By Bernie ‘The Movie Guy’ Ment
Contributing Writer
Tom Holland is the third actor to step into the big screen shoes (or slippers, perhaps) of the webslinging superhero known as Spiderman following admirable efforts by Tobey McGuire and Andrew Garfield. The big difference, though, is that Holland can actually pass for a high school age teenager, unlike his predecessors.
That’s just one of the things they got right with “Spiderman: Homecoming,” the latest Marvel superhero masterpiece in theaters this summer.
This film manages to combine the right mix of action, adventure and suspense to keep audiences riveted for the full two hour run of the storyline. Holland plays off nicely with his co-stars with the right mixture of cockiness and uncertainty of a kid trying to figure out his place in life as well as how to deal with his newfound powers.
Bitten by a radioactive spider in a lab experiment, Peter Parker (Holland) gains superpowers with many similarities to a spider’s abilities. He can climb walls and he has an inherent spider sense that lets him know when things around him aren’t quite ‘right’.
Additionally, young Parker has developed a webshooter that allows him to emit a super strong tensile webbing from his wrists, perfect for shooting out a rope he can use to swing between buildings or bind bad guys who he catches on his exploits.
One of those bad guys is played by none other than Michael Keaton who has made a career out of playing characters with questionable moral values or somewhat off kilter psyches.
Keaton plays Adrian Toomes, a recycler who falls on hard times after a contract he secured with the city of New York to salvage material from the damage caused in the last Captain America movie is suddenly taken from him.
Toomes decides to steal some of the technology left behind and fashions a flying suit out of some of the material. As the supervillain Vulture, Toomes acquires more salvage which he subsequently puts on the black market to the highest bidder, a situation that can’t go unchecked by either Spiderman nor Avengers leader Tony Stark who takes the young webslinger under his wing.
Since we’ve already been treated to big screen retellings of the Spiderman origin at least twice to date, the producers fortunately spare us from seeing the tale a third time. Instead, this version picks up where the Captain America movie left off, with Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) showing young Parker the superhero ropes as he treats him to fascinating upgrades for both his suit and the technology incorporated therein.
As a Spiderman purist who read the comics going back to the sixties when Stan Lee first introduced the character to comic book audiences, the technological upgrades were one element of this movie that didn’t sit right with me. Spiderman always relied on the abilities he gained from the spider bite, not special effects that were built into his costume. The costume, provided by Stark, also gives Spiderman additional powers which he never had in those earlier generation comics and are largely unnecessary even in the scope of this storyline.
Additionally, the producers also chose to re-write parts of the Spiderman legend, which I’m sure we’ll see more of in future Spiderman installments. I will pass judgment on those changes when they see fruition on the big screen.
Holland is ideally suited for the role of Parker and he works well with Downey who is as snarky as ever as Tony Stark. Jon Favreau also manages to steal parts of the movie as Happy Hogan, Stark’s chauffeur and head of staff who needs to slow down and learn to tolerate others if he expects to keep his employment in the future.
The real charm of the movie, though, is Keaton who is perfectly suited to playing the lead bad guy here. He manages to instill Toomes with elements of sincerity which manages to make him even more off-putting and his comeuppance all the more poignant at the end of the story.
One other thing that I found a little disconcerting were the CGI effects that show Spiderman climbing up walls and other objects. While the effect looks extremely unreal, it does lend a certain appeal nevertheless since Parker does look very spider-like as his CGI variant bounds up the walls with the agility akin to a real arachnid.
As with most Marvel movies, be sure to stay for the end credits. There are two Easter eggs, one near the start of the credits and an especially humorous one tacked on to the end. The latter has little to do with the storyline, per se, but it’s still worth viewing for the laughs it provides.
It’s not often that I enjoy superhero reboots, but this one deserves a fair shake. I give Spiderman: Homecoming 4 out of 5 stars.
