Spider-man: Homecoming (2017): based on characters and situations created by Steve Ditko, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, and Don Heck; written by Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley, Erik Sommers, Chris McKenna, Christopher Ford, and Jon Watts; starring Tom Holland (Peter Parker/ Spider-man), Michael Keaton (Adrian Toomes/ Vulture), Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark/ Iron Man), Marisa Tomei (May Parker), Jon Favreau (Happy Hogan), Zendaya (Michelle), Jacob Batalon (Ned), Laura Harrier (Liz), and Chris Evans (Captain America):
Spider-man: Homecoming because Spider-man: Prom lacked the metaphoric level of Spider-man's 'homecoming' to the Marvel Cinematic Universe after five movies in his own playground at Sony.
The movie is surprisingly funny and light on its feet. Spider-man: Homecoming gets Peter Parker's urgent need to save people just right. It also does the right thing by having Peter be an underclassman in high school.
Tying Spider-man so thoroughly to Tony Stark/Avengers is a bit of a bummer, though. We're told repeatedly by assorted characters that Peter is "the smartest kid" they know. But the elements that made this true in the comics only remain in Peter's creation of his web-slinging fluid and web-shooters. And Tony Stark even improves on them. Peter doesn't have to create the finished version of the iconic costume, the Spider-Beacon, the Spider-tracer.... oh, well. The whole thing almost acts as metacommentary on Spider-man now being part of a vast, shared, corporate movie universe.
Tom Holland is good, as are most of the actors. As Spidey's newly minted best pal Ned, Jacob Batalon steals the show on several occasions while also demonstrating why maybe superheroes need to preserve their secret identities. He's definitely a plus.
Peter Parker isn't the socially ostracized misfit of the comics, though, and that was always part of the point of Peter's high-school experiences: Spider-man is willing to help people who treat him badly. Here, socially awkward Peter has trouble asking a Senior girl to go to the Prom... sorry, Homecoming... but it turns out she has a huge crush on him! The angst and awkwardness of Peter Parker has been mostly muffled. It seems like Marvel missed a chance to use Spider-man to address issues of bullying et al. Spider-man's miserable high-school existence has been defanged.
So too his reciprocal, self-sacrificing pas de deux with Aunt May, who is now Marisa Tomei, her hotness much commented upon, her elderly comic-book nature replaced by a sort of hippie Earth Mother. I'm not sure Aunt May should turn out to be Stacy's Mom!
Still, it's a genial movie. Michael Keaton's Vulture is surprisingly low-key -- he's supposed to be a working-class joe who moved into high-tech after being screwed over on a contract he had to clean up some alien debris lying around after the Avengers' battle with the Chitauri invasion of New York that occurred at the end of Avengers (2012). As motivations go, it dovetails with the movie's treatment of Spider-man as a working-class hero who needs to give up his desire to join the Avengers full-time and save "the little people." Oh, those little people. Recommended.
The Amazing Spider-man: based on the comic-book character created by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee; written by James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent, and Steve Kloves; directed by Marc Webb; starring Andrew Garfield (Spider-man/Peter Parker), Emma Stone (Gwen Stacy), Rhys Ifans (Curt Connors/The Lizard), Denis Leary (Captain Stacy), Martin Sheen (Uncle Ben), and Sally Field (Aunt May) (2012): The Spider-man reboot gets a number of things more right than the first three Sam-Raimi-directed, Tobey-Maquire-starring features.
Peter Parker is now a young super-genius, just as he was in the original comic books, and his cleverness will aid him in his adventures. As comic-book-writer/artist John Byrne would say, only Peter Parker could have been Spider-man. It especially helps that, as in the comic book, he has to build his own web-shooters: they don't just conveniently pop out of his wrists as they did in the Raimi movies, though there they really should have popped out of his bum if we were to be even vaguely realistic about this whole human-spider schlemozzle.
Andrew Garfield is appropriately slighter than Maguire, while Emma Stone makes an appropriately cute Gwen Stacy, moved from her place much later in Peter Parker's life in the comic books to the start of his career. Betty Brant really gets no respect in these movies. This Gwen Stacy is also something of a science prodigy, which means she gets more to do than just scream and offer romantic support to the web-spinner.
The performances are all really quite solid, with Rhys Ifans as the scientist who will become the villainous Lizard and Denis Leary as Gwen's Police Captain father. A complicated back-story for Peter's family looks to be the thread that goes through all these new movies. I like my superheroes with much simpler, original origins; unfortunately, Hollywood Screenwriting 101 has taught us that everyone and everything has to be connected, that there are no coincidences, and that every superhero must ultimately be motivated by revenge rather than altruism.
They do a nice job here of setting up Peter's guilt over his Uncle Ben's death (the whole wrestling story has been discarded, which may be a good idea) and the existence of his capacity for heroism before he gains his powers. Still, his battle with the Lizard is ultimately a personal one because, you know, Motivation 101 and all that crappy studio crappy crap.
The visual effects are mostly serviceable, though nothing stands out as spectacular or even amazing. And I'd really have kept the comic-book Lizard's alligator-like head, complete with snout: here, Spider-man's either fighting the Scorpion or perhaps the Abomination from the second Hulk film. It's a strikingly unoriginal bit of character visualization, and frankly it looks way too blobby and way not enough scaly to be called The Lizard. And where is his giant white lab-coat and giant-lizard-sized purple pants????? Recommended.
