Guilty Pleasures #45 - Spider-man: Homecoming

Time to go back to Spider-man in his third iteration of the 21^st Century. I took issue with the Raimi Spider-man stories, mostly because of the dialogue which has aged terribly. I also don’t like the direction they went with the relationship between Peter and MJ (although it’s a million times better than selling their marriage to the devil)

The Amazing Spider-man movies are less cringeworthy when it comes to dialogue but have issues when it comes to storytelling and tone, with the second movie in particular being too busy setting up multiple plotlines and attempting to establish an expanded universe, rather than being a smaller self-contained story.

Sony were knocked back by the ‘poor’ performance of the Amazing Spider-man 2, dropping its sequels and I have no idea what they’re doing with Venom. They made a deal with Disney to incorporate Spider-man into the Marvel universe. My understanding of it, beyond merchandise which is another can of worms is this: Spider-man can become a part of the Marvel cinematic universe. Sony are still responsible for making (and financing) the movies, but with Kevin Feige, overseeing it as producer, as he is with all MCU movies. Sony do not have to pay Disney for any MCU characters they use, but at the same time, Sony do not get paid when Spider-man appears in any other Marvel movie. 

So, after making his debut in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, Spider-man would be in his first MCU solo movie with Spider-man: Homecoming.

The movie was well received with a 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (average 7.7/10) and made $880m on a modest $175m (well, modest by Marvel standards) budget. Is it deserving of all that praise? Let’s take a look

OK, I’m just gonna start on a DVD menu complaint, the clips shown in the menu practically give away the whole plot, that’s not a good way to get people excited! On a side note, the trailers were terrible for this too.

Speaking of the plot, we open just after the battle of New York back in the Avengers. A small crew is helping the clean-up of the city, including alien weapons. If you’ve seen Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. you know of it ends up on the Black Market, so whoever it is doing it, is doing a ‘bang-up’ job. The leader of the crew is Adrian Toomes, but his operation is soon brought to pieces by the arrival of Damage Control. Awww nice, a reference to a Dwayne McDuffie creation… I actually mean nice too, even if the leader is a bit of an asshole, especially since it’s implied that Toomes will lose money over this.

The Department of Damage Control is a joint operation between the US government and Tony Stark. Bare in mind, this predates the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. so I’m surprised they’re not involved. One of Toomes’ associates points out they have a truckload of alien tech from the day before, which gives Toomes an idea.

This is a great way to introduce us to the Vulture, by showing the circumstances that lead him here, in a way that makes him legitimately a victim, they make him much more relatable and interesting. Will he be threatening as well? With a box-load of alien tech, you bet he will. It also fits well with the more grounded and street-level Spider-man story whilst not losing its connection with the larger Marvel universe.

We cut to 8 years later, and Toomes’ crew have been manufacturing and shipping weapons using alien tech. Toomes himself is be donning a wing suit to salvage more tech to use. Michael Keaton plays Toomes, and he’s a good actor, making the part memorable.

So after the new long-ass Marvel logo (with the old spider-man theme in the background) we cut what is arguably the weakest part of the movie. Peter Parker is vlogging. Not only is he vlogging, he’s vlogging about his trip to Germany that no-one’s supposed to know about, for no reason whatsoever. I suppose it’s a fine time to reintroduce us to Happy Hogan, who’s gonna be a kind of straight man to Peter’s antics.

It’s still insufferable though, some I’m gonna skip over it. So we have a small scene between Peter and Tony Stark, he’s the main Marvel cameo of the movie, although we’ll see more of Happy Hogan than we will of him. I’ll get to my thoughts on Stark later. Although continuity guff, wasn’t Peter supposed to be injured?

We cut to 2 months later, Peter is on the train to school, and frivolously texting Happy in a way that could almost certainly compromise his secret identity. And we meet this universe’s Flash Thompson.

