No single character in Marvel’s pantheon has had more comic book titles than Spider-Man. The Amazing Spider-Man has continued to be published in some form or other since 1963, and he’s had an absurd number of secondary titles. There have been many months over the past fifty-plus years when there’s been a new Spider-title every week. (As an example, in the early 1990s there were four monthly titles, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Spectcular Spider-Man, Web of Spider-Man, and Spider-Man.)
The character had enough history all on his own from this plethora of publications that Sony tried to create a “Spider-Man Cinematic Universe” with the Marc Webb-directed, Andrew Garfield-starring films. However, the movie that started to build that universe, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, was something less than a howling success, and Sony had to go for Plan B.
The infamous Sony hack of 2014 revealed that Sony had been talking to Marvel Studios about the possibility of their producing a new trilogy of Spider-Man films, even as they were also making plans for a third Webb-directed film. (There was also talk of bringing Sam Raimi back to do more Spider-films.) The disappointing performance of ASM2 and the revelation that Sony was interested in doing a deal with Marvel Studios got those conversations back on track (Marvel originally rejected Sony’s offer). Kevin Feige has long wanted Spider-Man to be part of the MCU, and this was a way to make it happen.
After introducing the character to this corner of the Marvel Universe in Captain America: Civil War, the search was on for screenwriters and directors. The team of John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein were considered to direct, and did do one of the drafts of the script, pulling on their experience in sitcoms to bring some ground-level humor. Jon Watts was eventually tabbed to direct—besides Daley and Goldstein, Jonathan Levine, Ted Melfi, Jared Hess, and Jason Moore were considered—and he also wanted to take a ground-level approach, as he felt the appeal of Spider-Man was that he was a regular person with regular-person problems who happened to have super-powers. In contrast to the big epic feel of most of the MCU movies, Watts wanted a Spider-Man who was an ordinary guy—a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, as it were.
Part of the deal with Sony is that one MCU character has to appear in an MCU Spidey film, and Tony Stark was the obvious choice to bring in to continue his role as Spidey’s mentor that he had in Civil War, with Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan along for the ride.
Michael Keaton (last seen in this rewatch as the title character in 1989’s Batman and Batman Returns) debuts the role of Adrian Toomes, a.k.a. the Vulture, one of Spider-Man’s longest-tenured villains, having first appeared in the comics in the second issue of Amazing Spider-Man in 1963. Garcelle Beauvais and Laura Harrier play Toomes’s wife Doris and daughter Liz, respectively, with Liz being one of Peter’s classmates at the Midtown School of Science and Technology.
Screen versions of a few other members of Spidey’s rogues’ gallery appear, including Bokeem Woodbine as Herman Schultz, a.k.a. the Shocker; Logan Marshall-Green as Jackson Brice, who was a version of the Shocker both here and in the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon from 2008, but was also Montana of the Enforcers in the comics; Michael Chemus as Phineas Mason, a.k.a. the Tinkerer; Michael Mando as Mac Gargan, who in the comics eventually became the Scorpion (Gargan has a scorpion tattoo on his neck by way of tribute to the character’s comics persona); and Donald Glover as Aaron Davis, who in the comics is the shady uncle of Miles Morales, who would take on the mantle of Spider-Man (Glover voiced Miles Morales in the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon that was running while this film was being made, and Davis here does make a reference to his nephew).
We also get to see the Department of Damage Control, based on a company created in the comics by the late great Dwayne McDuffie, which is called in to clean up after superhero battles. Tyne Daly appears as the head of the DODC, which in the MCU is a joint operation between the U.S. Government and Stark Industries.
Back from Civil War are Tom Holland as Peter Parker, Marisa Tomei as Aunt May, Robert Downey Jr. as Stark, Chris Evans as Captain America (in a bunch of PSAs shown at Midtown), and Kerry Condon as F.R.I.D.A.Y. Back from Iron Man 3 are Jon Favreau as Hogan and Gwyneth Paltrow as Potts. Back from The Incredible Hulk is Martin Starr, who reprises his role as an academic coach, named Mr. Harrington here. Back from Captain America: The First Avenger is Kenneth Choi as Principal Morita, the descendant of Jim Morita of the Howling Commandos in World War II.
Parker’s fellow classmates besides Liz include Zendaya as Michelle Jones (who decides at the film’s end to go by “MJ”), Jacob Batalon as Ned, Tony Revolori as Flash, and Angourie Rice as Betty.
Also introduced in this film are Jennifer Connolly as Karen, the A.I. in the Spider-suit, Hemky Madera as the bodega owner Mr. Delmar, Christopher Berry as Randy, and Hannibal Buress as Coach Wilson.
Holland, Downey Jr., Evans, Paltrow, Batalon, and Condon will next appear in Avengers: Infinity War. Favreau and Tomei will next appear in Avengers: Endgame. Zendaya, Revolori, and Rice will next appear in Spider-Man: Far from Home.
Homecoming was a massive hit, as just the domestic gross was almost double the budget, and a sequel was green-lit tout de suite, which would serve as the coda to Phase 3 in general and the Infinity War/Endgame two-parter in particular, and which we’ll cover in December. After a brief breakdown of negotiations, Sony and Disney came to terms for a new deal, and a third film with Holland will be released in the summer of 2021.
“Dude, you’re an Avenger, if anyone has a chance with a senior girl, it’s you!”
Spider-Man: Homecoming
Written by Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley and Jon Watts & Christopher Ford and Chris McKenna & Erik Sommers
Directed by Jon Watts
Produced by Kevin Feige and Amy Pascal
Original release date: July 7, 2017
In 2012, after the Chitauri invasion, Adrian Toomes leads a crew of workers who have the city contract to clean up the mess at Stark Tower. But then the Department of Damage Control comes in and says that it’s their responsibility now. Toomes is not happy about losing the contract, as he paid for extra trucks and extra workers, and he’s out all that money now.
