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With $13 million or more, director Jon Watts’ film would outpace the Thursday preview performances of such blockbusters as Deadpool ($12.7 million), Guardians of the Galaxy ($11.2 million) and Wonder Woman ($11.2 million). Homecoming would also launch out of the gate well ahead of 2007’s Spider-Man 3 ($10 million), the final chapter in Sam Raimi’s trilogy, and 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ($8.7 million), the Marc Webb sequel that preceded the reboot.
According to the movie, the U.S. Department of Damage Control was created by (who else?) Tony Stark and the U.S. government right after the events of "The Avengers". Really? And this DDOC wasn't mentioned by Nick Fury, Phil Coulson or anyone else within the MCU in the past five years?
Perhaps the "Damage Control" alluded to IM was an independent contractor (owned by Tyne Daly's Anna Marie Hoag and "acquired" by Tony Stark) just like Toomes and his crew, that grew and was given an official government office in light of the upsurge in enhanced-human activities?
As for why they haven't been mentioned more often? Well, in the comics it's part of their reputation that they are quick and unobtrusive. Also, they tend to arrive after the film/episode is over, while we're waiting for the end tag.
Also, hindsight is 20/20. If they knew then what they know now and all that. Also, keep in mind that for a time Damage Control was a candidate for a Marvel sit-com. Wheels within wheels.
Not, its not, since 3 was...3, and the Garfield films--with his "I--I'm such a misfit" act---was anything but a genuine Spider-Man. And thankfully, the romantic interest this film (Zendaya) is not grating at all, but a normal personality (Like Kirsten Dunst in the Raimi spider-Man movies). The opposite of Emma Stone in the Garfield movies.
I don't know if I'd call Michelle the love interest, it was pretty much just Liz here, with a possible set up for her to become the love interest in future movies at the end.
I just saw the movie a couple hours ago, and I really enjoyed. Tom Holland was great, Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield both were good, but I really thought Tom Holland was the best all around Spider-Man. He felt like a teenager trying his best to be a good superhero.
Micheal Keaton was awesome, the best Marvel villain since Tom Hiddleston's Loki.
The rest of the cast was pretty good to, with Jacob Batalon's Ned and Zendaya's Michelle being highlights.
The story was really good to, with a nice emphasis on the conflict between Peter's normal life and superhero life. I was a little nervous about how well the superhero and high school elements would end up being combined, but I thought did a really good job of making it all work together.
One of the last Spidey stories I read was New Ways to Die, so I got a big kick out of Marc Gargan, who played a pretty big role in that story, although as Venom rather than Scorpion.
You definitely need to stay through both the mid credits scene, which appears to set up the next villain, and especially for the post-credits scene. Just be patient.
My Grade: A- ______________________________________________________________
This is the third take on this particularly superhero this century... Which, sure, isn't saying much since we're less than 20 years into it but it should say a lot considering took most of the whole of the 20th century to get 3 iterations of Batman and Superman. but such is the ways with modern Hollywood and how the film rights to characters work.
After the tepid response to The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in 2014 Sony found themselves backed into a corner holding a turd they thought was chocolate. They wanted to launch something of their own version of a comic book Cinematic Universe like Fox has with the X-Men and Disney has with the bulk of Marvel's characters but with the results of TAM2 it wasn't happening. Their contract with Marvel says they have to have a Spider-man movie in some level of production at least every two years or they loose the film rights to him and they revert back to Marvel (who would love to have the iconic superhero back.)
So what to do? Reboot Spider-man again for the second time inside of 20 years? You could probably manipulate the terms of the contract by having a movie perpetually in the very early stages of production, enough to satisfy the terms without spending much capital on making a movie but that's a waste of a solid property at a time when superhero movies are all the rage.
So what to do?
Well, here comes Disney and Marvel with an offer and a possible solution, give Marvel some level of control back over Spider-man and let him join the Marvel Cinematic Universe, something fans have been dying to see happen. Sony retains some control and financial benefit of the character, mostly control over solo movies, and Marvel gets to use their banner character in their ever expanding universe.
How did it work out?
Marvel took some ideas from Spider-man, possibly learning where Sony fumbled in the past, and did what they could to make this Spider-man their own while staying true to the character, and also avoided doing yet another origin story with him. Spider-man was introduced in Captain America: Civil War (3) where he was a highlight of a big action sequence involving pretty much all of the MCU characters (minus Thor and Hulk.)
Reception was very positive and many apprehensions were relieved on how well Marvel and Sony did this version of Spider-Man even if some of the changes made felt odd. (Seriously, Aunt May shouldn't be so damn attractive.)
Spider-Man's first solo outing under the partial control of Marvel had to maintain this momentum and prove that the two studios could work together and produce a good Spider-man movie that was tonally consistent with the MCU universe and was able to introduce the character without having to do an entire origin story.