“’Sup Penis Parker”

And nope, I don’t think Spectacular Spider-man will ever be topped as my favourite Flash, I realised that from the first line. It’s homecoming soon (hence the title) and we’re introduced to Ned. Ned is almost a carbon copy of Ganke from the Miles Morales’ Spider-man comics, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. More thoughts on him later. Just know he has a Lego Death Star and wants Peter to help him make the thing. People seem to be obsessed with making models, a swear I saw several K-nex models in the background.

Peter finds the love interest of the day and it’s Liz Allen? This is unexpected, but we’re in new territory and rehashing old ground isn’t what this movie is setting out to do. Hence why we’re looking at a young but not new spider-man as opposed to seeing his origin again. But they don’t entirely match the character of Peter Parker. In the lesson he’s goofing off, watching a video of himself on Youtube.

Even so he manages to humiliate Flash and erm… yay, as someone who’s reasonably proficient in maths, I dislike that answer, sine of what, genius! He manages to use science class to make his web fluid in secret. They are certainly less strict about giving students chemicals than they were in any of my schools.

So, Peter’s a part of an Academic Decathalon but decides to bail out before nationals on the grounds that he’s needed for the Stark Internship during the weekend… We’ll get back to this. Flash is selected to replace him, and we find out that Peter has quit two other clubs entirely. So school ends and Peter goes to get a sandwich from a deli he knows. Peter knows Italian, that’s cool, might be useful in the sequel, but otherwise serves little purpose here.

After getting his sandwich, Peter slips into an alley, gets his backpack covered in garbage and changes into his Spider-man costume. And we see it in detail… So spider-man does some neighbourhood patrols, giving directions, doing flips, trying to trace a stolen bike but he makes some mistakes too, thinking a car is being stolen for some reason and setting off the alarm, annoying the neighbours, including our friendly neighbourhood cameo.

He sees some crooks robbing a bank, they’re using alien tech and wearing Avengers masks, which gives Peter plenty of opportunities to make quips. Oh and the bank is sadly right across the street from the sandwich shop from earlier. One of the robbers tries to up the power of one of their weapons and almost immediately loses control, firing a laser that destroys the bank and blows up the deli. Spider-man manages to get the owner and his cat out unharmed, but the bad guys get away in the process.

Spidey calls Happy but he’s busy helping the relocation from Stark Tower to the Avengers new upstate HQ. Peter lands back in the alley to find his backpack gone. So he has to crawl into his room and guess who’s waiting? Yup, Ned is waiting with his Lego Death Star, and now he’s exactly like Ganke from Miles’ comics (except we don't know if he's gay). I actually really like this, Peter has someone to talk to who isn’t also his love interest.  

And just to make this 100 times more awkward Aunt May busts in when Peter has taken off his costume. She barely remarks on it, not sure if that makes it more or less awkward. Right so, Peter’s reasons for keeping his identity secret, him being a kid under the authority of someone else makes him keeping it a secret from said authority much more understandable. Since May can’t cook, despite it being one of her major skills in many versions of the character I’ve seen, they’ve head out for Thai. The same day a Deli shop blew up because of Bank Robbers… Do people not watch the news?

I guess the showing of said news footage answers that question. Peter says he needs a new backpack, and it’s revealed that’s the 5^th one he lost. One of the waiters gives them sticky rice pudding because he has the hots for Aunt May and…

OK, I can’t put this off any longer. I am fine with Aunt May being younger and more attractive than other, not everyone’s Aunt is pushing towards the end of her life, but just have her be younger and more attractive. Please stop having everyone falling in love with her just because of this. There’s a rule in comedy, you can do a joke twice, but the third time there must be some variation. I guess this time, May sees it, but that doesn’t make the joke different.

So Ned and Peter are talking about being Spider-man in public. Ned continues to pester him with ludicrous questions throughout the day. And time for a second Marvel cameo. Chris Evans reprises his role as Captain America for a series of videos we’ll see throughout the movie. And Ned blurts out that Peter knows Spider-man, to a bunch of girls they’re both crushing on.

This gets Peter invited to a senior party. This time he arrives wearing the suit under his regular clothes, so we don’t have to see him in his underwear again, thank you for that. I forget to mention Michelle, played by Zendaya, I like her, but she’s not exactly important yet. And we get a reprisal of ‘penis Parker’ Flash, that wasn’t funny. Penis isn’t even a good play on Peter. That’s why you’ve never heard it in any comic ever.

