by Garrett Gilchrist » Sun Jul 16, 2017 8:52 pm
Spider-Man Homecoming: Marvel does it again, of course. Spidey may be in his seventh big-screen outing (eighth if we count the 1977 film), but this feels fresh and new in every way that the 2012 film didn't.
Spider-Man is Marvel's most popular character, and Sam Raimi's quirky 2002 film was an instant classic and the first big superhero success of the CGI era. It laid the groundwork for a lot of what Marvel is doing now.
So it's a bit of a cosmic joke that Spider-Man is a young newcomer to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, being mentored at a distance by Robert Downey Jr's Iron Man, who is more than thirty years his senior. Iron Man was a less popular character, but Jon Favreau's great 2008 film set the stage for Marvel's unprecedented success in movies. Sixteen films later, Spider-Man is the kid playing catchup in a high-tech world that Tony Stark built, and we feel that throughout.
Despite the irony of the situation, the dynamic works because Spider-Man has always been an underdog. Tony Stark is a billionaire war criminal with PTSD. Peter Parker is a broke science nerd struggling to get by in life, while his battles as a superhero constantly threaten to ruin his life and the lives of everyone he cares about. Casting Peter Parker as a teenager trying in vain to prove himself to the Avengers absolutely worked in the Civil War film, and it absolutely works here.
It also shows us another side of the character, which is very true to how he's always been in the comics, but hasn't been shown onscreen before. Tobey Maguire was about 26 in the first Spider-Man, typical for Hollywood, where adults play high school students. Both Tobey and Andrew Garfield look like old men next to 20-year old Tom Holland, who's supposed to be 15 or 16 here. Holland and his whole supporting cast are much more believable as high school children. 16 year old Angourie Rice has a small part as Betty Brant, and looks like a baby compared to Elizabeth Banks playing the same part. With his high-pitched voice, Tom Holland comes off like Michael J. Fox playing Marty McFly. Not a bad thing.
It's a diverse cast, less white than previous Spidey films and feeling more realistic, more high school and less 1960s because of it. We loved the corny, 60s throwback quality of the Sam Raimi films, but Homecoming succeeds in a more 2017 way. Laura Harrier plays Peter's crush, Liz Allan. Tony Revolori plays Flash Thompson as a bully, but also a fellow nerd rather than a sports jock. Which is frankly strange. Zendaya steals every scene she's in as Michelle, or MJ, possibly this film's version of Mary Jane Watson. She's consistently funny in a subtle way, as a scruffy nerd with a sense of social justice, and a casual punkish cool to how she's dressed.
Jacob Batalon is great as Peter Parker's best friend Ned Leeds, a name taken from the comics but portrayed here as very similar to Ganke, Korean best friend of the Ultimate Spider-Man, Miles Morales. At times it seems like they intended to make a Miles Morales movie, but put Peter Parker in it instead. Morales has generally been portrayed as very young. And Donald Glover, who inspired and voiced the Morales character, turns up as Morales' uncle, Aaron Davis AKA The Prowler. In a weirdly underplayed scene, Davis tells Parker he needs to get "better at this," and mentions his nephew (Miles).
The film is fast-paced and there are a lot of characters you only see briefly, and which leave you wanting more.
Minor Spider-Man characters are here in abundance. Versions of The Shocker and Tinkerer are henchmen to Michael Keaton's Vulture. Michael Mando (from Better Call Saul) turns up very briefly as the Scorpion. There's a lot that's being set up here for future films, and we'll just have to trust Marvel on that.
That hasn't always worked out for superhero films. Sam Raimi's films set up Dylan Baker as the Lizard, and Bruce Campbell, who had played various parts, would have turned up as Mysterio. Raimi never made that film, as he clashed with Sony over Spider-Man 3. Raimi wanted Ben Kingsley as The Vulture, but Sony inisted on Venom. The film was overstuffed with villains and Raimi's heart wasn't in it, leading to some bizarre, uniquely Sam Raimi scenes. Spider-Man, as a character, has a reputation for having a quirky sense of humor. That's not actually true in Raimi's films, but Raimi himself is such a peculiar and quirky director that that quality came through in the films themselves.
In 2012 we got to see what Sony's plan for Spidey really was. They held onto the rights even as Marvel was establishing the MCU. Directed by Marc Webb and starring Andrew Garfield, the two "Amazing Spider-Man" films were, to my eyes, deeply boring. The scenes just sit there. There is definitely an attempt to make Spider-Man, as a character, funny. This doesn't work at all because the film itself just goes through the motions, and the editing is strangely flat.
The 2012 film also shows us Spider-Man's origins, and this can't help but feel like a worse version of the 2002 Sam Raimi film. It's showing us something we've seen before.