However, one of those extra trucks is back at Toomes’s warehouse and is full of alien technology salvaged from the site. Toomes decides to defy federal orders to give everything back and keep the truck.
Time passes. (The caption says eight years, but that would put this movie in 2020, and every other chronological cue of the MCU puts movies in the year they were released, so let’s just say “several” years later…) Toomes and his gang have spent the time salvaging alien tech from various super-battles—the Triskelion’s destruction, e.g.—and selling it on the black market.
Peter Parker kept a video diary of his trip to Berlin, and we see Happy Hogan driving him to the airport, flying to Europe with him, taking him to his hotel, and finally giving him the suit he wore in the battle at Leipzig/Halle Airport. We see bits of the battle that Parker recorded on his phone, and then they return to Queens, with one final “alibi video” for Parker’s Aunt May, saying how well the “Stark Industries retreat” went.
Stark then tells Parker to keep things low-key, to handle street-level stuff, and the Avengers will call if they need him.
Parker continues to go to school, and his cover story for being Spider-Man is an internship at Stark Industries. He keeps waiting for a call to a new mission with the Avengers, and continues to help people as Spider-Man, but he also quits his extracurricular activities—including the Academic Decathalon, which is going to the Nationals in Washington D.C. soon, but Parker doesn’t want to be out of town in case the Avengers need him. We also meet several of his classmates, including his best friend Ned; Michelle, who is dismissive and insulting to pretty much everyone; Liz, the captain of the Decathalon team, and also the organizer of the upcoming homecoming dance, and on whom Parker has a major crush; and Flash, who regularly torments Parker (mostly due to being jealous of Parker being smarter than him), and who also takes Parker’s place on the Decathalon team.
His patrols are a mixed bag. At one point, he stops what he thinks is a car thief, but it turns out to be someone just getting in his car, for which he is berated by a plethora of cranky New Yorkers, including one who looks just like Stan Lee. He also gives a woman directions, and she gives him a churro for his trouble. He reports all this to Hogan’s voicemail—Hogan doesn’t answer his calls or respond to his texts.
He stops an ATM robbery by four guys in Avengers masks who are wielding high-tech weapons. While Spidey foils the robbery, the bodega across the street is destroyed. (Spidey manages to rescue Mr. Delmar and the deli’s cat Murph.)
When Parker goes home, he crawls into the apartment through the window and walks along the ceiling and then closes the door—only then belatedly realizing that a shocked Ned is sitting on his bed, waiting for him to come home so they could put together a LEGO Death Star together.
Parker swears Ned to silence—he can’t let May know about him being a hero, as she’s been through too much as it is—but Ned won’t stop asking questions about being Spider-Man. When they overhear Liz saying that she thinks Spider-Man is fantastic, Ned blurts out that Peter knows Spider-Man. Flash is skeptical, and Parker is furious at Ned for even saying it, but it gets them both invited to the party at Liz’s house that weekend, in the hopes that Parker will bring Spider-Man along.
Parker and Ned go to the party, driven there by May. The plan is to have Spider-Man show up, say his friend Peter invited him, give Ned a fist-bump, and then head out.
However, after he changes into his uniform, he sees an energy discharge very similar to that of the weapons in the ATM robbery, and he goes to investigate, only to find an arms deal going down. Two of Toomes’s people—Herman Schultz and Jackson Brice—are trying to sell weapons to Aaron Davis. Spider-Man breaks up the arms deal, and Schultz and Brice try to get away, with Spidey chasing them through the suburbs. They don’t lose him until Toomes himself shows up in his mechanical wings and drops Spidey into a bay. Spidey almost drowns, tangled in the parachute he didn’t realize his suit had, and is rescued by a remote-controlled Iron Man. Stark himself is halfway ’round the world, and has been monitoring the Spider-Man suit. He advises Parker to stay away from this, as it’s too big for him. He should just be a friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man.
Because Parker disappeared from the party and Spidey never showed, Flash—who is the DJ at the party—starts a call-and-response chant of “Penis” followed by “Parker,” thus solidifying Parker and Ned’s status as losers.
Toomes is furious at Brice for making such a public scene. Brice is unconcerned, and Toomes fires him, prompting Brice to threaten to expose Toomes’s operation if he does. Toomes grabs a weapon and shoots Brice, disintegrating him—to his surprise, as he thought it was the anti-gravity gun. His tinkerer, Phineas Mason, explains that that was the disintegration ray, and now Brice is dead. Brice had been using a gauntlet that shoot electric blasts, and Toomes gives the gauntlet to Schultz.
Spidey did manage to put a tracker on Schultz, and he and Ned see that he’s in Maryland. Best way to get there is to put himself back on the Decathalon team, since it’s on its way to Washington D.C. They also have a piece of tech that Brice left behind in the chase, which they examine, but can’t quite figure out what it is.
In their shared hotel room in D.C. the night before the Decathalon, Ned and Parker manage to remove the tracker from the suit and also disable the “training wheels” protocol, which activates the suit’s A.I. (whom Parker eventually names “Karen,” as that’s nicer than “Suit Lady”) and lots of other functions. (Too many, as Stark’s tendency toward excess is seen in things like the kill protocol and the many types of webbing.)
Spider-Man stops Toomes from stealing items from a DODC van, but winds up unconscious in the van itself. When he wakes up, he’s in a secure DODC facility with a time lock. At first, Parker just waits it out, having several conversations with Karen, but eventually discovers that the device they salvaged from Brice—and which is currently in Ned’s pocket—is a Chitauri grenade. Working through the night to dope out the time lock, Parker eventually breaks through and escapes—having missed the Decathalon entirely, though the Midtown team wins anyhow. They go to the Washington Monument as part of their post-victory celebration, but the security scanner Ned goes through activates the grenade, which goes off while they’re in the elevator. The emergency systems will hold it in place for a bit, but the damage from the grenade has compromised it. Spidey arrives in the nick of time to save everyone, though it’s difficult (and involves defying the Metro Police, who only see a weirdo in a onesie climbing the side of a tourist attraction). Liz is the last one out of the elevator before it collapses—and then it does collapse, but Spidey manages to save her.