Anyway, Flash ridiculing him is enough to get Peter to change, but when he sees a massive blue explosion he decides to head off towards that instead. A nice gag is Peter needs to cross a gold course, where there’s nothing for his webs to attach to. Peter is in Queens, not the sprawling metropolis of Manhattan or the like. Peter watches as they try and sell weapons to one Aaron Davis, another character from the Miles Morales end.

Spidey is forced to step in when his phone goes off. He grapples to the truck and slides along all whilst being shot at. I like the youthful ingenuity this Spider-man has, a lot of others just swing off buildings. Of course he’s forced off and has to run, causing rampant property damage along the way. Just as he’s about to jump back onto the truck, Vulture grabs him, Spider-man’s parachute deploys for some reason, although it doesn’t really help when he’s dropped into the lake. Thankfully Iron Man saves him, or rather an Iron Man suit since Tony is somewhere else.

Tony begs Peter not to go after Vulture, but mentions this is a little below the Avengers pay-grade, elitist dicks as they are. Spider-man says he’s ready but Iron Man doesn’t agree and tells him to stay close to the ground. I’m gonna continue to hold off on Iron Man until later, I do have words to say about him.

Peter does manage to find a weapon that fell out of the truck. He is gonna go back to the party but Flash is making the same lame joke he’s made 3 times no, with no variation! Vulture returns and isn’t happy the weapons were fired in public as it could bring the heat down on them. One of his crew doesn’t give a crap and gets kicked out, but Toomes fires a weapon when he threatens to report his activities and disintegrates him.

So, Peter decides to do the logical thing and bring an alien gun that ‘tried to vaporise’ him into school. He manages to break off the power source and this is where Peter loses any sense of responsibility… This is a problem people might have with this version, this version of Peter Parker does not take the mantra seriously yet, and I don’t think the movie intended that to be his arc. Sure he’s a kid, and he messes up, he’s eager to prove himself, and he’s pushed away by a lot of the adults around him (or at least the ones that know) and Tony Stark is not blameless in what happens next, but I’ll get to that soon. But Peter has an alien power source, and rather than taking it somewhere where it might actually be dealt with professionally, like to Happy, he wants to deal with it himself.

Two of the crooks from earlier sneak into the High School, having detected an energy trace. Peter fires a tracer and it ends up in Maryland. That’s 300 miles away but not far from DC, the Academic Decathalon. Peter rather easily ends up with the group again and heads to DC, btw, Ned still has the alien power source. Peter removes the tracker in his suit, in the process finding that the suit is basically an Iron Man suit but not made of metal.

It’s got a lot of safety protocols to prevent Peter doing something stupid, so Peter does something stupid and deactivates them. He heads outside and runs into Liz, ready to have a skinny dip with Peter (*wink wink*) ok, she’s doing it with the others. She claims its because a rebellious activity before a competition helps morale, and Peter realises how important this is to her, unfortunately he leaves anyway.

So, Peter’s suit now has an AI, that can tell him what to do and where to go, how is this not the training wheels protocol? There are 3 hostiles at a gas station, and why the f*ck did Tony think an ‘instant kill’ function was a good idea?

Spider-man tries to swing and instead fires a rapid fire shot. This is a funny gag, and I always did wonder about Spider-man configuring web combinations. Stark gave him over 500 which is excessive although I wouldn’t be surprised if over the years they have been that many. Spidey sees the Vulture attach himself to the convoy and use alien phase tech to get inside the truck. Spidey lands on the truck too and tries to fight but in the tussle gets stuck in the truck and knocked out.

Spider-man busts out when the truck stops and finds himself in the deep storage vault at Damage Control. The doors won’t open till morning so Spidey begins familiarising himself with the new web gimmicks, all of which won’t be used effectively because of what’s coming soon. Peter talks to her suit about whether he should talk to Liz, then gets bored and finds a Chitauri energy core, like the one he found earlier, which the suit (which he’s named Karen btw) tells him will explode if exposed to radiation.

