Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

Directed by Jon Watts (Clown, Cop Car)

Written by Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley, Jon Watts, Christopher Ford, Chris McKenna, & Erik Sommers (we’ll come back to all this)

Spider-Man: Homecoming is a movie that I want to like more than I actually like it when watching it. The real problem is that it’s got about three full movie plots going on (roughly one for each of its pairs of screenwriters), and there are some I like much more than others. When it’s working, it’s amazing, but it is definitely not always working. It’s strongest moments are when it’s breaking the mold set by the other films in the MCU. Every time it sinks back down to the tropes of all the rest of these, my heart sinks with it. The story thankfully skips any origin nonsense (we had, after all, seen that origin twice in the past 15 years or so) and jumps right in to Peter Parker (Tom Holland) fighting small-scale crime in his native Queens and dreaming of a spot on the Avengers. His superhero work is being overseen by Tony Stark and his right-hand man Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau), but he is definitely being kept on the sidelines. As he tries to prove himself a superhero worthy of independence and a place at the table, he also must contend with the standard Parker challenges of balancing his school and social life. He has a crush, Liz (Laura Harrier); a bully, Flash (Tony Revolori); a best friend, Ned (Jacob Batalon); and a weirdo companion, MJ (Zendaya). Basically all the ingredients you need for wonderful high school drama, which this show has in spades. In his attempts to legitimize himself, he runs afoul of a violent salvager and arms dealer named Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton), who has his eye on plundering some Stark technology. As the battle heats up, both of Spider-Man’s worlds come crashing together and he has to find a way to manage all of his great responsibilities.

Let’s get this out of the way first: when this movie is a John Hughes-esque teen drama, it is amazing. Like, I can’t believe this homage is so good, laugh-a-minute, shockingly smartly written amazing. All of the (actually pretty young) actors are perfectly cast, and they have immediate on-screen chemistry. Tom Holland is amazing (hehe) as Peter Parker, enthusiasm and joy one minute, regret and responsibility the next. The jokes at the expense of high school life are all wonderful (I particularly love the mascot always running somewhere with his head off), and the homage to Hughesian ’80s movies is never overdone. It’s fun, and funny. Really funny, and rarely in that mean, sarcastic way that most of these movies are funny. It has a genuine, warm sense of humor that loves its characters and the world they inhabit. There is, within this movie, a sweet, heartfelt ode to being young and surviving high school. If only there weren’t so many other movies fighting that one for dominance here. This movie has six screenwriters, and it really really shows. From what I can piece together, Goldstein and Daley were the first on the job, and wrote the basic story about the Vulture and Peter’s high school life intersecting in a dangerous way. It was intended to be a coming of age story focusing on the father-son dynamic between Tony Stark and Peter. Then, during filming, they added on both of the other pairs, who had different ideas of where the movie should go. Ford and the director added most of the high school drama stuff around the Academic Decathlon and the party, because they wanted it to reflect their childhood memories (they had grown up together and been friends forever). McKenna & Sommers, who were Marvel in-house writers, were actually rewriting scenes while they were filming the movie, and although I can’t find any confirmation of exactly what they were contributing, I would bet good money that it was the superheroics of it, the big dollar stuff. And all of this leads to a movie that’s rather schizophrenic in terms of its focus.