It is a very smart decision that Spider-Man Homecoming skips the origin entirely, even though it's showing us the youngest Spider-Man yet. We've seen it all before, and we only want to see it again to tick off the boxes and go through the motions. There's a new animated Spider-Man series to tie-in with Homecoming and it seems to be using the Sam Raimi origin, complete with Bonesaw McGraw. Ain't that something?
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 tried to set up future villains. It gave us Paul Giamatti as The Rhino for about five minutes, which is deeply embarrassing. And it gave us Felicity Jones (later star of Rogue One) as Felicia Hardy/The Black Cat. You probably forgot all that.
The difference with Marvel is that they keep making these films, and the stuff they set up does tend to pay off later. For about ten years now it's been okay to trust Marvel.
(Homecoming also throws in a female extra with silver hair, which I guarantee they won't follow up on with the same actress. It's like how the first X-Men films threw in characters they'd recast later.)
The 2012 film is very long, and feels very long, but has very purposely deleted any scenes which give any character development to Curt Connors, AKA the Lizard, now played by Rhys Ifans. It's a baffling decision since he's intended as a sympathetic character and is familiar from the Raimi films. "Amazing" makes him nothing but a bad guy.
Compare that to The Vulture. Marvel has a reputation for weak villains, but there are an increasing amount of exceptions to the rule. Spider-Man: Homecoming spends a lot of time fleshing out Adrian Toomes, The Vulture. His motivations are completely understandable throughout. He's a working-class father just trying to get ahead. We even understand his grudge against Tony Stark, and against Spider-Man.
Toomes was a contractor cleaning up after the destruction caused in the first Avengers film. He bought trucks and equipment planning for a big payday, until he was kicked off the site by Tony Stark - or more personally by Anne Marie Hoag (Tyne Daly) of Damage Control. He's in massive debt now, and in massive trouble. But he's still got some alien tech from the site, and doesn't intend to return it.
We flash forward eight years, and that should make all of us feel old, and impressed by how long Marvel has been pulling this off. You'll also feel old because in the comics, both The Vulture and Peter's Aunt May are visibly very elderly. Here they're played by Michael Keaton and Marisa Tomei, big stars from the 90s who we've missed lately.
This is Keaton in full villain mode, Beetlejuice-style lending an extra edge to everything he does. I've missed seeing Keaton doing this. We even like him, though we know he's the bad guy. Toomes is a smart guy who's built himself a real high-tech business, even if it's an evil operation that's putting absurdly dangerous alien tech in the hands of street criminals. At one point he kills one of his henchmen. Apparently he'd only intended to scare him, and grabbed the wrong gun. While Toomes ends up as a killer, nothing he does is unmotivated, and he's easily up there with the best villains Marvel's ever had.
Like Peter, The Vulture is an underdog. He mirrors Peter Parker's usual struggles with money. The young Peter takes the train to get around. He finds it hard to balance school and friends with his superhero "internship."
And despite an impressive debut in Civil War, Tony Stark (or rather Happy Hogan) isn't even returning his text messages. Some have argued that Tony is a villain in this movie. He seems distracted, neglectful. Tony gave Peter a high-tech Spidey suit in Civil War, and his fingerprints are all over the situation Peter finds himself in now, but he's not giving Peter the guidance he wants and needs. To an extent, Tony is testing Peter. He's built a ton of tech into the suit that Peter isn't supposed to know about yet. He's watching Peter from afar. But that excuse only goes so far, when Peter really needs his help.
It's understandable, to an extent. Despite his powers, Peter is just a teenager, and not ready to be an Avenger. And that's what being a teenager usually feels like - like you're ready to be an adult, and you don't fully understand how you're not. It's more glaringly obvious from the other side. An adult looks at a teenager and sees a child. But also a child who is bursting with power and energy. You can be scared of that and tell the kid to calm down and put that power back in its bottle. Or you can lend guidance. Either way it's going to take a teenager time to learn for him or herself how to become an adult.
Robert Downey Jr. never feels like much more than a Special Guest Star here. In every scene, it feels like they got him in for a quick bit of filming that he didn't take very seriously. That made sense to me at first. But he's actually in a lot of scenes. He keeps coming back. Then you realize, that's just the character. Tony doesn't know what to do with Spider-Man. He gets angry at Peter, at how he can't control Peter. He's disappointed in Peter, and finally disappointed in himself for not getting this right. By the end, Tony plays it cool, like it was all just a test. It wasn't, though. Tony wasn't there, and in his absence Peter learned a lot about himself.
Baffling, but appropriate for a film that's not about Tony Stark. Really, it's a film about people living in the mess that Tony Stark left behind. And, on a meta level, doing justice to the Spider-Man character from the comics in a world built around RDJ's Iron Man and The Avengers.