After a number of trials Peter manages to escape but it’s the decathlon and Ned has handed his phone over. Thanks to Michelle, they win, and are heading up the Washington Monument. Michelle decides to not enter because she doesn’t want to enter something probably built by slaves. Peter gets through but Ned doesn’t shut up and eventually Liz gets on the phone and tells Peter off. Ned’s backpack goes through an x-ray scanner and that causes a detonation while they’re in the lift.

Spidey arrives and races as fast as he can up the monument. This a really good setpiece for Spider-man, using the fact he can stick to walls to their advantage. Sure it’s all green-screen but that’s par for the course for a Spider-man movie. He makes it but hasn’t been as high before and now needs to break through a glass window that’s quite tough. The police arrive and try and stop him, not realising what he’s trying to do, so he only just makes it in time, and even then he ends up down the shaft with them, holding the elevator with a web and his feet. He saves Liz at the last minute, but just as he’s about to say something the web breaks

Toomes is not impressed with Spider-man breaking up his heist. He wants to kill him, then sees news of the Washington rescue. This makes the student news bulletin, which has like 15 frames where there’s a clear green-screen background, not sure whether that was intentional. Anyway, Spider-man mania is gripping the school, and it’s going to Peter’s already inflated cranium. He knows they’re stealing from Damage Control, Peter’s confident that when he brings the guy in he’ll join the Avengers and move upstate.

Peter is caught and given detention, but storms out in the middle of Cap’s thrilling lecture. Michelle is there because she likes to draw, no seriously. Peter heads home and Karen reveals she’s been recording footage as part of the ‘baby monitor’ protocol. Can Tony not come up with names that don’t sound patronising as hell? Anyway, they identify Aaron Davies, he has an address and Peter decides to activate the ‘interrogation protocol’ and it’s frickin hilarious.

Aaron has a nephew (whose name may or may not be Miles) and doesn’t really want these weapons on the streets either. He tells Peter of a deal going down, on a ferry at Statten Island and we get to the most heavily advertised set-piece of the movie. Thanks to his little spider-drone that I forgot to mention he had, he realises he has a perfect setup, the weapons, sellers and buyers are all on the ship. He gets a call from Stark he abruptly ends as he decides to swing in.

Unfortunately soon after he takes out the sellers, the FBI begin swarming the boat, this provides a distraction as Toomes gets his costume on. Spidey webs the gun and passes a charge through it, which becomes a major problem when it begins firing off shots at random. Spidey tries to use his webs to suppress it, but it begins overloading and explodes, tearing the boat in half. Spidey uses every web he has but one of them breaks and the whole boat comes apart. He buys time by pulling the ship together by pure strength but is only saved when Iron Man arrives and fixes the ship with his tech

Right, I think it’s time to start with the one bit I need to get off my chest. Turns out Tony had called the FBI. You knew how he could’ve saved all this trouble, HE COULD HAVE TOLD PETER THAT! Tony Stark must’ve been well aware that Peter is young, inexperienced and eager to prove himself. If that wasn’t evident from everything he’d seen personally then his constant calls to Happy Hogan should’ve been proof of the fact, and I highly doubt Happy wasn't complaining to him about it. 

Add that to the fact that Spidey was made aware of the illegal weapons some time prior to Tony Stark getting involved. If this outcome wasn’t obvious to him, it was bleedin’ obvious to the audience, even if they hadn’t had the trailer spoiled. Peter at least eventually accepts what happened here was his fault. Tony never accepts responsibility for his part in this.

For that matter, why create his suit. Sure you lock a bunch of functions behind stupid patronising protocols, but you must’ve known he’d use them eventually. So yeah, Peter loses his suit and then has to go home to a frantic Aunt May and yeah… because he was adult (or nearly so) in every other version we never really saw her worried about him this way. And it makes sense for her character after the loss of her husband to act like this. But she’s not entirely forceful, she wants him to open up and gives him chances to do so, and it says something that’s she’s been willing to accept it for this long. Peter at least confesses him losing the Stark Internship which is at least enough to calm her down, before admitting she used to sneak out too.

