SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING
(ACTION-COMEDY/SCI-FI)
★★★
Kevin Feige, the producer and mastermind behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) named the movies of John Hughes as a major influence on SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING, but John Hughes never made a movie featuring so many brown people. Diversity is a good thing folks, and in any case, HOMECOMING is a bit more of a Hughes-style high school teen soap opera within a superhero movie than ANT-MAN was any real sort of heist movie or THE WINTER SOLDIER was a political thriller. While many new installments of the MCU are now attempting to stand on their own, and the Guardians of the Galaxy movies have been particularly hailed for defying the formulas and television-style "interconnectedness" of the franchise, HOMECOMING couldn't be prouder of Spider-Man's new MCU credentials now that Marvel Studios and Sony, owner of Spider-Man's film rights since 1999 (about seven years before Marvel Studios began work on their first independently-produced feature film), managed to work out a co-production deal putting Spidey back under the creative control of Feige and the MCU. This film iteration of the character (the third since 2002, when Tobey Maguire first donned the suit) was introduced in CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR last year, as part of a team of superheroes led by Iron Man (aka Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey, Jr.) in a fight with Captain America and his allies. HOMECOMING begins with that standout airport action sequence from CIVIL WAR, shown from the perspective of Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Tom Holland) as he receives his souped-up new suit from Stark, has his first exciting encounter with the world-famous Avengers, and then is bummed to learn that he's going right back to his semi-ordinary high school life in Queens rather than pursuing any further adventures with the Avengers anytime soon.
While Stark tries to keep him in check via the occasional visit and the close eye of his liaison/driver/bodyguard Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau), Peter is intent on proving his abilities and worth as a superhero, and the opportunity presents itself in the form of Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton), an arms dealer trafficking ultra-powerful weaponry salvaged from the Avengers' battles and wielding his own high-tech flying suit as "the Vulture". While investigating the goings-on of Toomes's weapons trafficking, Peter is also trying to balance his secret superhero activities with high school to little effect, between working up the nerve to ask his crush Liz (Laura Harrier) to the homecoming dance and taking part in the science decathlon tournament.
The script, credited to no less than six different writers, thickly lays on the MCU references and universe-building, which will likely keep devotees of the multi-series franchise well-engaged but could be alienating to viewers who aren't fully up to date on the MCU so far. On the other hand, there are enough of them that you might not even notice. There are plenty of deviations from what previous film versions of Spider-Man have done (there's notably little of the high-altitude web-slinging among skyscrapers that has been prominently featured before), not to mention the significant changes to characters from the comics, which could also confuse some fans, but it's easy enough to fall into its groove and the willingness to depart from less integral parts of the source material is welcome, especially when the character has already been reinvented so frequently. Peter's best friend is Ned (Jacob Batalon), an original character who (as you know if you've seen the previews) knows Peter's secret identity as Spider-Man and frequently acts as the comic relief in a movie that's already pretty light, but he's a fairly endearing presence. Angourie Rice (who played Ryan Gosling's character's daughter in THE NICE GUYS) has a minor role as Betty Brant, a classmate of Peter's who was played in the Raimi films by Elizabeth Banks, and Disney Channel star Zendaya plays Michelle, another classmate of Peter's who walks a very fine line between suitably awkward but amusing and "too cool for school" in that annoying, "aren't I weird?" way as she attempts to channel Ally Sheedy in THE BREAKFAST CLUB. In this version, the jock bully who antagonized Peter in the comics and both the Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield movies (played by Joe Manganiello and Chris Zylka in those version, respectively), Flash Thompson, is played by Tony Revolori as a decidedly non-jock fellow student who is essentially an obnoxious and self-serving rival nerd in Peter's school, Midtown School of Science and Technology.
While the 133-minute runtime is par for the course in the realm of Spider-Man movies, it is one of the movie's modest weaknesses that it drags occasionally, mostly in the first half, as Peter faces off with the Vulture's henchmen a set-piece or two more than is useful, and while it pays off in at least one particularly amusing moment, having two iterations of "the Shocker" in the movie does little else but prolong the runtime. The movie is littered throughout with numerous MCU Easter eggs, to the point that it may overwhelm or at least confuse viewers who skipped a crucial installment or two in the franchise, but for as prominently featured as he's been in the marketing, Tony Stark thankfully never overtakes the story from Spidey. In fact, for as much as it's a blatant marketing ploy that Sony gets to plaster Marvel Studios' most popular character all over their movie's posters and cut their previews together from all his relatively few scenes, the Stark character is surprisingly well-integrated to the overall story in a way that ties in thematically to both the villain and the hero.
It's not the best Spider-Man movie, a title which still belongs to Sam Raimi's SPIDER-MAN 2 (not only the best Spider-Man movie but one of the best superhero movies
overall), a movie with very different and weightier aspirations, but SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING's buoyant, effervescent style gives the character and the Spider-Man franchise a much-needed good shakeup in his sixth "solo" outing. And the action scene at the Washington Monument is spectacular.
 |
| Images via Sony/Marvel |
No comments:
Post a Comment