There is a seductive quality to being a teenage superhero. An age when you are aware of injustice, yet can do little to stop it; capable of great optimism but familiar with despair—adolescence has become an enduring trope for good reason. As a mutant pubescent do-gooder, you’re in parts unbound from one, but much more susceptible to the other. Though one essential notion of being a teenager superhero remains the same, an ethos Spider-Man: Homecoming embraces, it could be so much fun.
Where I’m no arbiter of such things, is this the Spider-Man we’ve always wanted? It’s a gale of fresh air by any summer movie standard, not just the unwieldy design of superhero pictures. Refusing to take itself seriously in a way Deadpool never grasped, Homecoming is a joyful mixture of gold standard hero creation and genre antidote. And that's the word: joy. An unbridled joy, equally endearing and relentless.
The other immediate quality of Homecoming, it uses its brain. Jon Watts and company find a clever way to nudge every expected element of Spider-Man. With each subtle shift in perspective, fresh blood trickles through the reboot weary franchise. From the opening sequence, a series of Peter Parker’s frenetic smartphone videos, the film establishes itself as something rambunctious. No origin story, bougie Aunt Mae (Marissa Tomei), a riff on Spidey’s city dependence, it’s built on solid beats. Perhaps not always unfamiliar, but like an exceptional pop song, the mix is beautiful. Concepts are balanced, relationships make sense, and above all, the film has a good heart.
To that end, the stakes make sense. Peter Parker, as embodied by Tom Holland, attends Midtown Tech. A high school science academy and diversity cavalcade of hyper-intellectual youths, *handclaps* this is the future liberals want! It’s the weeks leading up to homecoming, and Peter has Spidey problems intermingled with teenager problems, but nothing is the end of the world.
Homecoming plays as much the teen movie—Hughesian in a way, but never a pastiche—as it does a superhero film. Academic Decathlons, ATM robbers, crushes, super weapons, they all coexist, each one’s priority as fluid as any concern of a high schooler. And in a cinematic universe where apocalypses are a dime a dozen, Spider-Man’s tangle with arms dealers feels just as pertinent. Where the scale may sound puny, the connections pulling our characters into the central conflict are personal. Saving an entire Eastern European capital, a’ la Avengers: Age of Ultron makes for grandiose cinema, but a tightly woven story with visceral heroes and villains offers something far more human.
And the humans in Spider-Man: Homecoming are rad. With a battery of high-caliber talent to deploy, the film manages to give something substantial to each player. Donald Glover and Hannibal Buress, with four scenes between them, are as effective as co-star Zendaya’s angsty Michelle. We get Martin Starr out there reminding us that protest is patriotic. Even a disembodied voice emerges as a memorable sidekick. And, somehow, the requisite appearances of other Marvel characters are largely tasteful. One such instance is punctured with, for my money, the best joke in the picture. Though, with all the warm pork bone broth goodness this picture pours down your gullet, I couldn’t help but feel the nag of one loose thread. I know, I know, it's always a loose thread with me, but the presence of Bokeem Woodbine as one of our Spidey foils cemented the connection.
It’s a moment from FX’s serialized Fargo where ambitious criminal Mike Milligan (as played by Woodbine) ascends in the organized crime world. An enlightened man of the 1970’s, Mike has a higher purpose, justification for each bloody handprint left up the ladder. Yet it’s Morning in America, and the multinational is the new kingpin. The enforcer’s reward is a small office outfitted with a word processor. He’s instructed to ditch his oxblood western suit, cut his afro, and learn to golf. Always golf. And on the dawn of Spider-Man: Homecoming—our Sony, Disney orgy of corporate interest—I can’t help but feel Marvel, a once weird, bankrupt, scrappy, visionary, has traded it all in to be just another corporate stooge.
This is not some phony righteousness on my behalf. Hell, if they existed, I would depression-lunch-rage-eat loads of McDoubleCrunchwraps, but some hellish union between McDonald's and Taco Bell does not a positive make. I’m not a fan of Hollywood’s current climate—especially Sony “lending” Spider-Man to Marvel, an echo of bad studio system politics—but the onus is to evaluate what happens between the margins, and Homecoming is a joyful place. So, for the sake of my beloved, beleaguered editor, there ends the need to grind this, my favored axe.
