Spider-Man: Homecoming

 

(BBFC 12A, 2hrs 13mins)


Imagine that The Breakfast Club’s Brian (the dorky, nerdy one) was a superhero, itching to break free of his enforced detention and save the world, and you’ll have pretty much nailed the tone Spider-Man: Homecoming is aiming at. And, for the most part, it manages to sustain that tone and deliver a breezy blast of high-summer fun in a movie that’s very difficult to dislike.

Following directly on from his turn in Captain America: Civil War, Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Tom Holland) finds himself back in the New York borough of Queens, living with his aunt May (Marisa Tomei) and dealing with the problems of being a fifteen-year old student, science nerd and superhero. Desperate to be accepted by not only his high school classmates but also his mentor Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), Peter struggles to balance his homework with his moonlight crime-fighting duties. As if being a teenager weren’t enough, Peter craves greater responsibility than catching bicycle thieves, a bigger challenge than chastising the local hoodlums and, despite Stark’s warnings, he goes all out to prove himself when Adrian Toomes/The Vulture (Michael Keaton) enters the frame. When Spidey and The Vulture’s battle of attrition culminates in a spectacular sequence aboard the Staten Island ferry, an exasperated Tony Stark is forced to repossess the super-suit he had gifted to Peter.


Toomes has taken to hawking alien technology and weapons on the black market after Stark puts his construction company out of business and, unlike so many other of Marvel’s villains, he doesn’t want to rule the Universe, he just wants to make a profit.  In many ways Toomes is the anti-Stark, he shirks the responsibility that comes with his high-tech weaponry and is a dark mirror of Stark’s paternal disappointment in his young protégé. It’s all set up for a final confrontation where Peter, now stripped back to his rawest form must use his wits, intelligence and bravery to defeat a foe armed with futuristic firepower, guile, viciousness and little to no conscience.

This being the third restart for Spider-Man in fifteen years (after the Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield iterations), fifty-ish years of comic books and countless animated series, Marvel have, wisely, taken the view that there’s no need for this to be yet another origin story. If you’re not on board with all the radioactive spider and Uncle Ben, “With great power…” stuff by now you probably never will be. It’s a bold decision, especially in an age where blockbusters rely so heavily on clunky exposition, to demote the origin story to one line and Uncle Ben’s dying lines to a thematic arc/lesson, to credit the audience with some intelligence, to acknowledge the cultural impact of arguably their most famous property, but one that totally pays off.


Tom Holland shines as Peter/Spider-Man, he’s affable, funny, dorky, clumsy and adorable both in his costume and out. There’s never any disconnect between the two personas, so the kid who trips over his own laces is also the hero who never quite manages to stick his landings, whose teenage bedroom is as messy as the calamity he creates swinging about Queens and bringing down treehouses. He’s a smart kid who’s naïve about the world and battling with not one but two learning curves about growing up and being a hero.

Sadly, Homecoming is not without its problems though. The supporting cast is never quite given enough time to flesh out and you’ll find yourself wishing a little more time had been spent in the trenches of adolescence and a little less spent with Robert Downey Jr popping in and out of the movie. It’s also a shame that Michael Keaton gets little to sink his beak into apart from one chillingly civil conversation with Peter. That said, the support isn’t particularly under written, in fact some are so good you want to see more of them especially Zendaya as Peter’s classmate Michelle, Ned played by Jacob Batalon and Tomei’s aunt May. Oh well, maybe in the inevitable next instalment.


Spider-Man: Homecoming is often more of a teen comedy in the vein of those John Hughes movies like the afore-mentioned Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (which makes a brief appearance) than an all-out superhero slug-fest but manages to carry out both its component parts and create a cohesive and enjoyable whole. Whilst not quite up to the high-water mark of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2, by bringing your friendly neighbourhood web-slinger back home (in all senses) Marvel have upped the fun and rediscovered what it is that makes Spider-Man so amazing.

Andy Oliver