A WEBBED WONDER
Spider-Man scales new heights
I honestly didn’t think I was ready for another Spider-Man. After the Tobey Maguire trilogy (2002-2007) and the truncated Andrew Garfield years (20122014), not to mention Tom Holland’s appearance in the climactic scene of last year’s Captain America: Civil War, I was awaiting this one with all the anticipation of a new iPhone iOS. “SM v. 3.1b” was my private name for Homecoming.
And yet darned if Holland’s Spidey doesn’t breathe new life into the old web-slinger, who officially turns 55 this year and doesn’t look a day over 15 in the movie. How’d they do it?
First and foremost, no backstory.
As written by a six-man consortium headed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley (Horrible Bosses), this Spider-Man doesn’t bother introducing Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben just to bump him off and teach the kid a lesson. (Though it does include Marisa Tomei as the hottest Aunt May to grace the screen.) Even the radioactive spider bite is mentioned only in passing, after Peter’s pal (Jacob Batalon in a fine bit of comic relief ) learns his secret identity.
Instead, we get something new. Michael Keaton stars as Adrian Toomes, a blue-collar type heading up the cleanup of one of the Avengers movies that wrecked parts of New York. His job looks like a workers’ comp/alien lawsuit waiting to happen, but before he can start, the feds take over with a new department, Damage Control. (Can’t help but see those initials, DC, as a dig at that other superhero franchise whose track record, until Wonder Woman, has been less than super.) Undeterred, Toomes grabs a bit of alien tech and makes himself a flying suit and some weapons to traffic. In something of a full cinematic circle, the Batman (1989) who became Birdman (2014) is now basically Evil Birdman.
Meanwhile, Spider-Man is honing his crime-fighting powers in the community rather than at the intergalactic level: Hey, he is your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man. And in a nod to the success of the similarly costumed Deadpool, Spider-Man delivers a fairly constant banter with his foes, albeit far more PG-friendly than Ryan Reynolds’ “merc with a mouth.” Though I’m not sure I’d like to live in Spidey’s section of Queens, given the low-level devastation — busted fences, broken roof tiles, etc. — he leaves in his wake. Kids these days!
Spidey will no doubt have more to do with the rest of the Avengers team in future movies — wait, you knew there were more coming, right? — but for now he gets just an occasional visit from Iron Man, or at least from Tony Stark’s remote-controlled Iron Man suit.
Mostly, Peter’s well-being is fobbed off on Stark’s assistant Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau), whose moving-day-at-StarkTower storyline is the film’s weakest plot element. On the plus side, there are several fun Captain America cameos.
Being a latchkey superhero leaves Peter free to get up to other shenanigans, some involving his high school crush Liz (Laura Harrier) and the more interesting but platonic Michelle (Disney triple-threat Zendaya). And since his suit comes from Stark Enterprises, he soon learns it has voice-activated options (Jennifer Connelly provides the suit’s amusingly Siri-esque voice).
Much of this culminates in a thrilling rescue atop the Washington Monument, nicely paced by director (and superhero firsttimer) Jon Watts.
Keaton, whose character pops up in the most unusual places (including one of two post-credit sequences), makes for a fascinating villain — far from wanting to take over the world, he seems most interested in providing for his family, making him hard to hate. And Britain’s Holland manages to balance his awkward, excitable personality against the film’s darker, life-and-death moments.
Here’s something I never thought I’d write: I want to see more of both of them.