The worst result of this splintered writing team is that the fights in this movie are miserably boring. There’s no actual character investment in any of the moments, no stakes that we actually care about, and the entire thing is just bland CGI constructs bouncing off of each other, the absolute worst element of the Marvel movies. The only action scene that actually works is Peter saving his friends from the crashing elevator, and that’s because he’s saving people that we care about and pushing his own limits, not actually fighting anyone. I would have thought that Marvel would have learned by now that to make someone care about a big spectacle fight, you have to do one of two things: make the fight itself so interesting mechanically that you engage the audience, or give human stakes to the action so that the audience cares about the people. This movie absolutely fails to do either. It goes through the motions by rote: we have a Spider-Man who is almost torn apart holding some stuff together, we have a Spider-Man who is smashed under heavy stuff, we have a Spider-Man who does all the iconic Spider-Man images in just one movie! It’s all the Spider-Man you could ever want! But it’s all so hollow, so mechanical. The film has a more interesting and nuanced villain than most of the others, but does less with him than it might. I, like almost everyone who saw the movie, love the twist of whose dad the villain is, but then that’s it! There’s a twist, we get a single tense scene, and then it’s back to the miserable grind of CGI slugfest. There’s not even any really interesting dialogue in the final fight, other than a single short villain monologue that it turns out was just a distraction anyway. The movie is at least a half hour too long at 135 minutes, and most of what could be removed is belabored scenes of CGI figures doing stuff that we don’t really care about.

All of that sounds really grumpy, but I want to be clear that I love so much of what this movie does. I am incredibly excited for its sequel (which has reduced the writing staff by 66%, supposedly) because I enjoy this world and the characters that inhabit it. But the reason I care is because I’m invested in these kids and their stories, not because of the superheroics of it. I want to see if Peter and MJ will get together, or whatever creative new insults Flash comes up with for “Penis” Parker, not more CGI characters flying around and bumping into each other. In scoring this movie, I’m torn deciding how much credit to give its potential. There’s so much of it: an amazing cast with great chemistry, a convincing homage to Hughes-ian teen drama, an incredibly charismatic lead! But this movie is not the one that really fulfills all of that potential. I’m hoping that this year’s sequel will, but I can’t let that hope blind me to the weaknesses that hold this movie back from greatness. It’s still a good movie. No amount of studio-mandated garbage can kill the legitimate fun these young people are having, but it falls short of what it could have been.

Overall: (barely)

Stray Thoughts:

• The completely fanfare-less return of Pepper Potts in this movie for what basically amounts to a joke is the worst kind of world-building, piece-placing, retcon stuff in movies like this. Her striking absence in the last two RDJ outings is here reduced to setting up a conflict for a future film and including what should be a huge development for Stark’s character as a kind of footnote to a movie that isn’t even his. It is a shockingly bad decision on the part of the Marvel head honchos, but there wasn’t anywhere really to put that criticism in the review proper.
• This movie, like Iron Man 3, will be the victim of a huge bit of character rewrite. Just like they wanted Tony back in the suit for Avengers 2, they want Parker on big adventures for next year’s Avengers: Infinity War, so all his character development in the end of the movie is going to be undone. That’s not this movie’s fault at all, but it’s unfortunate.
• I don’t understand why a ‘regular guy’ salvage crew boss would build himself a flying death suit. It kinda clashes with the low profile he’s supposedly trying to keep.
• For that matter, I don’t see how a crew of blue-collar salvagers could become a techno-gang of arms dealers over the course of less than a decade, but now I’m being nitpicky.
• Donald Glover is both a great sport for agreeing to guest in this and also wonderful to watch on the big screen.
• Tom Holland really sells the ‘heavy responsibility’ elements of the character without once ever having to mention Uncle Ben by name, which I think is a great development.
• Taking Peter away from Manhattan and skyscrapers was a good idea, and leads to some solid physical comedy.
• If I never see a ‘Spider-Man being torn in half by his webs to save people’ montage again, it’ll be too soon. I’m not saying it’s not a powerful image, but you’re never going to beat the execution in the 2004 Raimi version, and it’s just played out at this point. Please stop.
• Post Credits scene 1: Interesting. I like when they leave villains alive in these things, and I like that they’re ambiguous as to why he doesn’t reveal the identity. Honor? Vengeance? Who knows?
• Post Credits scene 2: Hilarious. I am on record as loving Chris Evans cameos, and this one is no different. A lovely little meta joke.
• Stan Lee cameo: I was hoping for more from the first Spider-Man movie back under the MCU, honestly. It’s fine, and I’m glad he’s not just playing another pervert.