By: Vincent Justin Mitra
Spider-Man: Homecoming, the first joint Spider-Man film between Marvel and Sony, is the latest entry in the ever-growing Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Despite being the sixth live-action reimagining of the web crawler in fifteen years, Homecoming manages to successfully separate itself from its predecessors.
The film takes place a few months after Captain America: Civil War and follows Peter Parker (Tom Holland) and his desire to take part in another Avengers-level mission, leading him to Adrian Toomes, the Vulture (Michael Keaton). Rounding out the diverse cast are Peter’s best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon), love interest Liz (Laura Harrier), classmate Michelle (Zendaya), as well as Aunt May and Tony Stark who are once again played by Marisa Tomei and Robert Downey Jr., respectively.
Marvel films have generally taken a particular film genre and mashed it together with comic book superheroes. Captain America was a war film plus superheroes, Winter Soldier was a spy thriller plus superheroes, and Thor was arguably a romantic comedy plus superheroes. Homecoming is no different, taking the superhero genre to high school.
Peter’s high school life takes more of the focus than in previous Spider-Man films, which is great because this time he looks believably like a teenager instead of a guy in his late twenties. This helps to characterize the Peter Parker half of the dual identity, both humanizing him and establishing how he is different from the other heavy hitters of the MCU.
Holland’s Spider-Man is able to bring a lightness to the character, as well as a sense of star-struck idealism left over from having literally met his heroes. The film also, like Civil War, suggests that Peter has been fighting crime for a bit of time already, giving him a bit of distance from the unspecified trauma of his early days and allowing him to really have fun with his powers. Homecoming is not so much an origin story as much as it is an introduction.
The film also does a good job of making Vulture a legitimate threat. In other appearances of the character, he is generally depicted as an angry old man who is really into birds: essentially Mr. Burns with a bunch of pigeons and a wing suit. Keaton, while no spring chicken himself, conveys severity and determination in his Vulture. Keaton’s Vulture also strives for relatively simpler goals, making the scale of the film more personal than the grand or sweeping plans of most MCU villains, and also makes him the perfect bad guy for this Spider-Man’s first solo film.
One of the factors that sunk Spider-Man 3 in 2007 was villain overload via their decision to include Sandman, Venom, and New Goblin. 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 repeats the same mistake of its predecessor by trying to force Goblin and Electro to share the villain spotlight. Homecoming wisely avoids this by having Vulture be the core villain. While other familiar bad guys do show up, they’re more like henchmen for now, giving Vulture plenty of space to spread his wings.
With strong performances, a believable main character, and youthful energy, Spider-Man: Homecoming is a fun film with a lot of heart, whether you’re measuring it as part of the MCU or up against one of the many Spider-Man films that came before.
A sequel has already been scheduled for July 2019.
