“A Film by Peter Parker”
The flick kicks off on a bit of a wobble, with a fairly unremarkable introduction for Michael Keaton’s Adrian Toomes that’s followed quickly by a continuity flab that claims this 2017 movie takes place “Eight Years Later” than 2012’s Avengers Assemble. But once that’s out of the way, the film finds its footing: composer Michael Giacchino’s wonderful riff on the Spider-Man cartoon theme song plays over the Marvel Studios logo, and then we cut into Peter’s home video recap of Captain America: Civil War.
From here, we see Peter struggling with life as a friendly neighborhood hero: his “Stark Internship” is clashing with his academic decathlon commitments, and school bully Flash Thompson isn’t helping.
Meanwhile, all Pete wants to do is put on his Spidey suit and find some action, even if that action ends up being “grand theft bicycle” and helping old ladies cross the road in exchange for a churro. Ned drops his LEGO Death Star when he spots Pete in his Spidey suit, and an oblivious Aunt May takes her nephew out for a larb-heavy dinner. It’s a neat, measured start to the film, but, of course, these low-key heroics can’t last for long.
The only decent crime in Peter’s neighborhood is a high-tech bank robbery (“I’m starting to think you’re not the Avengers!”) which provides a solid early action scene and puts our wall-crawling hero on a collision course with the Vulture and his alien-gear-wielding criminal gang. As the film builds to this confrontation, Jon Watts and the film’s other five screenwriters continue to showcase a realistic underbelly to the MCU – this is a lower echelon that lives in the shadows of Avengers Tower, with Donald Glover’s Aaron Davis providing a perfect example of that. This low-level crook wants a normal gun to scare someone with – he doesn’t want to “send them back in time” with Adrian Toomes’ OTT tech.
Peter plants a tracker on Toomes’ gang and rejoins the Academic Decathlon team to hitch a ride to Washington D.C. While on the trip, he sneaks off repeatedly to investigate the baddies, providing another example of the superhero/life balance that is so vital to Spidey in the comics. Peter fails in a lot of his heroic attempts, making him one of the most relatable heroes in the MCU, and ends up getting locked in the Damage Control deep storage unit overnight. Entrapped, Holland gets a chance to shine and Peter has an opportunity to chat with “suit lady” and learn more about his Stark-made suit.
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The action starts to ramp up at this point, with the Washington Monument rescue contrasting an iconic landmark with intimate personal stakes. The daylight heroics here are a nice alternative to the grim battles that dominate modern superhero films, harking back to the days of Christopher Reeve in the Superman suit saving ordinary people. This and the Staten Island Ferry sequence are probably tied as the film’s best action scene, with the climactic invisible plane battle between Spidey and Vulture lacking that personal touch by comparison.
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Standout scene(s): After disappointing Tony Stark at the ferry, Peter is back in his homemade Spider-Man suit when he faces off with Vulture. This results in Peter being buried under rubble, crushed and crying, struggling to summon the Spidey strength, shouting at himself to try and find a way out. (“Come on, Spider-Man!”) This scene is epically emotional but essentially intimate, and it has that great shot of Peter seeing his half-Spidey reflection in a puddle. It would be the best moment in almost any other superhero film.
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Best quip: This is a film with a very prominent funny bone, from the banter between Peter and Stark (“It’s not a hug, I’m just grabbing the door for you”) all the way down the school news bulletins that are edited like awkward YouTube videos (“I couldn’t bear to lose a student on a field trip… again.”) Zendaya is frequently funny, too. The most memorable laugh in the film could be Chris Evans’ cameos in the gym video (“I’m pretty sure this guy’s a war criminal now”) and the detention video (“So, you got detention. You screwed up.”) There’s a reason that the second one of those became a hugely popular meme.
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So long, farewell: The stakes being so refreshingly low, and the fact that we skipped over the Uncle Ben story, means that nobody major dies in this film. The only real death of note is when Toomes accidentally incinerates Jackson Brice’s version of the Shocker. Toomes thought he was using the anti-gravity gun, but it turned out to be a disintegration gun that reduced his lackey to a pile of dust on the floor. Thanos would be proud.
As well as the Chitaru tech from Avengers Assemble, Toomes’ gang has gear scavenged from Lagos (Civil War), the Triskellion (Winter Soldier) and Sokovia (Avengers: Age Of Ultron). Shocker’s arm is even established as being built with a “sub-Ultron arm,” and Peter also finds an Ultron head in the Damage Control vault.
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Happy Hogan produces an engagement ring from his pocket when Tony’s press conference plans go awry, saying, “I’ve been carrying this since 2008!” This, of course, is the year that the original Iron Man came out. Tony obviously popped the question shortly after the scene ended, because he and Pepper are engaged in Infinity War.
Credit check: The mid-credits scene shows Mac Gargan (who becomes the Scorpion in the comics) meeting up with Toomes in prison, asking the Vulture about Spidey’s identity. “If I knew who he was,” Toomes improvises, “he’d already be dead.” Then, at the very end of the film’s credits, Chris Evans cameos again, with Captain America offering some words of wisdom on the topic of patience. “You wonder why you waited so long for something so disappointing…”