Well, we *do* get an origin story, of sorts, but not in the way you'd think. We don't see the "radioactive" spider, we don't get the death of Uncle Ben or the mysteries of Peter's birth parents, the origin we get is Peter Parker growing from "your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man" to Spider-Man the Avenger-to-be, taking on the big challenges and finding the balance between his private social life and his heroic life. (An aspect not many of the Marvel heroes have to deal with given that they all pretty have their identities known.)
The movie treats us to some snippets of the events of Peter's point of view during the battle in the airport tarmac in "Civil War" and then picks up months later to "present day" with Peter now trying to live his life as, he thinks, an Avenger, all but waiting by the phone for Tony Stark to call him on another mission.
Tony's mostly sidelined Peter, putting him under the supervision of Happy who takes the task as more of annoyance than anything else, so Peter finds his calls unreturned, "mission reports" not reacted to and he can't even get a face-to-face meeting with Tony Stark himself, instead talking to Tony through an empty Iron Man suit. He tries to keep his identity a secret but accidentally reveals himself to his best friend who struggles to stay cool about it but manages to not leak it out. Peter also struggles to keep his secret from being revealed to Aunt May.
Things grow complicated as Peter tires to wade into the deeper waters of crime-fighting when he encounters a man in an armored, flying, suit ("The Vulture") using stolen alien technology to arm criminals. Peter fumbles and makes mistakes, alienating friends, classmates, and angering Tony and his aunt.
A good portion of the movie is spent with Peter as Peter rather than Spider-Man and when he is Spider-Man he struggles and stumbles to do the big tasks, particularly with the high-tech suit provided to him by Tony Stark, though he does have a moment where he shines.
The movie's pacing sometimes feels a little slow, but not terribly as the characters were interesting (though I found the friend character a bit annoying) and Peter's arc works nicely as we see him grow into a bigger super hero and doesn't need the death or potential death of his girlfriend or aunt for it to happen.
The movie also excels in an area where Marvel struggles, we have an interesting villain. The Vulture isn't just some vague bad-guy with vague goals of general world-conquering but a working-class man slighted by the government when he found himself in financial ruin in the aftermath of The Battle of New York in the first Avengers movie. (He was originally contracted to do the clean-up and spent a load of money on staff and equipment only to have a government agency step in and claim jurisdiction and not bail him out, he uses some of the recovered alien technology he still has to make advanced weapons to sell on the black market.) A large part of this is The Vulture being played by Michael Keaton who does a fantastic job in the role and actually makes you see where this guy is coming from and genuinely see where his loyalties and morality lies.
I could probably quibble on some nitpicks (I find it hard to believe the advanced Spider-man suit provided by Stark could so easily be hacked and disabled by a teenager, I also find it hard to believe Tony would transport a plane-load of sensitive equipment without giving it a personal escort in an Iron Man suit,) but overall the movie works and the story sort-of calls for these things to happen for things to work.
Probably the biggest "complaint" I have is that the movie goes a little far in trying to make sure we KNOW this is set in the MCU with a lot of references to it and establishing it there, I know you've got to reassure us that this is in the same world as the other Marvel movies but at times it seems to be trying too hard. Also Disney is REALLY proud of their ownership of the Star Wars license and they're not ever going to let you forget it and, dammit, Sony's going to get a slice of that too if it can!
I have some complaints about a big character decision they're going with as it's such a great departure of what's expected from the comics, but it may be interesting to see how it plays out in future movies.
And, of course, stay through the credits for bonus scenes.
Overall I'd say it may be the "best" Spider-man movie since the Toby McGuire Spider-man 2. this one might nudge past it a bit considering I like the younger version of Spider-man over the older one McGuire played and seeing Peter's high-school aged awkwardness is fun. (Though we're missing out on a lot of his surviving-on-his-own independent years and is now backed by Tony Stark with a high-tech suit.)
I have some complaints about a big character decision they're going with as it's such a great departure of what's expected from the comics, but it may be interesting to see how it plays out in future movies.
Overall I'd say it may be the "best" Spider-man movie since the Toby McGuire Spider-man 2. this one might nudge past it a bit considering I like the younger version of Spider-man over the older one McGuire played and seeing Peter's high-school aged awkwardness is fun. (Though we're missing out on a lot of his surviving-on-his-own independent years and is now backed by Tony Stark with a high-tech suit.)
I know it will probably never happening, but I little part of me can't help but wish that Avengers Tower is going to become the Baxter Building.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention how much the very last part of the main body of the movie cracked me up. I can't wait to see where that leads in the next movie.
