"Spider-Man: Homecoming:" Nothing Special, Next MCU Movie Please

By Ellie Drabnis on July 24, 2017

In my opinion, the best incarnation of Spider-Man is Miles Morales. So, I was not at all thrilled to go and see “Spider-Man: Homecoming” because, quite honestly, I am sick seeing of Peter Parker on the big screen.

Not to mention, do we really need more origin stories for Peter Parker? I mean, we get it: radioactive spider-bite, superhero status, that’s about it. Yes, now that Marvel Studios has the rights back to Spidey things will be different and should honor the comics a little bit more but that’s a little hard to do, especially when the person playing Peter Parker isn’t anything remotely similar to the character.

To clarify, I am not about to go point by point that ‘such and such doesn’t honor the comics;’ that would take far too long. Plus, the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies are a bit simplified and done as if the Marvel heroes were part of our everyday lives.

Spidey Guarding NY

(https://pixabay.com)

**WARNING: DETAILED SPOILERS AHEAD**

Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man will probably always be my favorite but both his Spidey and Andrew Garfield’s kept that ‘down to Earth, nice guy just trying to figure out life and the double life’ character genuine. I felt Holland’s take on Peter/Spider-Man was a lot more put on and honestly, anyone could’ve been in the role. He’s certainly not as memorable as Maguire or Garfield’s friendly neighborhood web-slinger.

A friend of mine reviewed Spider-Man: Homecoming on his blog and I firmly agree that while Tom Holland does indeed bring the character of Peter Parker/Spider-Man to life, he does so in a very generic way.

Holland’s Spider-Man eventually goes on to dive right into the ‘Superhero who is nothing without their hero persona’ cliché or as I like to call it the: ‘Nothing without this suit’ cliché.

Peter quits everything in school that makes him who he is in order to be Spider-Man full-time. Sure, having to do this was bound to happen sooner or later but he doesn’t even give many explanations or try to. Sure he might cite ‘his internship with Mr. Stark’ as his reason for quitting all of his extracurricular activities but really?

Holland’s Spidey/Peter has almost no backbone outside of his suit and is at the forefront until he actually stops Vulture (Michael Keaton) in the end, but him only continuing to fail everyone around him and finally come out on top was very predictable and even when he was in a tight spot, you knew everything was going to be okay. No suspense was built at all.

Please know, I’m not blaming the actor. He had to do what the script said — but either way, this is not a Spidey performance for the books.

Though, Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man/Tony Stark acting as Peter’s mentor and father figure was a nice pick-me-up throughout the film. Honestly, I did feel the film dragging at parts but RDJ helped to combat that.

Not to mention Zendaya’s character was fun for the most part. She was pretty annoying for a good chunk of the movie but overall, her character was a breath of fresh air. More on her later.

The characters of Ned and Flash, however, were terrible.

Fair-weather friend, relentless bully gets away with everything, and unrealistic brokenheartedness

In the movie, Peter has a friend named Ned (Jacob Batalon). But, I’ve taken to calling him Fair Weather Ned.

Sure, he might’ve helped Peter somewhat in the end while our masked hero was taking on Vulture. But, overall, Ned is nothing more than a fair weather friend.

Why?

Simply because he blurted out that Peter ‘knew Spider-Man’ and tried to use that to his advantage just to be at the ‘cool party.’ Peter begged Ned not to say anything over and over, only for him to more or less go back on that. I understand that Ned didn’t blurt out the truth but twisting it somewhat and saying anything regarding Spider-Man is being a bad friend in general.

Plus, the fact that he doesn’t step in at the ‘cool party’ and try to get the character, Flash, to stop making fun of Peter. That’s a fair weather friend if I ever did see one

Honestly, Ned might even only be friends with Peter because he’s ‘the other kid with no friends.’

Then there’s Flash (Tony Revolori), the relentless bully who gets away with everything. He is already jealous of Peter being right more times than he is when it comes to answering questions at Academic Decathlon Team practice and just doesn’t let up. He is clearly making fun of Peter because he’s jealous but it’s done so frequently that he sounds like a whiny baby.

I realize this is a movie and rather unrealistic but I know if anyone in my high school had yelled at someone else “[word for genitals]” followed by their last name as they parked their car in the morning like how Flash did to Peter, there would have been serious consequences. It’s very much implied that such a thing happens on a daily basis. When bullying continues like that, I’m pretty sure that’s called harassment. Since even Peter doesn’t seem to stand up for himself, that doesn’t send such a positive message.