When they return to New York, Parker is given detention. He also manages to work up the courage to ask Liz to the homecoming dance. Liz, who views Parker’s bailing on the Decathalon somewhat philosophically given that she almost died that day, accepts.
Karen has recorded everything Parker has done while wearing the suit, and she’s able to run facial recognition on the arms deal that Spidey broke up. There’s no record of Schultz or Brice, but Davis has a criminal record. Spidey goes to question him, initially in the suit’s “interrogation mode,” which fails rather spectacularly. But the pair of them wind up bonding over their shared love of the sandwiches at Mr. Delmar’s bodega, and Davis says he knows where Toomes’s next deal will be: on the Staten Island Ferry.
Spidey shows up to scotch the deal between Toomes and a criminal named Mac Gargan, but he winds up stepping on an FBI sting, and then one of the weapons goes off and cuts the ferry in half. Spidey manages to stave off the boat sinking until Iron Man arrives to save the day. After Iron Man welds the ferry back together, the pair of them fly off so Stark and Parker can have a long talk. Stark told Parker to back off and he didn’t. Stark was the one who called the FBI, and Parker screwed the pooch and nearly got a lot of people killed. Stark demands the suit back.
Parker goes home to May, who is worried sick. She knows Parker has been sneaking out and she’d been trying to reach him all day, and she can’t not know where he is and what he’s doing. He admits only that he lost the Stark internship.
He takes Liz to the homecoming dance. Arriving at her house, he discovers, to his abject terror, that Liz’s father is Adrian Toomes. Parker barely manages to hold himself together as Toomes drives them to the school, and Liz’s mentions of both his bailing on the party and disappearing from the Decathalon enable Toomes to put two and two and together.
Under the guise of a “Dad talk,” Toomes asks Liz to leave him alone with Parker for a minute. Toomes makes it clear that (a) he knows Parker is Spider-Man, (b) he’s grateful to him for saving Liz’s life, and (c) for that reason, he’s not going to do anything to him, but if he interferes in Toomes’s business again, Toomes will kill him and everyone he loves.
Parker seems frightened by this, but in truth he leaves his cell phone in the car, then goes in, apologizes to Liz, and bails.
As soon as he gets outside—back in the blue-and-red-hoodie outfit he wore before Stark tracked him down in Civil War—he is confronted by Schultz. Spidey manages to stop him, thanks to timely assistance from Ned. He then tells Ned to track Parker’s phone, still in Toomes’s car, and to call Hogan and tell him what’s going on—which is needed, as Parker realizes that Toomes’s latest target is the quinjet that’s taking all the items from Stark Tower (which is being sold) to the Avengers compound upstate.
Spidey’s first confrontation with Toomes (which he gets to by stealing Flash’s car, which he then drives with, er, inconsistent skill) ends with the latter dropping a ceiling on the former. Spidey manages to throw the plaster and metal and stone off himself with a Herculean effort, and then he goes after the attack on the Stark jet. The running battle on the quinjet does significant damage to the craft, which crashes on Coney Island. Spidey manages to save Toomes’s life from the fiery conflagration.
Toomes is arrested, and Liz announces that she and her mother are moving to Oregon, as her father doesn’t want his family around during the trial. Michelle is made the new Decathalon captain—she says her friends call her “M.J.,” prompting Ned to point out that she doesn’t have any friends, and M.J. to sheepishly admit that she does now.
Hogan summons Parker to the bathroom and thanks him for saving his job, and he brings Parker to Avengers Compound. Stark says he redeemed himself, and not only will he get a new suit, but also will officially be made part of the Avengers in a press conference he’s about to hold. However, Parker declines, deciding that he likes life better as a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. He also assumes that the whole press conference thing was a lie, part of a test to see if he really should have the suit back. Stark assures him that he passed—and then, after he leaves, Pepper Potts comes out and asks where the kid is? Turns out it wasn’t a test, but Parker impressed them with his maturity. Potts says they have to tell the press something, as they promised a big announcement, and Stark suggests their engagement. (Hogan has, apparently, been carrying around the engagement ring Stark got for the better part of a decade…)
Upon returning home, Parker sees a paper bag with his Spidey suit inside, and a note saying it belongs to him. He tries it on—just as May walks in and wants to know what the hell’s going on.
In prison, Toomes is reunited with Gargan, who heard a rumor that Toomes knows who Spider-Man really is. Toomes assures Gargan that if he knew, Spider-Man would be dead.
“Just a typical homecoming, on the outside of an invisible jet, fighting my girlfriend’s Dad”
For Spidey’s third reboot in a decade-and-a-half, I’m really grateful that Kevin Feige, Jon Watts, and their army of screenwriters decided to eschew a full retelling of the origin. Feige himself said in an interview that, after two origin stories in 2002 and 2012, “we are going to take it for granted that people know that [origin], and the specifics.” And thank goodness for that.
Having said that, the spectre of Uncle Ben hangs over parts of this movie, in three moments in particular: in Tom Holland’s voice when Parker begs Ned not to let May know he’s Spider-Man because she’s already been through so much, in Holland’s face when Stark takes the suit back after the ferry incident, but most especially in Marisa Tomei’s entire performance when Parker comes home after Stark took the suit. That scene in particular is a tour de force from Tomei who has, frankly, been underutilized, though what we have gotten has been excellent. When she enumerates all the things Parker has done that he thought he was keeping from her, like sneaking out to go on patrol, the PTSD from losing her husband is etched on Tomei’s every pore. It’s obvious that she keeps it under control for the most part—and indeed, she does so again when Parker reveals that he lost the “internship”—but in that moment, she’s in several kinds of pain because she’s afraid of losing the one person she has left.
