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movie review - Spider-Man Homecoming

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

For a second time in as many decades, the Spider-Man movies have now been rebooted; they've started all over again. In this iteration there's no origin story, and Spider-Man is meant to be a bit player in the larger "universe" of Marvel's over-blown super-hero setting. In every other telling of Spider-Man (from the 1960's) Spidey was all alone. That was the point. In this one, though, he's basically an employee of the appalling Iron Man and I have to say I'm not interested. The story is entirely set within the shadow of the Avengers, and this does not serve as a stand-alone movie. If you didn't know that the Avengers had fought a huge battle over New York City, you wouldn't understand the origin of the technology that the bad guys are using, and you'd be puzzled why in the late 20-teens there are scrap operators with advanced alien technology and why this is considered normal.

Michael Keaton is superb in this, offering the only semblance of grounding to a movie that's far too wrapped up in the perched, insincere vibe of the Marvel scene, where the actors all seem uncomfortable and the stories serve as filler for CGI action scenes. This movie feels like a lazy cash grab and it's an annoying mis-use of Spider-Man. There are literally sixty years of comic books to draw from, it didn't have to be this way.

Not recommended.