The Sunday Mail
THE hugely anticipated “Spiderman-Homecoming”, is officially on the streets. Unless you caught the movie when it premiered at Ster-Kinekor back in July, then purchasing the movie should top the list of your to-do list in the run-up to the holiday season.
“Spiderman-Homing” lives up to the hype and more. The film picks up right where last year’s “Captain America-Civil War” left off – as Peter Parker, played by the ever so charming Tom Holland, tries to piece his life back together after his once-in-a-lifetime dance with the Avengers.
This entails going back to school, spending time with best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon), gushing over his crush Doris Tommes (Gracelle Beauvais) and roaming the streets with friendly neighbourhood hero Spiderman. Unfortunately, this is not enough as the young Peter Parker yearns for more.
His chance comes in the form of Adrian Tommes aka The Vulture (Michael Keaton); a salvager turned arms trafficker who specialises in alien technology left off from the Battle of New York from the very first Avengers movie back in 2012.
A chance encounter between Toomes’ goons and Parker, puts the two in each other’s crosshairs. Now, after five failed attempts to launch this ever-so-popular franchise on the big screen; “Spiderman-Homecoming” is a refreshing take.
For one, the film launches the web slinger’s final arrival into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which in itself is a success both from the business and fan perspective.
Business-wise, under the safe hands of Kevin Feige, who also produces the film, the movie has done wonders on the box office, grossing approximately US$874 million from a budget of about US$124 million.
Also, by coming to some agreement with Sony, which up until 2015 held the rights to the character, Marvel have finally heed calls from their legion of fans across the world who have been desperate to see Parker swing his way into the MCU.
It is unfortunate that the same could not be said about Miles Morales’ incarnation of the character, which is the black version of the character. Feige and company do some fan service here by acknowledging his existence and finding a role for Donald Glover.
Glover voices the character in the animated series “The Ultimate Spiderman” and plays the character’s uncle and nefarious criminal Aaron Davis in Homecoming. Another merit, which I believe deserves mentioning, is how Marvel avoided doing another clichéd origins story with the movie.
Yes, while Feige and his writers stay true to the film’s history, it is done through a narration, in which we catch up with Peter Parker’s origin story. Parker has heightened powers, his parents and uncle are all dead and most importantly it is acknowledged that his powers come from a spider bite. We have seen all these things countless times in the Spiderman films and luckily Marvel avoided repeating the same mistakes other studios have done with the character.
It is almost as if there are no good stories to be told about Spiderman. Performance-wise, Holland is a delightful version of the character. With the exception of the lousy CGI, Holland ticks all the boxes in his performances.
He demonstrates good chemistry with all his co-stars; in particular Marisa Tomei (Aunt May), Robert Downey Jnr (Tony Stark/Ironman) and Michael Keaton (Vulture).
I also have to say that it was a delight to see how Feige and his team treated Tony Stark and Tomes.
In Downey’s case the saying “less is more” rings true here and there was always the fear that Downey and his Ironman character would turn attention from the movie. However, the character is hardly in the movie and only makes a few cameo appearances leaving Holland to do much of the heavy lifting.
Keaton and his Toomes (Vulture) fit quite well with the film’s narrative.
Toomes is a well-rounded character whose motives are visible and from the very first appearance, the character makes a gradual evolution from the everyday man trying to support his family to the full-fledged villain he ends up being.
The action scenes are well choreographed and executed; kudos to Holland and his stunt team. The fast paced action-sequence almost make the lazy CGI invisible and achieving that in this day and age is something to Marvel at.
