the Marvel Cinematic Universe Opener, so whoever made that decision: Kudos.  We start with scenes of the aftermath of "The Avengers" movie, with the Chitauri Leviathan corpse lying in a wrecked New York City building.  A 'clean-up' crew is salvaging all the materials left over from the battle when some government types show up to tell Adrian Toomes, the owner/boss/foreman, that he's out of a job and a lot of money, which he was planning to make back along with a profit for cleaning up the battlefield.  We then learn that Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man, is behind the Department of Damage Control, the people who took Toomes' contract.  Then comes "A film by Peter Parker," the Smartphone movies of Peter's "Captain America: Civil War" involvement was cute and it helped us drop into Peter's world as the phone was noticed by Tony Stark, changing the perspective from the phone to Peter.  And before I move on, so glad to see Jon Favreau as Happy Hogan again.  Also, no Uncle Ben dying or pro-wrestling silliness.  So yay, no origin story!  We've seen it twice already...

Oh, I almost forgot.

It's only been out for a week so...

Life seems to have gone on for Peter, as we're told eight months have passed since Peter stole Cap's shield and fought in the Avengers' Civil War.  We see Peter impatiently waiting to ditch school so he can don his suit and swing around Queens to help old ladies and stop bike thieves, and then sneaking home before Aunt May finds out.  He ditches his school bag by sticking it to a dumpster beforehand, and when he returns after making a phone call to Happy Hogan (his Stark/Avengers point man) to retrieve it, it's gone.  This leads the wall-crawler to come across some thugs wearing Avengers costume masks robbing an ATM with some decidedly alien tech, which starts our main story arc: Spidey wants to find who's selling these weapons to protect his hometown of Queens.

The movie continues with Peter's life as a teenager burdened by crazy powers, a desire to do more, and Spanish quizzes.  And that is what makes this Spider-Man movie one of, if not the, best of them all.  The other movies tried to cast young men and shoehorn them into looking, acting, and living like high school seniors, then quickly pushed them into the adult realm.  Marvel's team, led by Kevin Feige, cast Tom Holland perfectly as Peter.  An actual teenager is much more believable as Peter Parker, who's wise cracks and adolescent charm is what makes Spidey a fan favorite.  So watching this version of the Webbed Wonder crack wise about each 'Avenger as he fights the masked thugs is perfect.

His fight with the masked men isn't all laughs though, as they pull out insanely powerful weapons seemingly made from the salvage Toomes managed to keep.  This ends up blowing a hole in the side of the bank housing the ATM, but also blows up a deli Parker frequents that happened to be across the street.  Parker races over to rescue the owner and his cat and leaves Parker wondering where their weapons came from.

Later, Parker starts to find out.  With Spider-Man being hailed a hero on the local news, (and because his best friend Ned found out it's Peter when he caught Peter sneaking back home that night), Ned blurts out that Peter knows Spider-Man when they overhear Liz has a crush on Spidey in an attempt to help his friend.  This prompts Flash, a schoolmate, and bully, to tease Peter about inviting Spider-Man to Liz's party.

Peter begrudgingly goes (with Ned in tow) for the chance to be around Liz, planning to swoop in as Spider-Man to impress her and claim the two selves are friends, but just as he's about to do this, a strange blue explosion is seen and heard, and Spider-Man runs to investigate.  What follows is an amateur attempt to foil a weapons sale, but not without some heroics ("If you want to shoot someone, shoot me,") and some hijinks that result in several shots fired by the weapons merchants, Peter being dragged through the suburbs of Manhattan, and the friendly, neighborhood, Spider-Man crashing through several backyards.  This lands Peter a lead on the weapons when he finds a piece of their salvaged tech that some thugs come looking for.  And a montage later, we know they're somewhere in Maryland.

This leads to Peter going with his High School's Academic Decathlon team to Washington, D.C., to compete in the national tournament in order to track down Toomes' associates, only to miss the competition after his attempt ends him a night's stay in Stark's high-security Damage Control Bunker with some tech Toomes tried to steal with his flying Vulture suit.  (He manages to unlock some crazy extras from his suits code in the process).  He then has to save his friends when some of the tech Parker found while investigating the weapons goes off while they are atop the Washington Monument.  Spider-Man is considered a hero and Peter blends back into his high school life in preparation for the third act.

Switch gears briefly, I want to talk about Michael Keaton's performance and role in this movie.  He plays Adrian Toomes, and the film shows pieces of the life of Toomes, the blue collar salvage laborer turned hi-tech weapon seller to whoever has the cash.  We see and hear what Spider-Man's interference is doing to Toomes' low-profile, high-profit weapon business.  We are shown that he resents what Tony Stark did to his salvage business at the beginning of the movie, and justifies his actions in the last act of the movie by pointing out to Peter that Stark was a weapon monger once, as well, and is the only reason he has the wealth that he does.  But not before the best bombshell of the film.  Now I'm saving that for a moment to talk about Keaton's performance because it's part of (if not entirely) why the movie is so good.  We see a man provide for his family using the one thing he and his crew of salvage experts know how to do: turn broken stuff into profit.  And we understand his dilemma.  Unlike other Spider-Man movies which have given us villains that just seem to want to kill Peter for fun, Toomes only wants him to leave what he's doing alone so he can keep his family taken care of.  This conflicts with what Peter sees this business doing: giving anyone with cash incredibly dangerous weapons that threaten people in his hometown.  Toomes/Vulture is not just some random villain with some good tech.  He's a person with real motivations we can relate to, even if the means he uses are questionable.

