Week 103: Spider-Man: Homecoming

This movie never should have worked. The audience should have had Spider-Man fatigue after five previous live-action films. It was made by two movie studios with very different approaches to the material. The screenplay has six credited authors. Vulture is among the least interesting villains in the Spider-Man comics, and Ned Leeds is among the least interesting classmates of Peter in school. And yet somehow, it all works like a charm. I don't know how much of it was talent by a creative team with something to prove, how much was the reliability of the source material, and how much was just plain good luck, but this is a really fun movie that still holds up seven years later. The under-utilization of Zendaya and some noticeably sub-par CGI are the only parts that don't play in 2024. (8/10)

Speaking of Zendaya, I appreciate the little background detail that Michelle is reading W. Somerset Maugham in gym class while everyone else is watching the Captain America video.

I love the casting of Jennifer Connelly as the voice of Karen aka Suit Lady, since her husband Paul Bettany was the voice of J.A.R.V.I.S. aka Vision. That one's for trivia nerds.

During the dance, Shocker attacks Spider-Man and smashes several buses around and into each other. No one, not one person, hears this commotion despite so many people being at the school that night?

Certain Spider-Man stories over the decades struck a nerve and became touchstones for the character, like Gwen Stacy's fate on the bridge. When I read the ending of the "Torment" storyline, I never would have guessed that it would ascend to that level. It's not an especially compelling story, just Spider-Man trapped under rubble, slowly dying, contemplating his mistakes, imagining life going on without him, and finally digging deep to find the inner strength to free himself. That's not terribly dynamic, it's difficult to portray cinematically, and it doesn't get to the essence of the character... and yet, versions of it keep being retold again and again, as it does here when Toomes brings his warehouse down on top of Spidey. Tom Holland really sells it, crying and screaming in a way that previous versions of the character couldn't. And there's even a comics callback embedded within the comics callback, when the half-mask gets recreated in the puddle of water.

What is the purpose of the jet engine on top of the plane's tail? Engines work by maximizing the air flow to push upward on the wings. There's nothing to push up back there. That rear engine is just there to endanger Spider-Man's life for no reason, like the chompers in Galaxy Quest.

The plot twist that Adrian Toomes is Liz's father shouldn't work; we already saw his reaction to the Washington Monument explosion on TV (albeit cut off by the editing) and, well, the coincidence is just too convenient. But one of my favorite memories of seeing this in theaters was the audible gasps in the audience when he answers the door at Liz's house before the dance. It's cheap but it works anyway, really tying the whole movie together, and of course Michael Keaton is perfect for the part, particularly in the "dad talk" scene. (8/10)

Discussion question: Do you prefer high-school Peter Parker or adult Peter Parker? I've been a fan of Joe Quesada for years; I met him back when he was just an artist drawing X-Factor and Ninjak, well before he became editor-in-chief overseeing all creative decisions at Marvel Comics for the last couple of decades. But something that Quesada once said rubbed me the wrong way, that Parker being a teenager is essential to the character, and that he should never age or grow or stop being nervous around girls or picked on by bullies or struggling to juggle school with crime-fighting. I disagree! By the time I got into comics around 1990, adult Parker already had a marriage and career and other grown-up responsibilities, and the comics had gone well past the repetitive and predictable high-school-nerd stories, to their considerable improvement. Thus, I was unhappy when the comics de-aged him back into his youth and the movies seem fixed on that age as well and Quesada made that comment, because the teenager material is all just so monotonous by now. There are hundreds of mainstream American movies about what it's like to be a teenager; I really don't need another one.