Movie Review: Spider-Man Homecoming

SPOILER ALERT

While every effort has been made to avoid spoilers in this post, anyone who has not seen Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) is hereby advised that this post may contain a few unavoidable spoilers.

I’ve always liked Spider-Man. I used to collect the comics quite diligently when I was younger and I thoroughly enjoyed the movies too. Nevertheless, when I heard they were rebooting the franchise for a second time with Spider-Man: Homecoming, I was a bit jaded. I was frankly getting fed up with new re-tellings of the same story over and over: Great power, great responsibility; don’t care about that; Uncle Ben dies; it’s all my fault; aaah! bad guy trying to kill the girl I fancy; accidentally kill bad guy; the end. It’s for this very reason that I did not go and see Spider-Man: Homecoming when it first came out. Even after I learned it wasn’t another origins story, I was still feeling all Spidered out.

Well, the loss was mine. I finally did see Homecoming at the end of 2018 when my wife got me the DVD and it was just the breath of fresh air I needed to make me love Spider-Man again. Without a shadow of a doubt, this is one of my favourite Spider-Man movies of them all. The main thing that sets this film apart from the other Spider-Man movies is how much fun it is. The others had their share of humour, sure, but the humour in this film felt more natural in this film and was a great relief after so many dark superhero movies. If I was being hyper critical, I would say that the humour sometimes overshadowed the actual story just a little bit, but not enough to turn it into a farce. I just remember a lot more of the funny bits than I do about the actual plot if truth be told.

In many respects, this film is more like an American high school film than a typical superhero film. There is none of the mysticism or grittiness about it that’s become so popular in recent years, nor is Parker consumed with anxious thoughts about power and justice. No, in this movie Peter Parker character is portrayed very much as real teenager, full of enthusiasm about being a superhero, eager to be accepted by the more mature Avengers, while still trying to navigate the complicated high school life of parties, studies, friends and the girl he fancies. Incidentally, not being an American myself, I often find American high school movies a bit hard to relate to (high school in the UK is quite a different kettle of fish from the USA) but I didn’t find that to be the case here. The emphasise lies more heavily on Peter Parker as a character, rather than on the setting and anyone who has ever been a teenager will find it easy to sympathise with this enthusiastic and impatient young man.

The Vulture character is one of my favourite things about this movie. Previous Spider-Man villains have all lacked depth and especially relatability. Vulture is different. This is a man who is concerned for his family (he gave me a few good ideas for how to handle my daughter’s future boyfriends!) and trying to make a better life for himself and his family by doing a bit of bank robbing with the help of some alien technology he managed to procure. The final battle between he and Spider-Man was a bit of a disappointment, lacking the sense of tension that we’ve seen in previous movies (I mean heck, he never even got to choose between saving his girlfriend or saving a bus load of school kids!) but not to such an extent I didn’t enjoy it. It perhaps just felt a little like the story was ultimately finished already, and now Peter just had to have a fight with Vulture just to dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s so to speak.

All in all, a great film that has reinvigorated my love for Spider-Man. While it is part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it also works perfectly well as a stand-alone film for those of you who can’t be bothered watching all the Avengers films and is great fun to watch with a box of popcorn. I commend it to your enjoyment.

My rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

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Sharleen Nelson, Author of The Time Tourists [2]