Spider-Man Homecoming

Alright I was a little late on seeing Spider-Man Homecoming. If still you haven’t seen it and want my opinion, here it is….

Go see Spider-Man Homecoming!

If you are a fan of Marvel movies you have gone already.

If you are a fan of Spider-Man, you have gone already

If you want a fun and lighter comic book hero to get behind, then go see Spider-Man Homecoming.

Quick plot run down…..

After Avengers #1 We get One Adrian Tomes, here a common working salvage/demo contractor, cleaning up New York city. Well until the Feds roll in and shut down his operation. Of course he is distraught, and also happens to still have some Chitauri tech in his dump trucks.

The we jump to a bit of video of the adventures of Peter Parker from Civil War post his meeting with Tony Stark and thru the battle at the airport.

Now the big adventures are over and Peter is returned home to live a normal life. However, that is not what Peter craves.

Peter has embraced Spider-Man more than ever and desperately wants the attention of Tony Stark and the Avengers. His normal day to day is nothing but a distraction as he tries to constantly prove himself a worthy hero.

Eventually he gets that chance as one Adrian Toomes and his band of cronies are making high tech weapons from the alien tech they squirreled. Now there is a giant flying robot birdman to battle and Peter sees this as his chance to impress Tony Stark and become an Avenger.

Well that and juggle a girl, school, friends and the typical comic book teenage life.

Alright why is this Spider-Man better than the previous films?

Well the major reason is that it isn’t  a gods damned origin story! Finally, a studio gets that NOBODY needs to see a spider bite and then Uncle Ben die. Again.

I mean really who doesn’t know how Spider-Man became Spider-Man? If they don’t know then they can easily look it up on their damned phone as they wait to see the movie. Nobody needs another Spider-man origin story ( or Batman  or Superman either ).

Second this is a very upbeat Spider-Man. There is not this heavy burden of responsibility and guilt over the origin story you made us all watch twice before. Here we just get a high school kid with super powers being a high school kid with super powers. He never gets mopey and emo over being a kid with super powers. Even when shit is going wrong he still has an air of positivity around him. Love that he seemed more believable as a high school student than the previous films. It is good that we finally get this in a Spider-Man.

When he loses his Stark suit we get the homemade Spider-Man and that is great. I mean what kid is going to be able to put together a sweet latex, gortex, Under Armor  leotard? None of them. Here we get the sweats , goggles and web shooters that one would expect a kid to be able to throw together, well maybe not the web shooters, but you get the point.

That being said the movie is for the majority, very light and colorful. It only gets physically dark and a bit hard to see near the end.

They kept Spider-Man a ground level hero. This is where he belongs. Sure his opponents had super high tech gear, but they were just regular dudes. I always enjoy the street level Spider-Man better than the fighting crazy super villains and space stuff Spider-Man. He is doing ground level super hero stuff better than the Netflix street level heroes. Maybe they should take notes from this movie?

We get a lot of Spider-Man in the mask. I was surprised by this as most actors don’t want the majority of their screen time with their face covered. Was surprised by this, but this may change in future films.

"You wann get nuts!? Come on! Lets get nuts!"

Michael Keaton was a good bad guy. When he was menacing, but not over the top evil. The sequence in his car with his daughter and Peter was just great stuff. A great role and would love to see him back as the Vulture again. Plus he took a C list Spider-Man villain and made him pretty damn good!

A cameo near the end really surprised me.

Hey look it’s the Tinkerer! Who would have thought he would ever appear in film?

Happy Hogan is back!

Donald Glover is good and a nod to possible Miles Morales too?

The action is fun. There is descent ground work laid for sequels. There are some descent comedy beats in here. It all fits the typical mold of every Marvel first film.

Now what was off about Spider-Man Homecoming?

Not a whole lot.  My issues were nitpicks at best.

I miss Flash Thompson as the jock vs. nerd thing. However, I get where that has been over played and they went with a sort of rich vs. poor mechanic instead. I thought this was the weakest point of the movie and Flash Thompson could have been left out entirely. Especially no in the super PC world we live in bullying is bad and being wealthy is also bad. So….having a guy do both is double times PC bad right? Couldn’t they just left the tired old Flash Thompson bit out of the movie?

The final showdown is a bit frenetic and too dark at times. Some of the fight detail were just blurs and that was disappointing.

That was really all that bugged me about the film. It is a pretty tight and light Marvel movie based on a character that is second only to Wolverine in my heart of hearts.

Pretty damn good Spider-Man film and better than the previous five.