Spider-Man

Spider-Man Far From Home

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I guess I am just not as much of a Spider-Man fan as most people. I like the character well enough, but I didn’t gush over Homecoming like a lot of people did, and I certainly didn’t feel as strong about Into the Spider-Verse as many people. I enjoyed both movies, but I’d be lying if I said they had really stuck in my mind past a week or so. I think I feel the same way about Spider-Man: Far From Home. I liked it well enough; it is a solid entry in the ongoing Marvel saga. It is a coda to the story that wrapped up with Endgame, a movie that furthers Spider-Man’s adventures while dealing somewhat with the aftermath of the big movie.

One thing that is excellent is Tom Holland as Spider-Man. He does a great job of selling him as a teenager trying to do the right thing while being somewhat in over his head. His classmates are all really fun as well. Zendaya’s reveal as being MJ at the end of the last movie was groan inducing, but she is just about perfect as his love interest and eventual ally here. (To be clear: I did not like the end of movie call me MJ moment; Zendaya is great. It is the same problem as with The Dark Knight Rises’ Robin bit at the end. Don’t do that crap; just have the character be the character the whole movie.) Jake Gyllenhal mostly makes Mysterio work, though he remains kind of an empty shell of a character at the end, with his motives and personality largely just gaps that were never filled in.

One thing I haven’t liked with the current iteration of Spider-Man is making him Iron Man’s side-kick. Which is exactly what he has been in every MCU movie so far. The dynamic works well enough; I think DC should take notes for their next Batman movie and any attempt to integrate Robin. But to me it takes away from Spider-Man some. The fact that he is on his own is part of the appeal. Sure, in the comics he gets help from various sources, like the Fantastic Four, but the fact that he was the young hero that was not a side-kick always seemed to me to be a key element of his popularity.

Far From Home pushes Spider-Man’s limits. The first movie was all about Peter accepting his role as the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man; this movie pushes him immediately out of that neighborhood. The world has changed since he fought Vulture and Peter has to change with it. I just don’t know that this movie really works on the macro level. Him dealing with the legacy of Tony Stark doesn’t really feel like Peter’s responsibility. It only happens because Tony was apparently a mad man, creating tons of weaponized drones with few safety features. Nick Fury and the agents formerly known as SHIELD are so out of place I thought they were part of Mysterio’s illusion.

Stronger are the parts that deal with Peter’s personal life. His struggles to admit his feelings for MJ and his struggles with keeping his identity secret are both great Spider-Man stuff. That is what I wanted to see more of.

My complaints from a few years ago about MCU movies being all polish and not substance kind of went away for a bit, but that is exactly what this movie feels like. It feels polished to the point where it loses a lot of its personality. I don’t hate, I liked it, but it feels a lot like one of those MCU movies that people are going to forget exists in a few years, only coming up when someone throws is smack dab in the middle of Marvel movie ranking. Bring on the next phase.

***1/2

Spider-Man Homecoming

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This is going to end up being a fairly negative sounding review. I know that as I start to write it, because while I came out of Spider-Man Homecoming having enjoyed it the more I thought about it as started to write this review the more it seemed to fall apart.  Spider-Man Homecoming is not a bad film.  It has that slickly produced Disney/Marvel sheen, solid performances from its starring trio and a lot of good ideas in its foundation.  The movie also fails to build up to anything or follow through on any of its thematic ideas.

It starts with Michael Keaton’s Adrian Toomes having his clean up job taken by company owned by Stark in the wake of the first Avenger’s movie.  Upset about losing his job to the person who made the mess, Toomes and his employees keep some of the alien salvage they already had and try to figure out how it works. Starting with this is a smart move, doing for an origin story for the villain rather than the hero.  We don’t need to Spider-Man’s origin again.  Unfortunately, after the set up the movie gives the viewer precious little about Toomes, who becomes the Vulture. It makes him rather sympathetic, except when he suddenly decided he’s okay with killing people.

