Homecoming is the best Spidey movie ever made

MOVIE: Spider-Man: Homecoming

STARRING: Tom Holland, Robert Downey Jr

RATING: M

IT MAY seem ridiculous, rebooting Spider-Man for the third time in 15 years but after seeing Spider-Man: Homecoming, you’ll be glad they did.

The Tobey Maguire Spider-Man of 2002 was fine; the Andrew Garfield Amazing Spider-Man of 2012 was also fine. The Tom Holland Spider-Man of 2017 is the best Spider-Man movie ever to grace the screen.

Spider-Man: Homecoming is the perfect blend of high school dramedy and superhero antics. This is Marvel’s homage to John Hughes, complete with Ferris Bueller reference.

By taking it back to the school setting and ageing Spidey down to 15 years old, it recaptures some of the innocent magic gleaned in the comic pages. It also, for a movie with a flying villain and an altitude-defying superhero, grounds the story.

One of the main criticisms of superhero blockbusters is that they’re overblown with ever-increasing, imminent apocalypses and cities toppling over, usually in a stupidly bombastic third act.

Here, the stakes are much smaller, as is the body count with Peter turning off his suit’s “kill mode” as quickly as he realised it existed. For this Spider-Man, asking a girl to the homecoming dance is as fraught as stopping the bad guy.

Holland’s Spidey is pitch perfect as the high school hero.