This movie also feels so very much like a New York story. I previously wrote on this site that the makeup of the Midtown School of Science and Technology was much more representative of the demographics of New York than Midtown High was in the comics by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in the early 1960s, but it goes deeper than that. So many great New York moments here, from the neighbors all kibitzing over Spider-Man’s botched attempt to stop a car thief, which quickly devolves into a friendly conversation among neighbors; to the bodega, complete with overfed deli cat, where Parker regularly gets food (and the later bonding over it with Douglas is classic); to the tired cynicism of the teachers (the gym teacher’s response to the state-mandated Captain America PSA is a particular classic). Plus there’s all the classic high school stuff, from Parker’s crush on Liz to the awkwardness of the party to Flash’s bullying.
One thing I adore about this movie in particular, and Holland’s portrayal in general, is that he manages to be a great Peter Parker and a great Spider-Man. Tobey Maguire was a very good Parker, but his Spider-Man never felt like my favorite superhero at any point, really. Andrew Garfield had the opposite problem; he definitely was Spider-Man, but his Parker was just a typical skateboarding doofus teenager, with no hint of the brilliant kid he was supposed to be.
Holland, though, gives us both. His Spider-Man is constantly babbling and quipping while fighting (which is what Spidey is supposed to be doing), and his Parker is a brilliant young man. In fact, he’s so brilliant he sometimes doesn’t even realize it, as he gets so caught up in the superhero lifestyle that he forgets the importance of staying in school. Yet when we see him in an academic setting, it’s obvious that his brilliance is effortless. I particularly like that he came up with the formula for the webbing on his own, and uses Midtown’s science labs to synthesize it, before being given webbing by Stark in his shiny new suit.
One thing that helps with this is that the movie regularly gives Parker someone to talk to while he’s Spider-Man, whether it’s Stark or Ned or Karen. (I particularly like that the A.I. actually encourages him to kiss Liz after rescuing her while hanging upside down, a hilarious call back to the 2002 movie, made even more entertaining by his then falling down the elevator shaft before he can.) This enables the babbling, at which Holland excels, and which is one of Spidey’s most entertaining features, one that was muted in both his previous movie series. Plus Holland works beautifully with all three. Jacob Batalon is geeky perfection as Ned, and I especially love that he eventually gets to be “the guy in the chair”; Robert Downey Jr. gives us a Stark who continues to be the worst mentor ever, but at least does so entertainingly; and Jennifer Connolly’s chirpily helpful Karen is wonderful.
What’s best about this movie, though, is the same thing that made the Netflix series as appealing as they were. Most of the MCU movies are about big events and major occurrences, and rarely are the ground-level consequences even dealt with. By going small-picture, as it were, we get to see how this world of superheroes affects ordinary folks, from little things like Cap’s PSAs to big things like alien tech destroying a beloved neighborhood bodega.
Nowhere is this seen better than in Adrian Toomes, which is a magnificent performance by Michael Keaton. We first see Toomes as a workaday contractor who got a big score in getting to spearhead the cleanup of Stark Tower in 2012 only to have it yanked away from him by an uncaring federal government. (Kudos to Tyne Daly, who nails the role of the uncaring bureaucrat in her small role.) Toomes is the working-class hero twisted, as he wants to support his family, but he takes it to its nastiest extreme, killing Brice (while that wasn’t his intention, he doesn’t seem in the least bit broken up about the murder; Brice is also, it must be said, a classic fuckup, played to yeah-whatever perfection by Logan Marshall-Green) and threatening, not just Parker, but also his nearest and dearest. You understand where his villainy comes from, but it’s still villainy and he’s still scary.
This movie is a delight, a strong coming-of-age story, a strong Spider-Man movie, a good look at an aspect of the MCU rarely seen on cinema screens, and just a fun time overall. Each previous live-action version of Spidey was flawed in some way, going back to the 1977 Nicholas Hammond TV movie and followup series. Holland’s portrayal feels completely right in a way that Hammond, Maguire, and Garfield weren’t able to manage. And on top of that, it has a call-back to one of Spidey’s greatest moments, when he throws twelve tons of machinery off his back during the “Master Planner” storyline in Amazing Spider-Man #33.
Next week, more Civil War fallout, as we see the aftermath of King T’Chaka’s death and get a much better look at Wakanda in Black Panther.
Keith R.A. DeCandido has always loved Spider-Man since first seeing him on The Electric Company as a kid in the 1970s. His first comic book subscription was to Spidey Super Stories, the Electric Company tie-in comic, and when he became a professional fiction writer, his first short story (“An Evening in the Bronx with Venom” in 1994’s The Ultimate Spider-Man) and his first novel (Venom’s Wrath in 1998) starred the web-head, something he’s always taken geeky pleasure in.
What’s Spider-Man doing in a Marisa Tomei movie?
I love so many things about this movie, but I’ll mention the one thing that kinda bugs me: Jacob Batalon isn’t playing Ned Leeds, he’s playing Ganke Lee. His role in the story, his personality, even physically, that’s Ganke. This gets in my head so much that when Tom Holland’s got the mask on, I keep thinking it’s Miles under there, and not Peter Parker. And I don’t think it would change the story much at all if it were Miles.
My blog review:
https://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/2017/07/19/spider-man-homecoming-thoughts-spoilers/
Excerpt:
I liked the movie, but I didn’t love it. I guess I’m not the target audience for the John Hughes-style teen romantic comedy vibe they were going for — I don’t think I ever was. I got kind of bored during some of those teen-drama sequences, though the young actors were all pretty good. I didn’t dislike it, and it was pretty fun at times, but it didn’t wow me. I dunno, everyone these days seems to be excited about putting Peter Parker back in high school, even though he spent only three years and 30 issues in high school in the comics (well, more like 44 issues counting guest appearances in other books), but I first became interested in Spidey as a college-age character in the 1990s animated series, and I got to know him best when writing about him as a college graduate and part-time high school teacher in Drowned in Thunder. So I guess the idea of making him a kid doesn’t do that much for me.