IMO best interpretation of the 'Spiderman' character to date. I loved the modernization and motivation behind 'the Vulture' and his gang. They had a reason (although misguided) for why they were doing what they were doing. The bit with the Spiderman 'home video' was hilarious. I also loved the Spidersuit as an actual character itself in the film.
I love that they didn't treat the Vulture as an idiot - and I loved how he deduced Spiderman's true identity. I was concerned that they might have Ironman overshadow Spiderman in parts of the film, but it really didn't happen.
I also LOVED Chris Evans 'Captain America' PSAs in the film and in the Easter Egg scene - big props to him for be willing to do that - I mean yes, he got paid - but he could have said no because he's getting tired of doing the charactert, and these were 'gag' bits.
I also LOVED the final scene in the main film with Aunt May...it was perfect.
All in all it goes back to the roots/core of the original Sppiderman character - a kid who is often overconfident in his spider powers, but still learning how to make use of them and often unsure in other aspects of his life; but playful in combat, and the Spiderman banter was well done.
There are still other MCU films I enjoyed more, but this one is up there. I did a good job with the characters and story, and was entertaining and fun.
Tomorrow morning is going to be my earliest opportunity to see the movie, but there's something that's bugging me right now: insistence in certain corners of the Internet that not putting a certain detail regarding Zendaya's character out there beforehand constitutes "hiding a twist" about her and somehow "misleading" fans as to her identity.
Just because there's a certain aspect of her character that happens to be shared with a pre-existing character from the Spider mythos doesn't make her said character any more than Emily Bett Rickards' character in the Arrowverse sharing a name with a C-list Firestorm supporting character makes the two characters the same.
2. All this "Best since Spidey 2" and "2nd only to Spider-man 2" is driving me nuts. It's better than Spider-man 2 and it's not even close. That movie is highly overrated.
3. I hope that gothy loner girl isn't Mary Jane. Just.....don't do it. I know you guys wanna be cute, but don't.
4. Aunt May is SO sexy. I can't believe I'm actually uttering those words. And I'm glad they actually made that a running joke in the movie because it's unavoidable how smoking hot Marissa Tomei is.
5. Minor gripe: no spidey sense. Did they forget he had it? Cuz it sure wasn't working.
6. MAJOR GRIPE: Uncle Ben. There should NEVER be a Spider-man movie featuring a new Spidey that doesn't mention Uncle Ben. Ever.
Sorry, to be a wet blanket, but it was good, just far from great.
My review:
Almost 10 years ago, when Iron Man hit the theaters, the super-hero movie was simple. You introduce a character and their supporting characters/villain and that’s that. The first post-credit scene of this era heralded what would shortly become a hallmark of the modern super-hero movie: the larger universe. We began to see a cinematic universe in which characters introduced in one movie would migrate over to others. Iron Man 2 introduced us to Black Widow who would go on to join the others in Avengers and then the Captain America sequels. Captain America ended with him meeting Nick Fury, introduced in said first post-credit scene. Thor would introduce us to Hawkeye and feature another Iron Man emigre, Phil Coulson. They’d all mix in Avengers, star in their own sequel and eventually end up meeting back up in both Avengers: Age of Ultron and with Ant-Man in Captain America: Civil War.
It was in Civil War that we were introduced to Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, something Spider-Man: Homecoming revisits in its opening scene. It seems that after Tony left his apartment, Peter was put into the care of Happy Hogan (a refuge from the Iron Man movies, last seen in the hospital in 2013’s Iron Man 3), where he filmed a vlog featuring bad camera work to chronicle his adventure.
After that, he’s left hanging, and in a way, so are we. Tony hoists Peter onto Happy fully and goes off to do whatever Tony does when he’s not on-screen. And despite the cute, but not great opening moments, we’re left like Peter, struggling to find something interesting.
The main selling point of this Spider-Man reboot is that it wouldn’t have the albatross of an origin story. We don’t have to witness Peter being bitten during a field-trip again. We aren’t forced to see Uncle Ben die again. Instead both Peter and the movie seem to be adrift because of this.
Don’t get fooled, it’s still an origin movie of a sort, there’s still the arc of a fledgling hero trying and failing to learn the ropes (webs) of being a hero. He still encounters a villain who’s a mystery to him, but ultimately ends up tied into whatever Peter Parker is going through. Once again, the villain of the piece has a personal connection to Peter. You just can’t fight Spider-Man without tying into his personal life in someway or somehow. I guess unless you’re Electro and, well, no one cares about Electro.
I wish they had found something interesting to do with the time between the beginning and the end since they weren’t tied to the origin story, but Homecoming suffers because of it. Granted, I’m not implying we needed to see the origin again, far from it, but give us something great to fill that void.
Which brings me to Tony Stark. They took a big swing with his inclusion and in my opinion fouled out. With Tony Stark included, they ran the risk of Spider-Man: Homecoming becoming Iron Man 3: Spider-Man’s in This One. Thankfully, they avoided that, but almost by going in the other direction.