Spider-Man: Homecoming is good, but consolidation of creative enterprise under the penumbra of one megacorporation, well, that’s bad. Should the latter be wielded against the former? No, but they are inextricable.
—By Monte Monreal
Where I’m no arbiter of such things, is this the Spider-Man we’ve always wanted? It’s a gale of fresh air by any summer movie standard, not just the unwieldy design of superhero pictures. Refusing to take itself seriously in a way Deadpool never grasped, Homecoming is a joyful mixture of gold standard hero creation and genre antidote. And that's the word: joy. An unbridled joy, equally endearing and relentless.
The other immediate quality of Homecoming, it uses its brain. Jon Watts and company find a clever way to nudge every expected element of Spider-Man. With each subtle shift in perspective, fresh blood trickles through the reboot weary franchise. From the opening sequence, a series of Peter Parker’s frenetic smartphone videos, the film establishes itself as something rambunctious. No origin story, bougie Aunt Mae (Marissa Tomei), a riff on Spidey’s city dependence, it’s built on solid beats. Perhaps not always unfamiliar, but like an exceptional pop song, the mix is beautiful. Concepts are balanced, relationships make sense, and above all, the film has a good heart.
To that end, the stakes make sense. Peter Parker, as embodied by Tom Holland, attends Midtown Tech. A high school science academy and diversity cavalcade of hyper-intellectual youths, *handclaps* this is the future liberals want! It’s the weeks leading up to homecoming, and Peter has Spidey problems intermingled with teenager problems, but nothing is the end of the world.
Homecoming plays as much the teen movie—Hughesian in a way, but never a pastiche—as it does a superhero film. Academic Decathlons, ATM robbers, crushes, super weapons, they all coexist, each one’s priority as fluid as any concern of a high schooler. And in a cinematic universe where apocalypses are a dime a dozen, Spider-Man’s tangle with arms dealers feels just as pertinent. Where the scale may sound puny, the connections pulling our characters into the central conflict are personal. Saving an entire Eastern European capital, a’ la Avengers: Age of Ultron makes for grandiose cinema, but a tightly woven story with visceral heroes and villains offers something far more human.
And the humans in Spider-Man: Homecoming are rad. With a battery of high-caliber talent to deploy, the film manages to give something substantial to each player. Donald Glover and Hannibal Buress, with four scenes between them, are as effective as co-star Zendaya’s angsty Michelle. We get Martin Starr out there reminding us that protest is patriotic. Even a disembodied voice emerges as a memorable sidekick. And, somehow, the requisite appearances of other Marvel characters are largely tasteful. One such instance is punctured with, for my money, the best joke in the picture. Though, with all the warm pork bone broth goodness this picture pours down your gullet, I couldn’t help but feel the nag of one loose thread. I know, I know, it's always a loose thread with me, but the presence of Bokeem Woodbine as one of our Spidey foils cemented the connection.
It’s a moment from FX’s serialized Fargo where ambitious criminal Mike Milligan (as played by Woodbine) ascends in the organized crime world. An enlightened man of the 1970’s, Mike has a higher purpose, justification for each bloody handprint left up the ladder. Yet it’s Morning in America, and the multinational is the new kingpin. The enforcer’s reward is a small office outfitted with a word processor. He’s instructed to ditch his oxblood western suit, cut his afro, and learn to golf. Always golf. And on the dawn of Spider-Man: Homecoming—our Sony, Disney orgy of corporate interest—I can’t help but feel Marvel, a once weird, bankrupt, scrappy, visionary, has traded it all in to be just another corporate stooge.
This is not some phony righteousness on my behalf. Hell, if they existed, I would depression-lunch-rage-eat loads of McDoubleCrunchwraps, but some hellish union between McDonald's and Taco Bell does not a positive make. I’m not a fan of Hollywood’s current climate—especially Sony “lending” Spider-Man to Marvel, an echo of bad studio system politics—but the onus is to evaluate what happens between the margins, and Homecoming is a joyful place. So, for the sake of my beloved, beleaguered editor, there ends the need to grind this, my favored axe.
Spider-Man: Homecoming is good, but consolidation of creative enterprise under the penumbra of one megacorporation, well, that’s bad. Should the latter be wielded against the former? No, but they are inextricable.
—By Monte Monreal
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