Review: Spider-Man: Homecoming

There's no escaping the titular significance of Spider-Man: Homecoming. The first Spider-Man movie made in collaboration with Marvel Studios, it feels like he's finally back where he belongs. That's not to diminish Sam Raimi's Tobey Maguire-starring take on the web-slinger. But after Marc Webb's confused, Twilight-influenced reboot with the far-too-old-from-the-start Andrew Garfield, this new outing makes Spider-Man relevant and distinctive again, modernising him without losing sight of what makes the character so appealing.

That’s not to diminish Sam Raimi’s Tobey Maguire-starring take on the web-slinger. But after Marc Webb’s confused, Twilight-influenced reboot with the far-too-old-from-the-start Andrew Garfield, this new outing makes Spider-Man relevant and distinctive again, modernising him without losing sight of what makes the character so appealing.

Neatly dispensing with the spider-bite back-story in a throwaway line of dialogue, the film introduces us to Peter Parker (British actor Tom Holland) as a super-powered 15-year-old whose desperation to take off his “superhero training wheels” and join the Avengers is making him more reckless than his mentor, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr), would like.

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Cast when he was still a teenager, Holland (who’s only just turned 21) can still credibly play a bouncing-off-the-walls school kid and his first scenes here are full of manic teen energy.

Director Jon Watts follows the lead of the new Star Wars movies by filling the film with a racially diverse cast of relative newcomers that includes Grand Budapest Hotel’s Tony Revolori as Peter’s high school nemesis Flash Thompson, Jacob Batalon as his hilariously nerdy best friend Ned Leeds, Laura Hallier as his love interest Liz, and Disney Channel graduate Zendaya as his sarcastic, eye-rolling teammate on the school’s academic decathlon squad. All of which adds authenticity to a teen-oriented film that may reference John Hughes movies with a shout out to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but doesn’t exist in the same privileged bubble. That’s important too because Spider-Man is one of the few prominent blue-collar superheroes. He’s a kid from Queens, living with his struggling-to-make-ends-meet Aunt May (Marisa Tomei). The film also smartly – and presciently – taps into how that can go wrong courtesy of its villain, the Vulture, aka Adrian Toomes. Played by Michael Keaton, he’s a forgotten guy whose determination to run a legitimate business operating salvage crews that clean up in the aftermath of superhero battles is blocked by government and corporate bureaucrats coming in and claiming the spoils for themselves. Embittered, he’s taken to selling repurposed hi-tech alien weaponry on the black market. Spider-Man: Homecoming is that rare thing: a superhero movie about where the little guy lives and why it’s always worth saving.