It’s clear that Tony wants to be Spider-Man’s mentor. However, that mentoring is totally hands-off. Even his means of controlling/teaching him, the suit, is fumbled. Instead of telling Peter the suit will teach him and unlock features as he learns, he leaves that bit out, as if Peter is supposed to figure out that Tony’s into the gamification of the super-hero by himself. Which is problematic, since apparently the suit is easily hacked via USB with the computer programming level of a gifted(?) high school student. One wonders if the Iron Man armors are that easily hackable. You’d think Tony would have learned after Ultron.
There could have been a great story to be told with Peter unlocking the features instead of cheat-coding his way to godmode on the suit and completely fumbling it. There’s even a better story to be told of Peter being overwhelmed by it and deciding against the features for a more streamlined approach (such as the Peter of the comics, who doesn’t need all of these features and/or develops most of them on his own).
Of course, the suit gets taken away from him, setting him back to square-one with his hoodie suit and homemade web-fluid. It’s this way he’s go to go through the climax of the movie. And despite the fact that the stakes of the movie are whether the Vulture gets away with stuff from Tony’s tower (which is being sold), Iron Man doesn’t show up, even for the clean-up. Again, it wouldn’t work for Iron Man to save the day in a Spider-Man movie, but I was expecting Iron Man to show up after Vulture was dispatched.
The very end, not counting the ubiquitous post-credit scenes, feels as if it could have been from Iron Man 4, only from backstage. I guess it’s part of watching a shared universe. One wonders if that movie would have been more interesting.
As for the other characters, they’re really there to move the plot or provide a few good moments. In that respect, Hannibal Buress kills it, sadly, though Martin Starr is wasted in his role. There’s got to be a good story featuring Zendaya’s character, but we’re only teased about who she is, even in the end with her (not-so) big reveal. Tyne Daly also seems wasted, another actor choice which seems like they’re meant for something more. If she’s not given a bigger role in future Marvel movies, I question why she was even here. And there’s two cameos which fall under spoilers one of which is great and the other was a complete surprise for me, but it just opens up a whole lot of questions.
So, the Captain America videos were great, especially the final end-credit sequence which is just trolling us for staying through the credits for these things. I wonder if it's Sony poking fun at Marvel Studios/Disney and us, the fans. But I loved it. Pepper Potts though? Glad to see she's back with Tony after Civil War, but wow, what's going on between them and will we ever see it? What deal did Sony have with her that Marvel/Disney wasn't able to do?
Spider-Man: Homecoming isn’t a bad movie. As far as Spider-Man movies (of which we’ve now had 5), it’s in the top three. However, after all of the other movies, it’s hard to say this is a winner. Even 2015’s Ant-Man comes off better in most ways. The hero is more fleshed out (avoiding the origin only gives us hints of what’s up with Aunt May, so she’s basically just there for filler). The humor is a little better. The hero’s journey is more interesting. And the cameo is more organic (and enjoyable).
It’s not as if this isn’t a good movie. It’s definitely a good time and there are some good jokes and laughs throughout. It’s a solid B, up from the C to C- the poorly named Amazing Spider-Man movies were (as well as the better forgotten, 10 year old Spider-Man 3), but below the A to A+’s the first two Spider-Man movies were.
I think Marvel's gauging audience reaction here before they commit. If the fans take to 'Michelle,' the ugly duckling of Homecoming will be revealed as being in witness protection thanks to her abusive dad (fake name), pull off a Sandy-in-Grease makeover and become the bombshell (if slightly darker-complexioned) redhead we know and love, probably in the end-credits scene of Spider-Man: Prom Night (Yeah, I'm calling it now). If (like you) the audience isn't feeling it, Michelle's last name remains Jones. And then Debby Ryan will deliver the ultimate blind-date punchline instead.
4. Aunt May is SO sexy. I can't believe I'm actually uttering those words. And I'm glad they actually made that a running joke in the movie because it's unavoidable how smoking hot Marissa Tomei is.
This'd be a good gag in Prom Night - May gets so tired of guys panting after her that she gets a short haircut and dyes it silver (Ultimate Aunt May) to look older and less attractive. And it totally backfires.
Spidey's still a growing boy, a WIP who gets very easily distracted; the Spidey Sense probably simply hasn't developed yet, or not enough that he recognizes it as such. Plus now he's got 'Karen' and Ned to act as his early warning system.
Time enough for that, I think. Save it for a key story moment and make it count.
And think about this: Now you're also gonna need a younger Ben Parker, someone who fits as Marisa Tomei's husband yet can still deliver the wise elder goods when and where it counts. Hmm. Think Vin Diesel'd be up for a second role in the MCU...?