Peter manages to avoid expulsion, but does face detention, with Melanie mocking him. He begins rebuilding his life, doing well in school and making amends with Ned (they were never really on the outs, but Peter was effectively using him when he got him to hack the suit earlier) and building the Lego Death Star. Peter confesses his feelings to Liz and eventually gets her as his Homecoming date. It’s about as awkward as you’d expect.

Peter’s life crashing down around him because of his life as Spider-man is nothing new. What I like about this version is that we see the cause and effect. We don’t have a montage of things going wrong just because he’s Spider-man, ala Spider-man 2; we see the changes in his character that lead to it and more importantly we see him learn and rebuild, something I don’t think Spider-man 2 did that well. Could the consequences have been more severe? Yes, but it’s a bit late in the game to change the entire status quo of Peter’s life. We are in the final act now after all.

He seeks Aunt May’s help in preparing himself and damn it, I love this. But with all things, the plot needs to rear its head and it turns out the Liz’s father is in fact Adrian Toomes. And the cheery music stops immediately after the fact. Now, Spider-man’s villains having personal connections to Spider-man’s life is nothing new. What’s new here it’s about 2/3 of the way through the movie before we find out that fact.

It’s awkward and becomes ever more so as Toomes begins to piece together Peter’s identity as Spider-man. Interestingly the first thing he recognises is the voice, something I don’t think has happened before in film. So Liz leaves and Peter gets the threat. Having saved her life, Toomes isn’t just gonna kill him, but says if he interferes with his business again, he will kill him and everyone Peter loves.

Keaton owns this role, making Toomes relatable but intimidating as hell. Peter’s a bit shell-shocked as he enters the ball. But Peter knows all too well what happens if you let someone go like this and decides to ditch Liz. He grabs his old costume and races back outside where he’s confronted by one of Vulture’s henchmen, his name is Herman Schultz, and I haven’t really mentioned him up to now, but he’s one of Spider-man’s rogues ‘the shocker.’

Now, Spider-man movies of late have been criticised for incorporating too many villains. Largely because when they have their own agendas you end up juggling screen-time and something is lost in the process. But this movie manages to have the Vulture as the lead villain and have Shocker and the Tinkerer as associates, without the movie feeling cluttered. Because they work with the same agenda, less time needs to be dedicated to them.

Peter’s spider sense seems to be on the fritz, in this fight he seems to take hits I think he should’ve avoided. He’s helped out by Ned. Peter quickly brings him up to speed, getting him to contact Happy so Stark can find out what’s going on. So Flash is arriving at the Homecoming late, and Spider-man, putting on a weird voice, says he needs his car and phone, he dropped his own phone in Toomes’ car, I admit that was a good move.

It’s fairly obvious that Peter isn’t very proficient at driving, unfortunately when Happy answers the phone to Ned, he hangs up immediately. Yes, Happy, you’re fired, and that’s probably the best thing that could ever happen to you. He does give away enough detail for Peter and Ned to work out that Toomes plans to rob a plan carrying equipment to the new Avengers compound.

Peter arrives, wrecking Flash’s (dad’s) car and Ned is caught out by one of the teachers who wants him to go back to the dance. Spidey breaks into the warehouse Vulture’s been operating from, Toomes isn’t surprised to see him, but tries to talk sense to him, but it’s a distraction as Vulture’s suit is remote operated and he needed time to get it in the air. Spidey manages to avoid it but it turns out he wasn’t trying to hit spidey, rather destroy the support columns

And here comes something I’m amazed we haven’t seen in a Spider-man movie before. We’ve seen Peter perform feats of strength before, even with the cruise ship in this movie. But because he’s never allowed time to think about it, we just see it, it’s never really as much a struggle. Peter having to lift something really heavy and given time where we can see him struggling and finding the motivation and giving it all he has is much more powerful than any train set-piece can be.

