With the recent casting of Tom Holland as Peter Parker (Spider-Man), MARVEL has now got Spider-Man back in its own ranks. Tom Holland plays Peter Parker as a 15 year old high school student with way too much chip on his shoulder but with also exactly the right level of do-gooder naiveté, which is also evident now in his first film, SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING.
The film starts off recapping what happened before in CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR, but when Peter is back in his own world again ( Queens, New York ), he finds himself way too obsessed with awaiting his next Avengers mission. Trouble is, like a true teenager, he doesn't realize how obnoxious he is to his contact person for Tony Stark, Happy ( a wonderful role for director/actor Jon Favreau, who has a nice part in this as well ) in his eagerness to please. It is here also that the film delves a little too much into its attempts to be funny and wisecracking, rather than just have Spider-Man do what he does best. Web-swinging, for instance. No, we get too many moments where it becomes awkwardly clear why the suburbs are not for Spider-Man ( he can't attach his webs to any tall buildings so as to swing around and has to walk or run ).
I was also surprised at how different the whole Queens setting was for Peter, this time around. All of the characters we know from the comics are basically ditched. We only get Tony Stark and his associates, Peter Parker, his buddy Ned, his aunt May, who now is awfully young and lovely ( Tony Stark even has the hots for her, which admittedly is very funny ) and that is basically it. No Daily Bugle or J. Jonah Jameson newspaper antics, no Betty Brant, Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane Watson to play around with, a Flash Thompson who is decidedly unlike we have ever seen him before and no Harry Osborn. Instead we get his buddy Ned, no last names given, Liz, again, no last names and Michelle or rather MJ - but this is NOT Mary Jane Watson.
Where the film goes villain-wise, Michael Keaton as Adrian Toomes, aka The Vulture, is fantastic, even if his Vulture is a rather liberal depiction of his talents in the movie. Tom Holland and Robert Downey Jr are both also excellent in their respective roles but would I say this is an entirely succesful film? No! The story tries definitely too hard to do too many things at the same time and what basically also hurts the film is that we do not see Spider-Man in his element, between the skycrapers of New York. No, he actually turns up in Washington DC ( what is so special about Washington DC that could not be done in New York ? That elevator sequence could easily have fit into any skyscraper of any name in the Big Apple), in Maryland, in the suburbs, even at the Avengers compound outside of NYC !!!
And what is worse: in his battle with the Vulture we again get such special effects camera positions that at times you can't even clearly see what it is you are looking at. And with films as costly as this, who would want that in the first place? The music by Michael Giacchino starts off poorly already with an orchestral version of the 1960s cartoon Spider-Man theme and never recovers. Stan Lee's cameo is also very short and unfunny. Sure, I chuckled at seeing him but not because he was so funny. And the post credits sequences are not all that funny either. And although I think it is a wise choice for Spider-Man to NOT JOIN THE AVENGERS officially at the end of the film, I do think there is an awful lot of room to improve on for the next film. So until then, my favorite Spider-Man film is still this one :
Spider-Man 2, directed by Sam Raimi.