Flash needed a slap in the face if only so he would cool it. No hate to the actor who played him since he had to play the character as written but Flash was relentlessly annoying.

Then there was Liz (Laura Harrier), the sort-of intended love interest for Peter who you know it’s not going to work out with. And naturally, she was the daughter of Vulture. Her character was very much a good person who is beloved by everyone for her beauty and brains. Oh and look at that: the love interest of the hero is the villain’s daughter cliché!

After Liz and Peter arrive for their school’s homecoming dance, once Liz goes inside, naturally, Vulture threatens Peter. This is because Vulture can obviously tell Peter is Spider-Man on the side while no one else can …

Though I can’t get mad at that because of that whole no one could tell Henry Cavill was Henry Cavill actually standing under Superman posters thing.

Peter eventually ditches Liz at the dance. Her reaction to Peter after all is right with the world (i.e. after her father is in police custody and facing the consequences of what he did) is not believable.

Liz is an older girl than Peter and while age doesn’t negate emotions, the fact that she’s utterly heartbroken over this younger and more immature guy ditching her at the dance is very far-fetched. I understand that this might be more of bringing to life the pretty girl suddenly likes former nerd solely because he’s a hero cliché but that’s just too much.

By this point in the film, Liz has clearly noticed that Peter has been disappearing more and more over the last weeks. So, she really shouldn’t be surprised and it’s ridiculous that she says she’s over him while in tears. Those tears are to show that she’s still hurt.

Ladies, gentlemen, really, don’t let someone who’s always bailing on you hurt you that bad. If they can’t give you a real answer (how Peter can’t even come up with a believable excuse nor find the courage to confide in Liz that he is Spider-Man), the flaky person is not worth the trouble.

Please excuse the pun, but the ‘tangled web of clichés’ found within this movie really disinterested me.
( https://pexels.com)

A few noteworthy highlights and lingering questions

I wasn’t too keen on the way that Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) found out that her nephew Peter is Spider-Man. But, I appreciated the way she was ready to curse only for the credits to cut her off and that was a nice bit of comic relief to finish the movie with.

Michael Keaton’s performance as Vulture was wonderful. Sure, I’ve seen plenty of memes regarding a line from the Christopher Nolan Batman films since Keaton was playing a villain here and did play Batman once and played Alfred in the Nolan films. But, I’d argue those memes are further proof that Keaton played the role of a villain so, so well. In fact, he really made me empathize with him and part of me hoped that Peter wouldn’t stop him.

Zendaya’s MJ is that friend who is a bit cold at first as a defense mechanism but then is actually pretty fun to hang around. Her high-school aged character seems to be the only one who has any real maturity in her personality.

Also, she made a remark about the Washington Monument being built by slaves. That line left me thinking and, while I really don’t know what to believe, I found a pretty good explanation.

Even so, I wouldn’t have gone up there with my classmates given all of the Spider-Man based drama that seemed to surround them all. Again, just further proving that no matter MJ’s reasoning for not going up into the Washington Monument with her classmates, she’s the only one who has her head on straight.

Childish Gambino, I mean Donald Glover, played Aaron Davis who said a line about having a nephew in Brooklyn. He was indeed alluding to my favorite incarnation of Spider-Man, Miles Morales. That did make me laugh also because Glover loaned his voice to Miles in the “Ultimate Spider-Man” cartoon.

And, is Zendaya’s MJ going to indeed take on the love interest role of Mary Jane ‘MJ’ Watson? Or, is MJ just going to fill a supportive friend role? If Michelle continues to be Peter’s friend and nothing more, that’s A-okay with me too. But her character is just too good to suddenly throw into Peter’s arms when needed.

I understand that love can grow out of friendship but that’s very rare. If nothing else, I vote Michelle eventually becomes Black Cat and shows Peter a thing or two — minus the whole Spidey and Black Cat romance, of course.

Or, could the love interest role fall back to Liz? Will she and Peter make up in some other romance-trope-cliché? Perhaps Liz could even go on to fill the Gwen Stacy role. Or, is Gwen going to make an appearance on her own?

Stan Lee’s cameo where he yelled out of a window that he would come down and beat Peter in his Spider-Man suit really did make me smile but I have to be honest. With such a cookie-cutter take on Spider-Man, I’m not sure I want to see what would be written for a Miles Morales-centric movie because I could very much see such a dynamic character being completely ruined by haphazard high school clichés and laziness all-around.

Onto the next MCU Movie please — I’d like to forget this one.

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