In the third act, Peter loses the advanced Spidey-suit Tony Stark made him for Civil War after an attempt to catch Toomes' Vulture selling more weapons nearly turns the Staten Island Ferry into scrap, not to mention dozens of cars lost in the Hudson River and almost killing the Ferries passangers.  Iron Man had to come and save it, and Stark tells Parker to hand over the suit.  Peter's plea to keep it, claiming that he is "nothing without the suit," earns the rebuke, "If you're nothing without the suit then you shouldn't have it."  This is an interesting response for Stark.  In earlier Iron Man films, Tony's self worth becomes tied directly to what he can do in the suit.  It's not until the third film when Tony realizes he, not the suit, is what makes the difference.

 

Nice Video, MCUExchange!

Tony needs Peter to learn the same lesson he had to learn.  Bereft of the super suit, he goes back to being a teenager, no longer expecting to be swooped up to help the Avengers at a moment's notice.  Now free of the "great power" and the "great responsibility" of the hi-tech suit, Peter opens up to people he's neglected to engage with earlier in the film, like his crush Liz, and ends up asking her to the Homecoming Dance.  He asks his Aunt for help preparing, and then she drops him off at his date's house for the big night.  Knocking on the door with a corsage in hand, Peter is greeted by Adrian Toomes who has no idea who Peter is, but Peter knows.  He turns out to be Liz's father, and the anxiety and tension in the scenes that follow are intense.

We watch Peter, struck dumb and anxious as a rat in a trap, awkwardly disregard the girl he's been head over heels for the whole movie.  And the best part is that we know.  We know Peter knows.  And we both fear he will be discovered.  So what happens?  After Adrian innocently insists on driving his daughter and her date to the dance, Liz gives up that Peter 'knows' Spider-Man just as Adrian starts to realize Peter sounds like someone he's met.  (By the way, one of the few times I've seen a hero get recognized by his voice when he's normally masked.  Superman, those glasses fool no one but your comic-book neighbors.)  Arriving at the school, Adrian tells his daughter to head inside so he and Peter can have the 'daddy-date' talk, and as soon as she's inside, we see Adrian grab a handgun, and without even pointing it at Peter or revealing it to him, outs that he knows Peter's secret and offers him a chance to move on.  "Forget everything, or I'll kill you and everyone you love," is the gist of it.  Having no choice but to agree, Peter leaves the car and goes into the dance.

And immediately ditches his date after telling her she doesn't deserve this, grabs his old suit from under a WALL of lockers he uses as a stash (he just lifts the lockers off their foundation) and hijacks Flash's ride (his father's BMW)  With the help of Ned, Peter arrives to confront Toomes at an old warehouse, which the Vulture drops on Peter's head.  Trapped under the rubble that is crushing him, Peter digs deep, inspired by Tony Stark's message regarding his suit, and manages to intercept the Vulture just as he begins hijacking one of Stark's Avenger planes loaded with all kinds of tech Toomes intends to steal and sell (including at least one suit and several mini-ARC reactors).  Sabotaging the 'vacuum seal' the Vulture's wingsuit somehow formed over the place Toomes infiltrated the plane, Peter has to fight off the Vulture and try to keep the plane from crashing into Cooney Island (he BARELY made it to the beach) where a damaged Vulture beats Peter almost to death, only to be saved by the web-slinger when his wingsuit explodes.  Peter rounds up all the tech, and webs Toomes to a crate of loot, with a message saying, "Sorry about the plane."

The rest of the film is icing on the cake.  Stark invites Peter to join the Avengers (and offers him a SWEET Spidey-themed power armor suit) only to be turned down by the young man, who's figured out that he's not ready to be an Avenger.  We also see that Tony, despite playing off his invite as a test for the young hero, actually expected him to join, and Pepper Potts, played by the gorgeous Gweneth Paltrow, comes out wondering where he is!  With a room full of reports behind the door, Hogan gives Tony an engagement ring he's had in his pocket "since 2008."  (The first movie of the MCU was "Iron Man (2008)," suggesting Hogan has been expecting Tony to propose to Pepper the entire time).  Hogan leaves to drive Peter home as Potts and Stark walk into the news conference all smiles.  At home, Peter finds the Civil War suit on his bed, and as Peter relishes putting it back on, we see Aunt May behind him scream "What the f-" as credits roll to the Ramones.

Phew.  I didn't expect to write a whole plot overview, but it's what came out.  The movie was great, and it stayed focused on what it needed to: Peter's attempts to balance his high school/civilian life with having super-powers and a desire to be more, and Vulture's humanity clashing with his desire to take care of his family but also get back at Tony Stark.  And as the credit extra scene rolls, we see that Toomes, given the chance in prison by another inmate to out Parker and cause him endless trouble, says instead, "If I knew who Spider-Man was, he'd be dead."  Toomes' humanity survived, meaning he remains an interesting and worthwhile villain in a genre where villains are like the popcorn you eat at the theater.  You enjoy it for one movie and when it's gone, you don't think about it.  But Toomes remains memorable because we get to understand him as a person, not just as a cinematic punching bag for our webbed hero.

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