*Seriously. They did not call in a murderers row to write those movies.
It's been a decade of false starts for Sony with the Spider-Man franchise. We last saw the webbed crusader in Spider-Man 3, which was a massive hit but a creative disaster that left no one involved wanting to come back for a part 4. Sony hasn't been doing great with their superhero properties lately. After the Ghost Rider sequel crashed and burned in 2012, they've stayed out of the Marvel business entirely. Finally, after too long of a wait, they've teamed up with Marvel Studios (i.e. Disney) to bring Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe* with the very enjoyable Spider-Man: Homecoming.
*Technically, he did show up in Civil War, but this is his first stand-alone movie.
The two words I heard a lot leading up to this movie were "ground level" to explain the approach of the film. Director Jon Watts and company followed through with that. The Avengers are saving the world. Peter Parker is just a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. I guess Sony learned their lesson with the last Spider-Man movie - 2007's Spider-Man 3 - that it's best to not get too big. There's no need to outline the next 3 sequels down the line. The worst mistake they could've made with this would've been to start the first movie in the reboot with something big like, say, the Lizard trying to poison all of New York City. That would be too much too quick.
Homecoming employs a similar strategy to how BvS: Dawn of Justice introduced Batman: it assumes we all know the story already. Peter was bitten by a radioactive spider and gets his powers before the movie begins. He lives with his Aunt May (Marissa Tomei). His uncle (I assume his name was Ben) isn't around any more. You can fill in whatever blanks you need. All Homecoming is concerned with is that Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is still in high school. The film begins with a delightful explanation of Spider-Man's involvement in Civil War and the nature of his relationship with Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Happy (Jon Favreau). Beyond that one special mission, he's an on-call Avenger and hasn't been called on since. Most of this film is Peter being bored and clumsily getting used to his powers. He is a nerd at school. He has a best friend, Ned (Jacob Batalon) and a girl he likes, Liz (Laura Harrier). There's a bully who isn't actually threatening (Tony Revolori) and - hey - Zendaya's around for some reason. Eventually, Peter stumbles onto an underground weapons manufacturer (Michael Keaton) who is using dangerous alien technology. It's a fairly contained story and it works along the margins of the MCU nicely.
The Marvel formula is pretty simple and Homecoming effectively sticks to it. There's a few key actions sequences and enough plot to keep things moving forward. Otherwise, it's a funny movie. Everyone in the movie knows how to get a laugh.Hannibal Buress and Martin Starr are teachers at Peter's school. Donald Glover shows up a couple times. Michael Keaton's henchmen are familiar faces from other comedies who you probably couldn't name but might might recognize. Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Favreau know how to bust into a room, get a laugh, and leave. Even Zendaya gets some zingers. Tom Holland really should be more annoying than he is. He's playing an overeager and needy teenager which should spell disaster. He makes it work though. He knows exactly when to pull back before getting annoying and can switch into hero mode comfortably. I'm still partial to Tobey Maguire, but that could change with a sequel or two.
Another thing I appreciated [that's only a spoiler if you haven't seen any of the trailers] is that Peter's friend Ned knows about Peter's identity pretty early. In the Rami movies, Peter had to carry this burden on his own too much. Between Ned as a sounding board and Tony Stark's supervision, Peter has the kind of support system that keeps the movie light and fun.
Homecoming isn't perfect. It has the same issues that you could pick at in all of the Marvel movies. All of it is silly. There's at least one big plot coincidence that had my One Big Leap-senses tingling. Spider-Man causes millions of dollars of property damage throughout the movie that appear to be consequence-free. Frankly, I just don't give a damn about any of that. Quit trying to kill my buzz.
I saw Spider-Man: Homecoming as part of a back-to-back with The Big Sick. It's going to be hard to do better than that any time soon. This was exactly the Spider-Man film I was hoping for after waiting a decade for the character to return to the screen in his own film. At the end of the day, regardless of the actor, Spider-Man is the most popular Marvel hero among general audiences and this was a great reminder why.
OK, we can go back to acknowledging the Andrew Garfield/Emma Stone movies...I didn't like them. I enjoyed writing this reaction a lot more by excluding those movies. They were better than Fantastic Four. We'll always have the crane scene. RIP.
Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend
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