Still, for what it was, it worked well. It captured the essence of who Spider-Man is, his sense of fun and his desire to help and his commitment to justice even when it screws up his personal life, as it invariably does — just in a more teenagery way than usual. And in the context of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I can definitely see the value of stepping away from all the big important adult heroes dealing with matters of global or cosmic significance and taking a look at what life in the MCU is like for the little guy down on street level. And Spider-Man is a very good character for that, a hero who often hobnobs with superhero royalty but never loses his connection to the streets. …Moreover, it was really interesting to see a street-level villain. Adrian Toomes could soar to any height, but he didn’t want to rule the underworld or conquer the planet, he just wanted to make a dishonest living because he blamed Stark and the government for taking his honest livelihood from him.
…I’ve spoken before of my dislike of the way superhero movies insist on killing off the bad guys, either by having the heroes kill them or going the “I don’t have to save you” route or having them die by their own actions or a twist of fate. It was so satisfying to see a movie not do that — to see Spidey risk his life to save the villain, succeed, and even get karmically rewarded for it in the post-credits scene. That’s the way I like to see these stories play out. I was worried about how Spidey, a character largely defined by his refusal to kill, would be handled in the MCU, which tends to make its heroes rather less non-lethal than they usually are in the comics. (Seriously, why would Tony even install “Instant Kill Mode” in that suit?) I’m relieved that they’re keeping that aspect of his character intact.
—
So anyway, I’m not as fond of Holland’s Spidey as Keith is. I liked Garfield’s Spidey better, because his Spidey was actually snarky and wisecracking rather than just nervously babbling like Holland’s. Okay, maybe nervous babbling is more realistic for a teenager, but I like Spidey to be funny, not just awkward.
So much to like about this flick. I agree 100% about your assessment of Tom Holland as Peter AND Spidey. He nails it. The rest of the cast is great, too, as you mentioned. The one thing I didn’t love was how much Stark there was. And giving Spidey an iron man suit seemed like a poor choice to me, too.
@4/Rich: At least having the suit come from Stark helps explain how Peter is able to have such a fancy costume, something the Raimi films totally failed to address and the first Webb film only imperfectly accounted for. And it works as a parallel to the pre-Civil War plotline in the comics with Spidey joining the Avengers, becoming Stark’s protege, and getting the Iron Spider suit as an upgrade, though in this case the upgrade is his classic suit.
I did like this one a lot. My one complaint is a practical one: I can’t believe that the ferry wouldn’t have sunk a whole lot faster when it was bisected. But I’ll give it to them.
@@@@@#4– Rich, Tony Stark was only in this movie for less than 8 minutes.
https://m.imdb.com/list/ls023900717/
This movie skyrocketed Peter to being my very favourite Avenger after Tony. I absolutely loved that it was focusing on the ground level, and that high school kids actually looked and behaved like high school kids. Most of the rest is basically already said in the article, but it did not feel right not to add my voice to the general appreciation.
(Also, I remember the laugh at the post-credits scene and how it seemed that even Evans was having a hard time not to laugh himself.)
@7/Steven: True, but that very same list shows that Tony and Happy get the 5th- and 6th-highest amounts of screen time respectively, considerably more than Aunt May, Michelle, or any secondary villain, and exactly half as much screen time as Ned. And Stark’s presence loomed over the film even when he wasn’t on camera.
Orson Welles’s Harry Lime is only in The Third Man for about 6-7 minutes (sources are inconsistent), but he’s still the dominant figure in the film, because the whole story is about other characters talking about him and dealing with the consequences of his actions.
I love this movie (and all the recent Spider-movies, really) so damn much I can overlook any flaws. “Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane” is probably my favourite recent-ish Spider-family comic book, so going back to high school was just fine with me; in fact in both this and Far From Home I actually enjoyed the teen story more than the majority of the super heroics.
When this movie was first announced I was incredibly dubious about the Vulture as antagonist, but this is a wonderful interpretation of him. I liked that much of the Vulture’s menace here doesn’t come necessarily from super-powers but from knowledge and relationships.
The one little thing that bugged me was the amount of possible collateral damage near the end of the movie that nobody seemed to care about. I’d assume that even Toomes doesn’t want to kill a bunch of innocent people, not to mention that kind of fight is just too public for his business model to continue in the future. (well, that and I prefer a quippier Spider-man)
Some of my favorite scenes were the Captain America PSAs.
I really liked this movie and the next one, too, though Into the Spider-Verse is still my favorite of this crop.
What made this so special for me is that the villains are people that Tony Stark callously screwed over. There was nothing stopping him from hiring people experienced with salvaging the technology to work for him, or from just buying out Toombs’ operation, but he had to be the big swinging dick who solves everything his own self, screwing over working people and their employer in the process. I was sorry to see Toombs end up in prison, where he got to demonstrate his fundamental decency.
Is Adrian Toombs a better man than Tony Stark? If I were Peter Parker, I’d’ve been thinking that over.
@@@@@ 9 & 7 – See also pretty much every Hammer Dracula film.
I’m the first one to beg for more variety in film releases. But whenever anyone tries to blame the current state of cinema in an excess of superhero releases, I point them to 2017. This is the year that had not only this film but also two other solid MCU entries, plus Wonder Woman, plus Logan. That’s five superbly produced films that maintained an impressive high level of quality. There are undeniable problems with the current state of filmmaking, but as far as Marvel Studios is concerned, they were cooking at this point, delivering solid entertainment and taking some properties in interesting directions.
