August 13th in Owings Mills, MD. After viewing all five previous Spider-Man films since 2002, I finally got around to seeing the 2nd reboot of Spider-Man now that Marvel has the licensing rights back or something to that affect.
Tom Holland, who is 21 years old, is making his 2nd turn as 15 year old Peter Parker/Spider-man. Thankfully Marvel and director Jon Watts decided against giving us another version of the character's very well known origin story, instead they give the radioactive spider bite some lip service.
The film opens 8 years ago after The Avengers just defeated the Chitauri expeditionary force and the clean up of NYC is underway. Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton) has the city contract to clear the Chitauri debris. All of a sudden, Detective Lacey, who's now working for the feds, declares that the the salvage is now under the jurisdiction of the federal government. Toomes' contract is void and he's sh*t out of luck. Toomes and his crew manage to steal some of the alien technology and eventually use the technology to create very high tech weapons, what I found interesting about this scene was that Toomes and his entire crew go from legitimate contractors to a criminal enterprise in the drop of a hat (plus, how did a small business get this contract to begin with? Toomes does not have the manpower to clear of New York of the debris).
So when we get to present day, Toomes and his crew are successful criminals. Toomes used the alien tech to create the Vulture suit and he steals whatever alien technology he can get his hands on. All while avoiding any sort of run in with the authorities or a Marvel superhero. Seems to me that it would be easy to track where criminals using the technology got their weapons. Toomes' turn to villainy only happens because the big, bad government went after his small business. All he had left was to turn to crime. He just steals stuff to sell on the secondary market. No one ever seems to get hurt when he pulls a job. So he's not a evil person. He's not out to rule the world or anything. However, he will not hesitate, nor feel any sympathy, to kill anyone who threatens his way of life/family. That's how he justifies his criminal ventures.
Anyway, the basic plot is that Peter Parker is juggling being a teenager and his ambition to be a part of the Avengers. He's pining away for the hottest girl in school as well as pining away for Tony Stark.
Obviously, two very attractive well to do people, with nice hair and great fashion sense. Who wouldn't want to hang around them?
We see the trials and tribulations of Peter Parker the high school student and Peter Parker, the Spider-Man. As he steps up his Spider-Man duties, his school life slips a bit. He wants to be popular with his classmates but at the same time popular with Stark. He stumbles upon the Toomes' alien weapons and tracks them down. By doing this he missed out on the Academic Decathlon with his classmates, they manage to win without him in case you were wondering, in Washington, DC. As Spider-Man he puts his friends in danger by giving his pal Ned (played nicely by Jacob Batalon) a power source of a captured weapon that explodes while inside the elevator at the Washington Monument. Peter saves them given but he put them all in danger in the first place.
During this time, Peter and Ned manage to hack the suit, which they do quite easily, that Stark gave him so that Stark can't track him. Peter manages to foil a robbery that set in motion the monument crisis and learns about another Toomes sale about to go down. The sale is going to go down on the Staten Island Ferry and Peter shows up to stop it. As Peter crashes the deal, so does the FBI and things breakdown from there. The Vulture shows ups and causes havoc. Peter gets Vulture's weapon away from him and it causes catastrophic damage to the ferry. Peter has his Jesus moment...
Look familiar? Why mess with success.
But it fails and Iron Man shows up to save the day. Stark harshly reprimands Peter and goes so far as to take the suit back. Peter tells Stark that "he's nothing" without it. To which Stark says that maybe he "shouldn't have it" if that's the case. This is the new version of the "great power comes with great responsibility" scene. Peter goes meekly back into teenage life and manages to score a date with Liz (Laura Harrier) to homecoming (Liz is a senior and Peter is a sophomore, senior girls as beautiful as Liz DO NOT date sophomore boys in high school. It's not a thing. Liz would be dating college guys).
That all changes when Peter picks up Liz for the dance and meets her father. The Vulture. I found it funny that Toomes manages to deduce that Parker is Spider-Man in less than 30 seconds when no one else pieces it together. Peter has to ditch Liz at the dance and go after Toomes. Toomes however is ready for this contingency, even though he just deduced his identity a few moments earlier, and has The Shocker ambush Peter. With Ned's help, Peter eludes the Shocker and heads off after Toomes. Peter is able to stop Toomes from hijacking a plane carrying alien and Stark tech. No one is hurt during the plane crash and he manages to save Toomes from a fiery death in order to turn him over to the police.
Back at school, Peter apologizes to Liz for running out on her and she's surprisingly cool about it. In fact, now that her father is going to prison, she and her mother are moving to Oregon. Just like that! This nicely ties the love interest loose end so that the a potential love interest can start with Michelle (Zendaya), who clearly likes Peter but he never notices her because he's so smitten with the most popular girl in school cliche.
This is what passes for awkward, nerdy yet edgy high school girl.
The film ends with Peter getting his suit back and declining a bid to join the Avengers. Thus enabling Stark to avoid any child endangerment laws by putting Parker in danger as a member of the Avengers. The post credit scene shows us Toomes in prison meeting with the buyer of the weapons in the deal on the ferry. Its a foreshadowing of Spider-Man villain, the Scorpion. How do you know it's the Scorpion? Why because he's got a Scorpion tattoo on his neck that's why.
So far Spider-Man: Homecoming has grossed on $700 million worldwide. This was a fun movie but it got tedious for me at some points, those points coincided with the hamfisted product placement scenes. Of which Audi was extremely egregious. I feel that the 92% Rotten Tomatoes rating is a little high. This is the best Spider-Man film since 2004 by far but I felt that the high school dynamic was weak. Some of the scenes really agitated me and none of the high school characters looked high school aged, though Holland looked close. There are some nice references to the comics and I kind of dug the way Holland uses the suit in an attempt to impress Liz, because who among us wouldn't use their super powers to try and score with the babes. Secret identity be damned. I did like the fact that they went in a different direction with some of the secondary characters; do we really need to see a love interest with Mary Jane Watson or Gwen Stacy again?
There were times I wondered if this was just an Iron Man film disguised as a Spider-Man film, kind of the way a tv show will showcase a spin off. In Addition to Stark, Happy Hogan plays a significant role and even Pepper Potts show up at the end. Making me wonder how much that cost. I understand that the reason Marvel got the licensing deal for Spider-Man was because Sony wasn't making enough money after a failed reboot and Marvel is going to go all out for the film to be successful so they bring out their biggest gun. Iron Man. To me, they didn't let Spider-Man stand on his own, even the suit had a (sexy) voice like Iron Man's suit. Iron Man/Tony Stark were never too far away. Tom Holland will be back as Spider-Man in the MCU but there won't be sequel to Homecoming until 2019. That's the way Marvel wants to play it.
They did a lot of things right and did some stuff I didn't much care for. There are also the same problems in cinematic universe, the setting up of the next installment. Parker nor anyone close to him was ever in any real danger. The film was ok but not a must see by any stretch.
No comments:
Post a Comment