Chris Evans' Captain America makes some jokey cameos on videos kids are forced to watch in high school. Hannibal Burress turns up as the gym teacher, just barely funny in such a brief role.
It's remarkable that all these years of Marvel films have been one big story, and we feel that here more than ever.
In the 2002 film, the old 60s Spider-Man theme was used as a joke, as an easter egg for longtime fans. Here, Michael Giacchino arranges a lush, full-orchestra version over the Marvel logo, which says a lot about how much fun Marvel films are having taking all this silly stuff seriously. And why not? The actual heroic themes used for Spider-Man and The Avengers aren't as memorable as just arranging the old 60s Spidey theme in this way. They must have been tempted to use it in the film proper.
If I may digress for a moment:
A filmmaker got very angry when I pointed out that the editing, in the more recent Superman 2 Michael Thau Donner Cut, often falls flat or seem amateurish, compared to the editing done at the time. The farewell between Superman and Lois at the Fortress of Solitude site is my favorite work Margot Kidder did in the Superman films, and it always worked in the TV cut, but isn't the same in Thau's cut, somehow. You suddenly notice the music hanging too thick over the scene, and it's just not cut quite right.
I've criticized the Amazing Spider-Man films for editing and sound mixing which just falls flat, and for awhile I had the same trouble with Spider-Man Homecoming. Flat editing and sound mixing can be hard to pinpoint. A film lives or dies in its editing and thousands of decisions go into how to present every shot.
I felt the music hanging very thick over an early scene with Michael Keaton as The Vulture, where he says that the world is changing, and that his crew have to change with it. The cutting is very fast, early on in this film. Too fast, I felt. A lot of these scenes are already familiar, since we've seen so many trailers for this film.
In the trailers, Spidey is fighting some crooks in Avengers masks who are robbing an ATM. He says, "Wait a minute, you guys aren't the real Avengers. I can tell, Hulk gives it away." That line isn't in the final film. I'd say this is something new for Spidey trailers, but the first Sam Raimi film had an entire trailer involving the World Trade center towers, which didn't make it to the final film for the most tragic and obvious reasons.
It's noticeable that the final film uses different takes, and some scenes feel different than I expected.
I felt that with Ned Leeds in a hotel room saying to Peter "But you are a kid." And with Zendaya's last scene as Michelle/MJ, where she asks Peter, "What are you hiding, Peter?" It's a very Sam Raimi Spidey moment, but turns out to be a joke. She says "I'm just kidding, I don't care, bye." It's played off very casually, not acting-y. And isn't it nice that MJ is the funny one? Anyway, turns out she does care about what Peter is doing, more than she realizes. Which is predictably acting-y.
For a big part of its runtime it seems like Spider-Man: Homecoming is in a real rush, and that robs some scenes of their power. The script, however, is clever and witty and works, so a lot is forgiveable. They've also used the Guardians of the Galaxy trick of licensing older pop and rock and punk songs, like The Ramones doing "Blitzkreig Bop." That works no matter how old or young you are.
What the film does spend its time on is CGI action setpieces. No surprise from a Marvel film but it's terrific that the big setpieces on the Staten Island Ferry or at the Washington Monument set Spidey up as an underdog pushed past his limits. It's never easy for Peter and he pushes himself above and beyond. That's the character, and that's good storytelling.
We get into territory that's legitimately stupid with the final showdown between Toomes and Parker on top of a treasure-filled Stark Industries jet. They fight while holding on to and falling off of a jet that's speeding through the air and then crashing. The physics of that don't make any sense even for a superhero film. Fighting on board a crashing jet, I can understand. Fighting on top of a speeding truck, fine. This was just too much for me, and it's the finale. Thankfully the character stuff is what's actually important. We see clearly as Peter Parker defines himself as a person, in how he relates to Toomes, and finally to Tony Stark.
I think I was going to mention something else that didn't work, but I've already forgotten.
But this is Spider-Man, more than any previous big screen take on the character. It seems strange to say that when we've already had a bunch of previous films, more of which were excellent. But as usual Marvel has gotten to the core of what's most important about the character, and delivered it in a film that is not only entertaining and fun but serves as a manifesto for understanding who this hero is.
Sony has plans for more unrelated films starring Spider-Man supporting characters. I hope that none of that happens. (Unless it's Emma Stone as Spider-Gwen.)
I would also gladly bribe Marvel to bring back, from the Raimi films, JK Simmons and Bruce Campbell. That would probably never happen, but if Marvel wants my $20, wink wink.
Meanwhile, coming in February from Marvel: Black Panther. Already a hit from his appearance in Civil War, and coming from popular Creed director Ryan Coogler, with an all-star cast.
The Avengers will return in Infinity War.