I don’t hold Homecoming as high as I do those first two Raimi films, but it sure comes close. Holland nails every aspect of Spider-Man and Peter Parker. I actually adore the bumbling aspect, which fits the character better than the more wisecracking one taken in the Webb entries.
Watts, as far as directing goes, does the character justice, even though he lacks the sense of visual style that Raimi had (and it’s not hard to surpass Webb when it comes to directing action). Thanks to that army of writers, we get a solid, faithful take on the character.
And what this film does better than any prior iteration is the pure depiction of high school. The Raimi entries skipped to college too abruptly and the Webb entries did a poor job with the setting. Flash aside, this movie depicts the ideal high school, one I wish I’d grown up in. Great friends, fun teachers (and it helps when you cast Martin Starr), and memorable school trips. The movie is worth it for the Washington trip.
And it skips the origin story! While I thought the Spider-Man introduction aspect of Civil War a bit too disconnected from the main story back then, in hindsight it spared us yet another Uncle Ben shootout.
Toomes was yet another home run for the MCU villain pantheon. Relatable motives, but undeniably someone who took things too far. And a terrific performance from Keaton. I still hope we see him again.
And this film, along with its post-Endgame sequel, are very much dependant on Iron Man’s legacy. It pretty much informs both villains’ motives and contribute to some interconnected world-building. Back when Superhero films started getting traction, this is what I expected in terms of a shared universe. Worth the wait.
I only have two quibbles, and one of them is not even related to the film itself.
Civil War made a plot point out of Tony being separated from Pepper Potts. I wish we’d seen their reconnection and how it happened. Sure, it makes for a fun twist at the very end with the press conference, but I still feel they could have booked Paltrow for another day of shooting at the very end of Civil War.
My other issue is the timeline. The story could only take place 8 years after the Battle of Chitauri if Avengers had taken place in 2009 (unlikely). Or assume Homecoming takes place in 2020. Neither is satisfactory. I expect for Watts, Sony’s Pascal, the screenwriters and the editors somehow miss this little detail. What I don’t expect is for Kevin Feige himself to overlook it. Obviously he reviews the final cuts of these productions before release. He had to know the timeline, especially considering Infinity War and Endgame were already in production. He knew there was going to be a 5 year time jump, which would them inform Far from Home. This was a glaring mistake, pure and simple.
As for the rest of the film, I have nothing to add but praise.
*to somehow miss.
Leave it to me to not review or edit my own words after I made a full paragraph’s worth of criticizing Feige for overlooking a screen title. Note to self: never rush the writing.
I agree that Tom Holland is the best movie Spiderman so far. The only thing I didn’t like about this movie, and about MCU Spiderman, is how Uncle Ben Parker is mostly brushed aside despite the fact that he’s an integral part of why Peter is Peter, and thus Spiderman. I get that they didn’t want to repeat the same beats as the two previous iterations, but refusing to acknowledge Ben Parker except indirectly is a weird choice to me, and having Iron Man become Spiderman’s mentor and give him the high-tech Spiderman suit is also weird to me. The former generated all the memes about Tony Stark seeing Peter as his son and him seeing Stark as his dad, as if he didn’t already have a father figure even if he recently lost him, and the latter just plain clashes with the classic “Spiderman is poor and he does everything by himself because he’s smart and resourceful.” I guess I can buy that his suit is spandex or an alien goo monster, but I don’t like him as Ironman’s Robin. I love Marisa Tomei as Aunt May, though.
@16/JM1978: As I mentioned, Tony did become a mentor figure to Peter in the comics in the couple of years before and during Civil War, so it stands to reason that the MCU would use it given that they introduced Spidey in their Civil War adaptation. And maybe it has something to do with setting up Spidey as Iron Man’s successor as the leading hero of the MCU, although one wonders if they can really do that as long as they’re just borrowing him from Sony and the deal isn’t necessarily guaranteed to last.
I love this movie – as I said, this, along with Ragnarok, are the only ones we actually own/rewatch. I was a bit skeptical – I grew up (more or less) with the Tobey McGuire films, and yes, they have their cringey aspects, but that still feels like ‘my’ Spider-Man. (Although I actually did enjoy Garfield’s charisma and chemistry with Emma Stone quite a bit). But Tom Holland completely won me over in this movie. I did Quiz Bowl and Science Olympiad in high school so a lot of the drama around their Decathalon hit pretty close to home :)
I love Keaton in this one too, and totally agreed with @12 on his character (and him being yet another casualty of Stark).
I tend to be pretty genre savvy so movies of this type typically don’t surprise me much. But when Tooms answered the door, I absolutely did not see that coming and it was a great moment that satisfyingly tied both parts of the movie together.
I really like that it’s a ‘low level’ neighborhood type movie, as well. I find that I like the side story MCU movies the best.
@18/Lisamarie: I’ve said before in this space that I love it when these movies make a small change that completely wrong-foots the long-time fans’ assumptions, and Toomes being Liz’s father is probably the best example. It’s not just establishing Toomes as the parent of one of Peter’s classmates, it’s because fans know that Liz Allen is sister to the Molten Man, and eventual wife to Harry Osborn and the Goblin involvement that entails, so having her be connected to the Vulture is completely unexpected. I really appreciated that.
I love the spiderman homecoming and far from home, I love the characters peter, ned, liz, betty, cindy moon, flash Thompson even though everyone thinks the actor who plays,he not the real flash Thompson, but stan Lee says he will be great on the film, hopefully he will become agent venom and trained with shield.
Michelle Jones aka mj, she not the real mj, why because she looks like glory grant from the comic called spidey school out.