After the opening the film focuses on Peter and his desire, after helping out in Civil War, to join the Avengers.  He uses the supersuit that Iron Man gave him and solves local crimes while being ignored by Iron Man, who has pawned him off on Happy Hogan who also ignores him. I don’t really get the arc they were trying to give Peter in this movie. The lesson, I guess, is that he needs to focus more on living his life than joining the Avengers, but his actions in the movie don’t reflect him ever learning that lesson.  He does the same thing the whole time and other than this movie making him shitty at being a superhero he seems to be trying to do the right thing.  His experiences don’t lead up to any change, though the movie makes one happen at the end anyway.

That is my big problem with the movie.  It starts with some good ideas and ends in places those ideas could have lead, but the movie in between doesn’t actually connect them.  This is in spite of solid performances by Keaton, Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Holland.  It is fun to spend time with these characters, I just wish I could do so in a better movie.  Peter fails as a hero, but suffers no consequence and learns no lessons.  Iron Man, and/trough Happy, tells him stay small and close to home while focusing on his schooling, but the movie doesn’t show him do that.  He bails on his class mates and they aren’t particularly bothered by it.  And the action scene escalate while Spider-Man does a better job handling them.  He succeeds at what he was told not to do and that somehow teaches him not to do it.

The school stuff is fun, but it is also very undercooked.  The videos of the school news team and Captain America PSA’s are the best part of the movie, hands down.  While it sets up some John Hughes like high school drama, the movie never really does anything with it.  It is a good idea that is handled in an unsatisfying way.  The worst part is a stupid line at the end for one of the characters that left me flabbergasted at what they were going for.

Spider-Man Homecoming is pleasant to watch. That is more than enough to buoy the viewer while watching it.  Upon reflection it is a jumble of ideas that don’t coalesce into a real story and the spectacle is never really that spectacular, though that last part might be the fault of the too dark theater I saw it in.  I liked the movie. It is easily the better than the two Amazing Spider-Man movies.  Unfortunately for Homecoming, this year has been a very good year for superhero movies and with Logan and Wonder Woman in recent memory, it is hard to get excited for a film that is merely okay.

***1/2

The Amazing Spider-Man Review

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This was going to be a review of The Dark Knight Rises, but my attempt to see the midnight opening turned into something of a failure. I’m not crass enough to complain, but I didn’t end up seeing the movie. So instead of The Dark Knight Rises, I guess I’ll finally get around reviewing Amazing Spider-Man. The Amazing Spider-Man does not live up to its name. While it certainly hews closer to the comics than Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, it feels wholly unnecessary with that film in mind. Did anyone need to see Spidey’s origin again, especially with so few changes and even fewer improvements? Its not that the movie is that bad, just that for every good thing it does, it does at least two bafflingly stupid things.

Let’s start with the bright spots. Martin Sheen and Sally Field as Uncle Ben and Aunt May are terrific. Rhys Ifans makes a lackluster villain at least somewhat interesting. Emma Stone is perfect as Gwen Stacy. The only real weakness in the cast was Andrew Garfield as Peter. He doesn’t look like a teenager, for one thing. Also, instead of seeming like a nerdy outcast, Peter comes off as an autistic creeper. He takes pictures of Gwen when she isn’t looking and uses them as computer backgrounds; its strange. He also sort of nods and shakes uncomfortably all the time. I’d rather have the somewhat mopey Tobey Maguire.

There is a satisfying kineticism to the fights and the webslinging. It is really solid stuff. Too bad it is ruined by some awful plotting. The basic story is as good as ever, but everything built around it is done rather poorly. Peter sneaks into Oscorp by taking a name badge with no I.D. check, then breaks into the experimental spider room because it is locked by a simple video game mini-game. Oscorp leaves a potentially deadly weapon just sitting in the middle of a poorly guarded lab. Baffling stupidity like that is the norm for this movie. Anyone of them would be fine, but they build on each other until it becomes kind of unbearable. Which is sad, because it ruins some great character scenes between Peter and Uncle Ben, Gwen and Captain Stacy.

Amazing Spider-Man simply feels unnecessary. Most of the plot did not need a retread, despite the slight improvements it made in some parts. Since it has been a relatively short time since Spider-Man, it is hard not to compare the two movies, and the comparison is not favorable to Amazing Spider-Man. Amazing this movie simply is not, it is borderline dull; a tired exercise in repeating better movies and superhero cliché.

*1/2