Finally! Our Prayers have been answered. For the last three Spider-Man films, I was left completely ambivalent toward whether I liked them. Spider-Man 3 was so bad that it caused Sony to reboot the franchise. Then the reboot was underwhelming, but I was unsure of whether I liked it or disliked it. Same went for the sequel “The Amazing Spider-Man 2”, which had great action sequences and a pretty cool villain, but was bogged down by forced subplots with nonsensical payoffs. I feel like I wanted to like it a lot more than I did and maybe tricked myself into thinking it was a lot better than it was. But I am elated to tell you that I have finally seen a Spider-Man film that I love with absolutely no sense of doubt or shame. This is the Spider-Man film the world needed. This is what dedicated Spider-Man fans such as myself have been waiting for ever since Spider-Man 2. A great movie that we can all unite behind, rather than a mediocre movie that no one can agree on whether it’s good or bad. July 7th was a great day to be a Spider-Man fan.
Let’s start with lead actor Tom Holland, who is without question my favorite portrayal of Peter Parker/Spider-Man to date. I’ve seen him say in interviews how much he loved Spider-Man and how he grew up watching the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films. His love for the character comes through in hi performance and it is beautiful to watch. He does a great job getting me emotionally invested too. Whenever Peter Parker was sad, I was sad, when Peter was happy, I was happy with him. Then there was Michael Keaton as The Vulture, a villain who I honestly had no desire to see on the big screen ever until this movie. But not only was The Vulture awesome in this movie, he was scary. Michael Keaton is no stranger to playing unhinged, dangerous bad guys, and he makes it work in this movie and helps make The Vulture feel like a legitimate threat. My only complaint was he felt a little too held back. I wish the director would have just cut him loose and let Michael Keaton be this loose cannon bad guy who doesn’t give a crap. Instead they tried to make him this good guy doing bad things character. Which made sense for the overall plot, but there were some moments where I felt like they made him do bad things and he just reneged on it immediately after. I wish they would have let him be an unapologetic bad guy, but like I said as the movie progresses you come to understand why they went that direction.
The action scenes are great too. My favorite scene is either the one on the boat or the end fight. I won’t spoil anything for you here this is a spoiler free review. However, I will say that Tony Stark is used sparingly in this movie. He’s the father figure for Peter Parker and that dynamic works well. It plays well into what the overall point of the movie is and that’s a coming of age story for the hero we all know as Spider-Man. Spidey essentially has to earn his stripes. Which is probably a surprise to no one that has seen the trailer but it’s executed well. This is also a very streamline movie with very little holding it back in the way of subplots or unnecessary side characters. This is a simple movie that is easy to follow. Essentially showing that you don’t need all these bells and whistles to make a great movie, a great movie will stand up on its own. And that’s the thing with this movie, Marvel came in and showed Sony how it’s done. I could gush forever about this movie but I want to keep it vague because I think you should go into this movie knowing very little and just be excited to see a great movie. Steer clear of the trailers but go see this movie. This film has my highest of recommendations.
That is my review of Spider-Man Homecoming. I don’t really have a rating system for movies because I don’t review movies very often. But if you couldn’t tell, I loved this movie. If you’ve seen Spider-Man: Homecoming, let me know what you thought of it, and I’ll see you next week.