I love ned leed, he the bestest friend of peter and spiderman, he always There and help him his crime fighter, liz Toomes is the daughter of vulture is awesome. But can she become a hero like Peter, liz toomes will become firestar, a mutant hero, next dove cameron will play as gwen stacy, Peter greatest love interest, best friend, and girlfriend. Cindy moon is one of peter classmate, she will become silk, and Peter will help her and trained her, soon they will attract to each other, these two are made for each other.
Harry osborn: Peter parker second best friend and later arch enemies.
Hopefully in the MCU FILMS will be spiderman in young avengers.
1. Peter parker aka spiderman
2. Harley keener aka iron lad
3. Shuri aka black panther
4. Cassie lang aka Stringer
5. Kate bishop aka hankeye
6. Sam Alexander aka nova
7. Cindy moon aka silk
8. Flash Thompson aka agent venom
9. Liz toomes aka firestar
10. Gwen stacy aka ghost spider
That will awesome young avengers movie ever. And Peter will train Morgan stark to keep Tony legacy alive. Peter must become greater than ever, he will train with shield, help to improve his fight skills, and learn martial art, and have better gears and suits.
Maybe in future MCU FILMS we will have Teresa parker, Peter long lost sister.
@12, 7, 9, etc.
In the Civil War review Keith mentioned “As with the previous Avengers movie, one of the villains here is Stark’s ego.”, and I think this is the case here. I don’t ascribe callousness- Tony did what he did and how he did it with Damage Control in his usual “feel anxious, ‘make a fix my problems button’, mash my new ‘fix my problems’ button, sleep at night (don’t sleep at night), anxiously move on” style.
@21: I would agree with you, and also add this: I think he does Peter the same disservice as he did Toomes by taking the info that Peter gave him about the energy weapons and pushing Peter to the side. I think that if Stark had included Peter, even just a bit, in what was going on, Peter wouldn’t have needed to go behind his back.
And I 100% side with Peter in this situation. He’s following his heroic instincts. As he said in Civil War: “When you can do the things that I can, but you don’t, and then the bad things happen, they happen because of you.” And he told this to Stark himself, no less. He should have known Peter wouldn’t have left this alone, and he shouldn’t have let him do it alone.
This movie made me SO ANGRY at Tony Stark. What he does to Peter Parker is one of the worst things he’s ever done.
First of all, he recruited a young teenager, a kid, to go fight in a battle that didn’t have anything to do with him.
Afterward he dropped him off and basically abandoned him.
He let him think he was still a part of the team and any day now would get to go on another mission.
He did not acknowledge any of Peter’s attempts to warn him about the ferry deal. If Peter had gotten a message saying that Tony would take care of the ferry deal, he would never have tried to handle the whole thing himself!
And then punished Peter for trying to do the right thing when he had no reason to believe anyone else was going to try to do anything.
And then continued to ignore Peter’s warnings, so that he felt he had no choice but to risk his life AGAIN to do the right thing.
And then gives him back the suit with no guidance or oversight. Which almost turns disastrous in “Far From Home”. (Not getting into the inheritance here.)
Every bad thing that happened in this movie is Tony Stark’s fault.
Great essay, KRAD. IMO Tom Holland’s portrayal of Spider-man is the best, beating out Hammond, Maguire and Garfield by miles. Hammond, Maguire and Garfield seemed too old to play the character as a high schooler.
@24/ Oops, the last sentence should read: Hammond, Maguire and Garfield seemed too old to play the character as a high schooler or college student.
Paladin: to be fair, Hammond was playing him as a graduate student. And Maguire honestly still looks like he’s twelve….. :laughs:
BrendaA: Yeah, I maintain what I said in my Age of Ultron review, and which applies to Civil War and this movie, to wit, one of the biggest villains in the MCU is Tony Stark’s ego.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I didn’t actually mention them in the review over much, but the Captain America PSAs that Midtown was required by New York State to show were hilarious, as were the responses (especially the gym teacher’s). Chris Evans delivered them beautifully. And trust me, as a survivor of the New York State Regents and their insane requirements (which have gotten more insane since I graduated high school 33 years ago), that they were made and are required in all schools in NY is so very typical……
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Do NOT remind me of that… Regents. God I hate those. The only purpose for that is to make your life miserable. Spoken like a new yorker brother *pumps fist*
And of course the wonderful Captain America PSA at the end of the credits:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47n6v4e3QJE
One great thing about Homecoming was that unlike the first Maguire and Garfield films, we didn’t have to spend the first third of the movie waiting for Uncle Ben to die.
Still weird thinking of Aunt May as hot.
I believe Stan Lee said in retrospect that it was a misjudgement in the comics to graduate Peter Parker from high school, and after a relatively short time. Actually, “Marvel Action Spider-Man” comic is running now with Peter, Miles, and Gwen Stacy attending school together and all having spider-powers: even as comics go, this is aimed at younger readers – the “real” Spider-Gwen is from parallel universe Earth-65 of course, and Miles is from Earth-1610 (and wait till you see the really big numbers), but Miles apparently got retconned in-universe to Earth-616 (The Neighbour of the Beast). None of which is the Cinematic Universe.
I loved this movie. I always liked Peter better when he was in high school (as he was when I first encountered him back in the 1960s). All the actors nailed their roles, especially Holland and Keaton. The Vulture is kind of a goofy character, but this movie made him plausible, and even a bit scary. Bringing the character into the larger Marvel universe offered all sorts of storytelling possibilities (some of which they fleshed out in the sequel). In my humble opinion, they nailed it; a fun flick from beginning to end.
@29, I believe the MCU is Earth-199999, speaking of bigger numbers.
@31/Captain Mike: Those multiverse designations on the Marvel Wiki aren’t canonical. There have been a couple of references in the MCU (a chart by Dr. Selvig in The Dark World, IIRC, and a mention by Beck in Far from Home, though the latter is of course questionable) to its reality being Earth-616. Similarly, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse labels the universe of “Peter B. Parker” as Earth-616, though he’s clearly not the Peter of the comics, more like a variant of the Tobey Maguire Spidey.