The Quinjet takes off and Toomes is following, followed by Spidey, who’s grappled onto him. They both land on the plane but as Spidey struggles with the winds, Tooms uses some tech to get inside. Soon Peter is spotted and in the struggle, Toomes’ wing destroys a turbine and spidey one too, the plane begins to drop but Toomes refuses to leave empty handed. And yeah, we’re getting into the CGI brawl bit now.

Spidey manages to turn the plane so it doesn’t crash into the city, instead on a beach on Coney Island. Only now does Happy take notice, by the way! Spidey takes off his mask, barely able to breathe, but Toomes’s still kicking and attacks, although his wings are also badly damaged. He has Peter down and is about to finish him off but notices some surviving tech and goes for that. When Peter wakes up he sees the damage to the wing suit, it’s gonna explode. Peter tries to get him, but Toomes refuses to listen and Peter is out of web fluid. He crashes but Peter races through the flames and drags him out of the fire. How he survived the suit exploding is up for debate but hey, a spider-man villain made it out alive!

Happy and Damage Control find the crash site, all the tech that was still in tact and Toomes webbed to it. Guess he reloaded his web fluid. Spidey sits atop the roller coaster, and his injuries miraculously heal by the next day. That said, Spidey’s healing is faster than average so I’ll let this one slide.

Unfortunately, it’s not so happy for Peter, Liz is moving to Oregon. The two didn’t have massive amounts of chemistry because not much time was dedicated to their romance. I can’t see it having lasted anyway. Michelle is given captaincy of the Decathalon team, and she asks them to call her MJ… how cute. Look, I wish I had more to say, I just don’t. Whatever direction they go with this, could be interesting. I don’t find it insulting to Mary Jane, it’s just a cute little reference and nothing else, yet.

Peter gets a text telling him to go the bathroom. Happy wanted to extend his thanks, and decided to do it from the boy’s bathroom in a school, nothing creepy about that at all. Happy takes him to the new Avengers HQ, where they meet up with Tony. Who now takes credit for everything because Tony Stark believes the tough love moment worked. Except it didn’t, at all really, since Peter risked his life and likely a fair number of others to do exactly the one thing you told him not to do, except this time he was successful and no-one was killed or injured.

And yeah, this is Peter’s official invite to the Avengers, the half that still exist anyway. There are reporters to welcome him behind the door but Peter refuses, thinking it’s a test and wanting to stay a more ‘neighbourhood’ spider-man. Turns out it wasn’t and… Pepper Potts? They got Gweneth Paltrow back for 20 seconds, cool. Tony proposes and uses as it their new big announcement

Peter arrives home and sees his Stark costume waiting for him. And just has puts it on, we see that Aunt May is behind him. Oh my god, yes! Finally, Aunt May knows, and we skip around the same drama over and over. Thank you, whoever did this, this opens up so many good possibilities.

So, mid credits scene, the buyer from earlier is in fact the Scorpion, but Toomes refuses to tell him Spidey’s secret identity. And there’s no post-credits scene.

Spider-man homecoming may have it’s flaws (and I can understand if people see this version of Spider-man as a little too irresponsible) but as a Spider-man movie, it might well be my favourite. It’s not afraid to try something new and handle things in a different way, which is important when you’re the third iteration of a character so far this century. The story having 6 different writers somehow didn’t make the story a jumbled mess and is actually more cohesive than some other MCU movies.

It’s content with being a smaller scale story, which helps scale back on its need for effects, and Vulture is one of the best Villains Marvel has at its disposal. Michael Keaton nailed the role and I look forward to his return.

Tom Holland nailed his version of Spider-man in my opinion, carrying a youthful energy that sells his High School shenanigans and does a good job as Spider-man, carrying the movie even when the special effects are lacking, which they are in some cases I’m sad to say.

Not every joke lands, and it does break the rule of three on 2 different occasions (Penis Parker wasn’t funny the first time) but it’s funny often enough that I give it a pass on those. The set-pieces at the Washington monument and the Cruise ship honestly over-match the finale, but the finale works thematically and provides half-decent action, even if the effects aren’t great.

Rating -400%