Review of Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) by Brent H — 13 Sep 2017

Spider-Man: Homecoming would be the best Spider-Man movie yet, and an excellent movie in general if every scene tying it to the Avengers franchise were removed. As it stands it is an episodically fun adventured punctuated by tedious, insufferable commercials for movies that we've already seen or which are coming soon. Michael Keaton's Vulture promises a compelling, complex foil to Tom Holland's Parker: the former is a downtrodden father whose working class realities are exacerbated by the Stark empire, pushing him to cynical, desperate violence; the latter is an orphan whose working class realities are transcended by a scholarship to a private school and generous tech allowance by the same Stark, which fosters both a sense of invincibility and idealism. But in the end all of this is reduced to a disruption in moving day for the Avengers, as though the worst crime anybody at Marvel studios can conceive of anymore is something getting in the way of their next big franchise tentpole installment.

Like Parker himself, the movie is fun and charming, but ultimately ends up lost in the shadow of Tony Stark and the Avengers, and as a result I can't imagine it will ever have the impact on audiences that the first (or even the third) Sam Raimi film did.