Greetings, and welcome to Earthling Cinema.
I am your host, Garyx Wormuloid.
This week’s artifact is Spider-Man Homecoming, starring Tom Hollandaise Sauce, and praised
by fans as the installment that bravely made Aunt May hot.
The film follows teenage Earthling, Peter Parker, who is hashtag blessed with sticky
hand powers.
One day, Peter fights for playboy billionaire, Elon Musk, in the Civil War.
But before Elon can Ulysses S. Grant him a spot on the Avengers, Peter has to prove himself
by just sort of “stopping crime” with no clear deadlines or goals.
"Hey, is this anybody's bike?"
Fortunately, a garbage man named Toomes has been busy repurposing recycling to sell artisan
weapons on Etsy and dressing like a bird, spiders’ sworn enemies, behind waterspouts.
At school, Peter spends his time macking on his crush, Liz, chillin’ with his obligatorily
fat friend, Ned, and macking on his crush, Liz, while chilling with obligatorily fat
friend, Ned.
After school, he looks for crime only to find New York City is too safe.
"Everybody good?"
That is, until Toomes’s men forgot their pin number and have to use a ray gun.
They escape, but Peter does manage to blow up a deli.
Peter slings back home where Ned learns Peter’s deepest secret: he still plays with Legos.
Oh, and he’s Spiderman.
That too.
When Ned coyly implies Peter knows Spider-Man, — "Peter knows Spider-man!" — they score
tickets to Liz’s weeknight rager.
But the party is cut short when Toomes men sell guns to Childish Gumby.
Peter mixes it up by using all the same tactics and gets dropped on his head like my son.
Relax, he was a baby.
Armed with a 9th grade education, Ned and Peter decrypt a doodad, and geolocate Toomes
to Washington D.C., the criminal capital of the universe.
Peter gets a rematch with Birdman, but ends up in an Amazon Prime Warehouse, where he
hits it off with his OS, Samantha.
"So, where would you like to take me tonight?"
"It's really nice to have someone to talk to."
Speaking of hitting it off, Ned turns the doodad into a bomb causing an explosion in
the monument to Washington’s penis.
Peter saves his classmates, heroically costing the taxpayer millions.
Back in the Big Apple store, Parker interrogates Childish Gumby without a warrant, since this
is America.
He tells him to check the ocean bus, where Toomes goes rip ship.
Elon glues the ship back together, but takes back his suit, leaving Peter to walk home
naked.
Peter asks Liz to Homecoming -- Get it?
Of, course you don’t -- but when he gets to her house, a shocking Pepsi Twist is revealed:
Birdman is Liz’s Dad, who’s anti-Spider and pro-gun.
Since it’s Act Three, Peter decides to stop Birdman’s latest scheme: robbing an airplane
full of Avengers merch.
Toomes tries the old “I’m going to drop a building on your face” trick, but Peter
remembers he has super strength, and thwarts his plan by crashing the plane into an area
full of tourists.
Having utterly wrecked Liz’s life, Peter says goodbye.
Elon offers Peter a job at Telsa, but Peter declines.
Oh yeah, Aunt May was in this.
Spiderman: Homecoming marries the superhero action genre and the teen comedy genre with
a license it got online.
The film is stylized like John Hughes joints, both through homages to Ferris Bueller Doesn’t
Go to College, Pretty in Pinko, and The One About Breakfast, and through its themes of
teenagers exploring identity, romance, and hats.
"It gives me confidence."
Through the lens of a kid growing up, the film updates the Sony Spiderman ethos — "With
great power comes great responsibility."
— and ten more reboots.
Usually, this is interpreted as meaning that since Peter has great power, he has the obligation
to use it for the utmost good of society.
But Homecoming inverts this by questioning whether the young Peter is responsible enough
to wield great power.
"Could I do anything?
What do you want me to do?"
"I think you've done enough."
In the beginning, Peter is impulsive and fails to think through the consequences of his use
of power, not so different from the criminals who sell nuclear weapons to people without
conducting a background check.
He considers using his power for frivolous means, such as crashing Liz’s party as Spiderman
for the gram, and jailbreaking his suit before reading up on Windows Vista.
His “father figure” Elon has to repeatedly swoop in and clean up his mess, usually in
a Tesla, ultimately taking away his suit so he can dry clean it.
It’s only when Peter realizes that his actions make things explode all the time that he grows
up, ironically realizing he is not ready to wield such power.
Until the sequel, Spider-Man: Home Depot.
In a note of intertextual irony, Michael Keaton appears as a avian villain on the heels of
2014 Oscar darling, Birdman: Or, The Unexpected Value of Shooting Off Your Nose.
In it, Keaton’s character falls into obscurity after starring in a superhero franchise, much
as Keaton did after his starring role in Badman.
Although who could forget Jack Frost?
Literally every human after they lobotomized it from their brains.
This role becomes an ironic completion of Birdman, implying that the film made Keaton
relevant enough to return to lucrative franchises and play the underdog to mega-stars like Robert
Downey Jr. and sixteen-time Oscar winner, Zendaya.
For Earthling Cinema, I’m Garyx Wormuloid.