Spider-Man Homecoming Review

I’m a huge fan of the marvel cinematic universe but an even bigger fan of Spider-Man. Now when they announced that marvel had the rights to do a Spider-Man movie in their universe, it became one of my most anticipated movies of the year and after seeing it I have a lot of thoughts.

Firstly, I think Homecoming is a great film but not a great Spiderman film. Overall this is probably one of the more joke heavy Marvel movies and most all the jokes do land, which is great, however, that means it loses the opportunity to be more intense and dramatic. The old Ramie films had this visceral feel to them especially during the action scenes. You could really feel the grit and sweat when it was all going down like in that train scene with Doc Ock. Most of the action scenes in Homecoming were pretty clunky and focused more trying to get in a joke. Even the final battle had way too much shaky cam, which is a shame because they could’ve done some really cool things visually regarding the circumstances of that scene. Spider-Man is this colorful acrobatic character so you expect his battles to really pop off the screen. Also the amount of CGI for the suit made it look too much like a cartoon at times in my opinion.

I do think Tom Holland was a great choice to play Peter Parker. He has the right tone for this kind of character and he’s really fun to watch. In my opinion, Tobey Maguire was a great Peter Parker and Andrew Garfield was a better Spiderman, but Tom nicely blends the two personalities together. All the other characters in the movie were greatly casted and have good enough introductions to be developed more in the coming films, but there are so many of them introduced so none of them are really that interesting except for Ned but mainly because his name is connected to some hob goblin lore in the comics, that no one cares about and which isn’t really explored in this movie. Zendaya was also hyped up to be this big character but she was barely in the film and when she was it was just to make a joke. Liz was literally just your average love interest and I guess it was smart to make Flash Thompson more of a bully within Peter’s social circles for a more unique approach to the character to fit into this world.

The amount of villains in the movie is a lot, but its played well in that most of them have a purpose in the current story we are in. However, you have terrible examples like Donald Glover, playing the Prowler, who is just there as set up for future films, which sucks because I think that if you’re gonna put someone like Glover in there, don’t make it something disposable like that. If you really want him in this universe then leave him for the next film where he can be more substantial. That’s the problem with these cinematic universe type films at times, the world building can be too obvious and distracting when not subtly done right and take away from the main point of the film.

I do think the suit in this movie looked great on screen but it is a little much at times with all the tech which kinda made the movie feel like I was watching Iron Man Jr., but they improve upon that by their decision to take the suit away for the second half, which made the movie feel more Spider-Man, so that was a great idea.

The Vulture is probably one of the best MCU villains to date, which he should be because Spider-Man has almost all Marvel’s best villains but I wish he had more time to interact with Peter other than during the last act. However, in the little time that they did interact it was great and when you find out more about him he becomes more human and fleshed out so that you end up understanding why he’s doing all the sinister things he does. That’s a great way to make a villain more relatable and tragic kind of like what they did with Magneto in the recent X-Men films. Micheal Keaton was also a great choice for the Vulture and had probably one of the best and most intense scenes in the movie. Iron Man’s presence was also great and wasn’t as heavily involved as I thought the trailers made it seem like.

Overall, I would say that this is a fun movie but once again not the best Spider-Man movie because of its deliberate lack of sincerity that the last two iterations at least tried to have (Amazing Spider-Man 2 was a piece of sh**). The final shot of the movie was a good example of the film not really wanting to take itself too seriously. This felt like just another Marvel movie and not really like the return of the real Spider-Man, the most popular hero of the Marvel franchise. This movie should’ve been one of the most anticipated things Marvel has ever done, but even after seeing the trailers I was more excited to see Thor 3 this year. The main problem with the movie is that it’s just too safe and in this era, superhero films are getting released almost every month so each one really needs to try to break the mold to be recognized. And this film didn’t really do much unexpected.

The original Spider-Man 2 will always be the best Spidey movie in my opinion, so I'm hoping they step it up in the sequel after the next Avengers films. The ending credits scenes really do show that there could be more potential in the future. To sum things up this movie is like an In-N-Out burger, it's good but not a delicacy.