The film actually makes an effort to create a world that isn't all about fictional cities being turned into a collage of rubble by some murderous mastermind. What essentially differentiates Homecoming from its ilk is its decidedly consistent endeavor to show the much-ballyhooed multiverse not from the perspective of the superheroes but from the ground. Watts appropriately scales down the spectacle. This isn't much, considering that Parker is essentially just an overachieving high school student with the power to shoot webs out of his wrists. Homecoming is all of that, and quite thankfully, more.įrom detailing the transformation of Toomes from the typical American businessman who only seeks to exploit tragedy for profit into the gravity-defying bandit who Peter Parker (Tom Holland) tries to foil to gain entry to the Avengers, the film quickly jumps to show how the 15-year-old superhero has been faring after the events in the Russo Brothers' Captain America: Civil War (2016). However, the genre has started to show its weaknesses, with each new release nearly identical to the last, along with its preoccupation with special effects and raising expectations for movies that have yet to be written and shot. In a way, Homecoming seems to say that the genre it belongs to – the superhero genre that subsists on reiterating origin stories to suit consistency within a multiverse that lack any efforts for closure because there is still so much profit to make – is here to stay, at least for the meantime while moviegoers are still willing to shell out money for its redundant pleasures. Toomes then talks about how what's happening is just a matter of cultural progression – how decades ago, people were into Westerns and their cowboys, and now, into caped crusaders combating out-of-this-world villains.
While cleaning up the city of alien implements left behind from the invasion that was the climactic battle in Alan Taylor's Thor: Dark World (2013), they talk of how those superheroes have been on everyone's minds. The opening scene of Jon Watts' Spider-Man: Homecoming strangely feels like a veiled defense for the genre it both staunchly adheres to and somewhat successfully remolds to suit its more grounded and less bombastic mood.Īdrian Toomes (Michael Keaton) proudly shows a coworker his daughter's doodles of the Avengers. Tom Holland stars as Peter Parker/Spider-Man in the new film, directed by Jon Watts.