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racefortheironthrone · 7 years

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Thoughts on Spiderman: Homecoming

I’ll put my short, non-spoiler version above the cut for people who haven’t seen it yet: it’s good. It’s really good, head and shoulders above the Amazing duology and it holds its own against the Raimi films more than you would think.

Specifically, it has two major strengths: first, as many people have noted, Tom Holland’s Spiderman feels like a real teenager way more than either Andrew Garfield or Tobey Macguire did - in part because the movie makes the most of out its science high school setting by giving Holland a secondary cast of other teens to bounce off of, and by making the conflict between his superhero life and his regular life being about high school things generally (making Lego Death Stars, Academic Decathalon meets, detention) instead of just about his romantic relationships.

Second, as other people have noted, Spiderman: Homecoming feels way more New York (more of a neighborhood Spiderman, you could say) than previous Spiderman movies. The Amazing movies’ idea of New York was some abstracted Times Square theme park, and with the best will in the world, even the Raimi films portrayed an extremely white New York that didn’t go beyond Midtown canyons and various landmarks. But Homecoming felt like Queens, from the multicultural student body at Midtown Science to Spiderman and the Prowler (you were great, Donald Glover!) arguing over which bodegas have the best sandwiches, to the jokes about how the outer boroughs aren’t well-stocked with tall buildings to web-swing off of, to Spiderman’s interactions with neighborhood locals who get pissed when would-be superheroes web their hands to their cars or repay subway directions with churros.

Protagonist

So let’s start with Tom Holland. For all that people complain about the Marvel “machine,” one of the things the machine does very well is make sure that their writers and directors nail the main characters, even if that’s at the expense of the plot, because you have to sell the audience on the character to get the audience to care, and because superhero plots are generally pretty secondary anyway. And Homecoming does a really good job of building on the excellent work that Civil War did. To quote myself:

“I buy Tom Holland more than I ever bought Andrew Garfield or Tobey Maguire - Tobey was always a bit too soft and saccharine for me to buy that he was the irreverent snarker behind the mask, whereas Andrew’s performance was way too much of an over-reaction to the backlash against Spiderman III, and came off as way too cool.

That’s the thing about Spiderman/Peter Parker that makes him tricky: he’s a nerd and a bit nebbishy (although he kind of ages out of that a little - there had to be something there that Mary Jane Watson liked), but once he puts the mask on, he gains the confidence to express himself, even if that is as a smart-alecky motor-mouth. There’s a side of Peter Parker that has an ego, a yearning to show the world that he’s not Puny Parker any more - after all, the first thing he did when he got super-powers was to get in front of TV cameras - that makes him prank J. Jonah Jameson to get back at him, or not just fight the Kingpin but relentlessly crack fat jokes at him.

As I’ve said above, it’s really easy to grab one part of that personality and not the other. And one of the things I really like about Tom Holland’s Spiderman is that I feel like you have both...”

So how did Homecoming build on this? First, the nerd side of Peter Parker was nicely contextualized by his high school (which because it’s an elite magnet school is full of nerds) - he’s extremely high-scoring (he’s bullied by Flash because Peter’s constantly showing him up in class, and he’s the lynchpin of the Decathalon team until MJ steps up in his absence) but you get the sense that he feels like he’s maybe too smart for school so he sometimes gets himself in detention and probably hurts his GPA a bit by not doing homework in favor of his own projects; he’s a joiner (Decathalon, band, etc.) because he’s not very socially confident (hence his small friend circle of Ned and MJ, hence his mini-freakouts about Liz’s party and the eponymous dance) BUT he’s also someone who over-extends himself and then quits (holy crap did that one hit close to home), so he’s seen as a bit of a flake.

Second, that nerd side nicely parallels his super-hero side, with the wonderful euphemism of the “Stark internship” (god, no wonder Flash is jealous). Peter is desperate for recognition, to get called up to the big leagues, to the point where he’s constantly biting off more than he can chew (literally taking the training wheels off too early) to prove himself to “Mr. Stark” and then tries desperately to hold everything together or explain his screwups away when it blows up in his face. (Notably, all of the major action setpieces in the movie except the last one involve situations where Peter’s over-enthusiasm has actually created a bigger problem: foiling the bank robbery causes the bodega fire, his investigation of the alien power source causes the damage to the Washington Monument, his web-slinging damages the fission gun that damages the ferry, etc.) At the same time, he’s trying to live up to the image of what he thinks a super-hero ought to be, whether that’s in posing for commuters and doing backflips for hot dog vendors or making quips at bad guys (notably, his smart-alecking always comes off as a mixture of nervous posing and too much energy rather than coming off as mean).

