So, here we are with yet another spider-man reboot under our belt - with Aunt May and Peter Parker getting even younger than before.
I mean, at this rate if they reboot the franchise one more time, it's just going to be "Muppet Babies".
The movie itself I thought was perfectly fine. A fun movie, a good popcorn flick, as they're called,
and as an action movie, you know it was pretty alright.
But, as a Spider-Man movie I felt it came up a little short in a couple of places.
Now, to be frank, I don't really have any particular affinity for Spider-Man
And I'm not going to sit here and tell you that somehow this movie ruined my childhood because believe it or not
I don't derive my sense of self-worth from how cartoon characters are portrayed.
That being said, over the last three iterations between six movies so far, we've seen a lot of Spider-Man.
But this most recent one left me feeling... not so great about it.
First of all, in the super hero genre, there are three types of characters.
Ones who are born with their powers - now this would of course be people like the X-Men for example -
with a very clear allegory for being born different or misunderstood.
Some superheroes actively seek out their powers or abilities.
This would include people like Batman or Iron Man, you know,
people who use their brains or money to achieve their powers, I guess you could say.
And finally you have people who accidentally stumble onto their powers - like Spider-Man.
Your average-everyday-nerdy-dreamboat, you know, because there's just so many of those out there.
Gets bit by a radioactive spider and has to adjust to his new life.
Part of the appeal of Spider-Man is that he's kind of all of us.
He's trying to go to school, trying to date Mary Jane,
trying to just live his life and also fight crime and you know, be a superhero.
In Spider-Man homecoming, however, this dynamic is kind of reversed in a way.
Now, we don't really get his origin story so much, but I mean at this point we all know what happened.
He's bit by a spider, something with Uncle Ben, and great responsibility,
and now he has to fight crime or whatever. That's great.
Now, while we assume this happened, I mean, we don't really have the details so much,
everything else about the Spider-Man persona in this reboot is handed to him willingly.
Tony stark finds Peter and just kind of offers him a super suit and a chance to fight with -
or against it as the case may be - the Avengers.
I mean what 15 year-old kid wouldn't jump at this opportunity, right?
So, while his spider powers are assumed to be an accident
everything else is done willingly.
Here, Spider-Man shifts from traditional Spider-Man into a more Iron Man/Batman kind of situation.
Not completely of course,
but, instead of fighting against his newfound powers to find balance between his life as Peter and his role as Spider-Man -
this internal struggle that we're supposed to relate to - it's all just gone.
Instead of being an average dude who has to deal with his powers
he's a kid who basically wins the lottery and gets to play with his powers.
Speaking of the Spider-Man suit,
this is another part of the movie that almost kind of ruined it for me.
I know there have been several iterations of Spider-Man in comics and cartoons that
put him in the future with some kind of Inspector-Gadget-Spider-Man suit
and over the course of several issues or episodes they can dive in and get personal with Peter and his struggles or whatever.
But for a 2-hour movie it just kind of ends up making Spider-Man almost invincible,
with every problem being solved via "Deus Ex Machina".
"Deus Ex Machina", of course, is a latin term that means "lazy writing".
He's in a tough situation, things aren't looking so good, how is he gonna do it?
OH GOLLY GEE
WOULDN'TCHYA KNOW
this suit has just the right little thingy bobber to get him out of this particular problem.
Sure is convenient!
Thanks Tony Stark!
In Previous Spider-Man outings, his powers were very clearly defined.
He had super strength, he could climb any surface,
he had spider sense, and either organic or mechanical spider webs.
Just this small handful of powers is all he had to solve his problems and fight the bad guys.
He had to rely on his wit, his smarts, his skills, eeh basically just himself.
But now that he has this special suit all tension and sense of urgency
is pretty much non-existent.
Particularly once his genius friend
who, wouldn't ya know it,
can just hack pretty much everything,
turns off the training wheels protocol.
Spider-Man's suit now can suddenly do anything.
It comes with super-hearing, super-vision,
500 types of Web and Arsenal of Little Robots and a
full AI suite that can literally just tell him everything he needs to know.
His actual powers as Spider-Man comes secondary to the technology in the suit.
There's no need for cunning or wit because now the AI can just do everything for him.
It didn't really feel like I was watching Spider-man as much as a sort of
Baby Iron Man.
Now, maybe that was intentional
But it just felt like it took everything away from Peter Parker and Spider-Man as characters instead of being
instead of being Spider-Man the Superhero,
Peter just becomes a smart mouth kid in a suit.
Now, in the third act of the movie
Peter has his suit taken away from him and has to chase after and defeat Vulture all on his own.
This was the first time I felt like I was actually watching Spider-Man.
No special suit,
no AI,
it's just Peter, his mind and his limited powers.
Finally!
We had tension, we had a real sense of danger.
Iron man couldn't swoop in and save him at the last minute.
And at the end of all this,
at the end of the movie,
Tony stark offers Peter a brand new, probably even more advanced Spider-Man suit,
and a permanent spot on the avengers.
Peter, however, turns it down saying that he wants to do it his own way.
You know, more of a working man's superhero, so to speak,
and he doesn't need a special suit or anything like that.
GREAT
Now, he's finally, like,
actually Spider-Man.
But then, in the very next scene
he gets
the suit
anyway.
So the entire third act,
all the character growth and development that Peter just went through,
is completely meaningless.
He still isn't part of the avengers
he still has his special suit
Basically at the end of the movie,
Peter Parker is not so different than he was at the beginning of the movie.
Except now, Aunt May and his friend know that he's Spider-man.
But
all these are symptoms of a much bigger problem.
The loss of character depth and complexity are really only due to one thing:
Spider-Man now has to fit into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Before, he was a standalone superhero,
so we got to go deep into his life, his mind, we saw his struggles,
we watched as he overcame impossible odds,
he got the girl,
he lost the girl,
all that stuff.
Spider-Man was the only superhero in town.
So he was the only one we needed to think about.
Now, however, Spider-Man is part of an ever-growing,
increasingly bloated group of superheroes.
What started out with just a few key members that we got pretty deep looks at over the years
has grown into an overly complicated
chimera of characters.
The only way to add Spider-Man to the Avengers,
I assume,
was to dumb down and streamline his character and story.
Instead of being his own superhero,
he's now really just one piece of a much larger puzzle.
So, the depth and complexity we've grown accustomed to
had to be shrunk down as well.
What we're left with, though,
is a character that neither feels like Spider-Man
nor like any other Marvel character.
He doesn't really fit in with the avengers
but he also can't really stand on his own either.
As I said, Spider-Man: Homecoming is a fun movie.
But it missed the mark in a lot of ways
as to what makes Spider-Man so appealing.
And from the looks of things,
I'm not the only one who feels this way.