After all, it’s not like these are real alternate universes, just different interpretations of a bunch of imaginary characters and ideas. So any one of them can claim to be Earth-616 if it wants, just as an in-joke/Easter egg.
@12 Yes. Tony Stark is the primary antagonist of the MCU.
Speaking of Spider-Man as a non-lethal superhero, Peter could have easily killed Toomes in the car, even with a gun pointed at him. Toomes probably thought he was just another powered-armour superhero like Iron Man and didn’t understand how dangerous Peter is even out of his costume. Of course Spider-Man would never do that.
I’m in something of a minority of those who didn’t like the film much… I had some doubts about the film, largely because I was getting reboot fatigue with the Spider-Man film franchise, but ultimately decided to give it a try…Admittedly, must of my reaction was based on how I haven’t followed or read any comics in a while, and was caught offguard by the updated elements I wasn’t familiar with…Ultimately my overall dislike, or more accurately inability to really get into it was related to how I could identify more with the Classic/Trasitional Spider-Man than I could with a Millenial Spidey…To each their own..
If this has already been mentioned then I apologise but the casting of Jennifer Connelly as Peter’s AI is an easter egg. Connelly is married to Paul Bettany who voiced Jarvis, Tony’s original AI before being turned into the Vision.
I love this movie, and it’s sequel.
When viewing the MCU as its own, distinct property, it makes perfect sense to have Tony Stark in this role as pivot point for the entire MCU, including as Spider-man’s mentor/sponsor.
And yes, Tony Stark is an absolutely horrid mentor, which is half the fun.
Good film. Turning point for the MCU with making the villains more sympathetic. The vulture going villainous due to the financial callousness of shield was a nice touch.
I think you guys are being a little too hard on Shield/Tony/Damage Control and easy on the Vulture. The Vulture and his gang took to criminal behavior a little too quickly for me not to think that they were the wrong people to be cleaning that alien technology up in the first place.
John@39: Too easy on the Vulture? Maybe. He did give in quick, but that could be for the sake of narrative convenience. Too hard on Tony Stark? Not possible. As Raymond Chandler had an honest cop say to an honest private eye:
John: Oh, Toomes is still definitely a total piece of shit. He killed Brice in cold blood, and even though it was an accident, he wasn’t exactly torn up about it. And he threatened the life of a 15-year-old kid and his family, never mind that the kid has super-powers. He’s definitely a bad guy.
But that doesn’t let Stark off the hook, either.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
krad@41: Years into being a criminal, Toombs accidentally killed a guy who was threatening to betray him and everyone who worked for him. I don’t blame him for not being torn up about it. It’s not like he started that fight. Threatening Peter’s family is indeed shitty; threatening Peter isn’t quite the same thing. But he doesn’t get around to this until he’s at the “last big score” moment. It’s a very short-term threat from a very desperate guy. A bad guy, agreed; but not that bad a guy.
One thing that kept going through my mind after a rewatch was: why didn’t Toomes sue the City for breach of contract? Turns out, I’m not the only one to have thought this; Josh Gilliland of The Legal Geeks agrees:
http://thelegalgeeks.com/2017/08/08/the-vulture-should-have-sued-for-breach-of-contract/
CNash: my guess is that Toomes’s contact with the city came with a kill fee in case of cancellation, but that fee only covered the cost of the extra trucks and the new hires, but not beyond that.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@43,44:
Two thoughts. He may have tried to sue the city in the intervening 8 years. We don’t know. But I doubt it, since he decided to keep the stuff they’d scavenged that very first day. Once he made that decision, drawing attention to himself through a lawsuit was a non-starter.
But let’s say he didn’t steal the tech that first day. As the article linked to covers, New York could claim that contract was unenforceable due to the Feds claiming jurisdiction. Undoubtedly, something like a FISA court ruled that the mess was a National Security issue, so this is extremely likely. And the only thing they would owe Toomes for, as the article states, is a single day’s work. Toomes stated he bought a bunch of equipment for a job he would have expected to pay him at least 100 times the amount of that single day. The City of New York would not be on the hook for this, only for that single day. He would have had to take out a serious loan to buy the equipment. He was now on the hook for it.
Receiving damages from the City of New York is in no way a slam dunk, and the City would fight it hard. Toomes, already up a creek because of the loan he took to buy the heavy equipment, would have had to come up with the money to pay lawyers to fight both the City of New York and likely the Federal Government, possibly even Stark Industries; he wouldn’t have had the resources to do so at that time.
But again — once he took the Chitauri tech from the work site on that first day, even if he had HAD the resources to sue the City of New York for breach of contract, there is no way he would have brought the lawsuit and risked the attention to the NATIONAL SECURITY crime he just committed.
He was pissed, and in the heat of the moment, he made a decision that left him with no other options moving forward. It’s a completely reasonable and consistent decision for how the character is portrayed moving forward.
Fun fact: the Shocker’s gauntlet originally belonged to Crossbones and he was seen using it in Civil War.
https://www.cinemablend.com/news/1642830/a-key-way-spider-mans-new-villains-are-connected-to-past-marvel-movies
I still prefer the first two Raimi movies, and Into The Spider-Verse above this, but this very much feels like the kind of Spider-Man I grew up within the 1980s, where he may be a superhero, but crap keeps happening. Their riff on the Spider-Man lifts the wreckage off himself” has a real emotional kick to it as it really drives home what a scared kid afraid of dying alone this version of Spider-Man still is.
I would happily watch a 2-hour movie of just Spidey hanging out with the neighbourhood. Sadly the sequel went in the exact opposite direction…
Also introduced in this film are Jennifer Connolly as Karen, the A.I. in the Spider-suit,
No mention that Connolly is married to Paul Bettany, who began his MCU career as the AI in Tony’s house, and then suit?