But most importantly, at root Spiderman is a genuinely selfless hero - his first thought is to save the bodega owner and the bodega cat, he gives the ferry rescue everything he’s got even if he comes up short as 98% sucessful, he tells criminals to shoot at him rather than at anyone else, and in the film’s master-stroke, he goes all-out to save Adrian Toombs who’s repeatedly tried to kill him the moment he realizes that his wing-suit has gone unstable, because Spiderman doesn’t want to “instant death” anyone. And he’s utterly determined, as we see in the whole third act where he goes right after Toombs despite getting his ass kicked by the Shocker, then pulls himself out from the rubble Toombs buried him under, then gets himself onto the Quinjet then saves Coney Island from the crashing Quinjet, and on and on....

Antagonist

So...Michael Keaton. While not given a ton of time, Keaton does a great job reframing Adrian Toombs as the voice of blue collar upper-middle-class resentment, justifying theft and murder with his hatred of Tony Stark and the 1% on the one hand and the need to provide for his family on the other, and selling you on how this guy gives more and more reign to his dark side while trying to hang on to his hypocritical moral code. Also, it was an inspired idea to build on the idea of the Vulture being a scavenger by making him both a salvage operator and someone who later makes his money by stealing the aftermath of the Avengers’ battles and turns them into weapons. (BTW, even though the wings were re-done as military high-tech, they still had some personality - the way they draped down feather-like when he was resting on the billboard, the way he used them to pick up Peter and maybe use them as blades.)

Critically, the movie didn’t kill him off. See, Marvel’s villain problem isn’t always about how generic they are (although that was a problem for Malekith and Ronan the Accuser) but that they constantly kill off their villains which means that there’s no opportunity to build up a relationship between hero and villain - Robert Redford’s HYDRA true believer or Ultron would be great recurring villains, except they’re dead now. If Keaton ever wants to reprise his role, it would only take a jailbreak to put him back in the mix gunning for revenge according to his own code.

Also, the movie did a good job seeding future villains. We see the mantle (or rather the gage) of the Shocker get passed on in the film, the Tinkerer seems to get away in the end so is on hand for future movies, we get a great setup for why the Scorpion would go after Spiderman, and we even meet the Prowler who’d make for a great frenemy villain.

Secondary Cast

The kids are more than all right, they’re damn fantastic. Ned was a great audience stand-in as well as a voice of reason, was great as “the chair,” and even got to use the webshooters, Liz Allen nicely avoided a lot of “superhero girlfriend” pitfalls, Flash was a nice alternative to the over-used jock archetype, and Zendaya was a genuinely oddball presence who makes for a very different MJ than we’ve ever seen before (my friend @elanabrooklyn thinks that she’s basically comics Jessica Jones in all but name, which I would be ok with).

Marissa Tomei as Aunt May could have used more screen-time, but what there was, was great, from the ongoing gag that she’s completely oblivious to the fact that pretty much all the men in the service sector she meets are in lorb with her, to her very real mix of showing concern and trying to encourage while giving a teenager room, to her final F-bomb - which thankfully cut short the “Aunt May can’t know” storyline.

RDJ as Tony Stark actually didn’t over-shadow the film as much as people had worried - mostly, he’s there being simultaneously neglectful (answering some text messages, providing some encouragement outside of post-crisis situations, and actually explaining why you’re doing what you’re doing would be a good idea, Tony) and over-bearing (tracking devices and surveillance cameras are not a substitute for communicating, Tony), which is sort of how you’d expect him to handle being a mentor/surrogate father on his first go-round.

Plot

Despite how confident people were about what was going to happen in the movie from the trailers, the film actually did a great job throwing the unexpected at you, whether it’s the suburban lawn-chase sequence that wasn’t in the trailers, or the FBI showing up on the ferry, or the fact that Peter and Ned were directly responsible for the Washington Monument crisis, or why the Vulture and Spiderman were on a plane.

More importantly, the high school plot really really worked and intersected nicely with the superhero plot - Peter’s indecision about using his Spiderman persona to boost his and Ned’s social standing leading into the suburban lawn-chase, the Academic Decathalon giving the Washington Monument rescue real stakes, and best of all, the moment where Adrian Toombs opens the door for his daughter’s date and the commonplace dad/boyfriend tension goes into overdrive.

#marvel #marvel meta #spiderman #spiderman homecoming

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