93% on Rotten Tomatoes
Chloe's thoughts: Signed, sealed, and recommended by Chloe;
Watch it in cinemas;
I'm buying the DVD (to complete the collection of course);
Low-energy entertainment
Watch it if you: Were disappointed by the Amazing Spiderman movies;
Want to see a fun and entertaining Spiderman;
Don't mind the emphasis on Peter Parker's high school experience;
Have seen a few Avengers films and want to see the next installment in the MCU;
Want to see what Spiderman would look like now that he's in the know with the Avengers
Here we are with another Spiderman origins movie, yet this time, Peter Parker has just come back home from his first experience with the Avengers. Living off the thrill of the events from Captain America: Civil War (2016), he struggles to balance his lifestyle as he tries to prove himself to this superhero team when he learns of the underground works of the Vulture.
I had pretty high hopes for this film, and while it was enjoyable and entertaining, I think it's hard to wholly love it when it's the third Spiderman we've seen. Don't get me wrong, though, I do think it's the best Spiderman, and I really enjoyed some of the new takes they put on his origin story, but it did feel a bit long as the film shows many things that we've already seen on the big screen under the Spiderman name.
Yup, we've seen it before, over and over again, we know that Peter Parker is nerdy, awkward, and we know how he's like around the girls that he crushes on. So seeing this again makes the movie feel very long, and I think even if we hadn't seen the previous two lots of Spiderman, there's still a lot of focus on Peter Parker's high school experience. This can be refreshing, and it can make the characters feel very genuine and relatable, but at the same time, you go in wanting to see really cool Spiderman action sequences.
Having said that, though, the action scenes were still very entertaining and good. They weren't anything epic, but they were decent.
One example is with the scene of the ship splitting in two. When we watch the trailers, it's very reminiscent of the Spiderman 2 (2004) train scene, but in the actual movie, it's nowhere near as riveting or suspenseful as the train. The scene feels rushed, and really chaotic, with too many things going on. It also doesn't feel like there's as much at stake, and the whole scene ends fairly quickly. So the scene was good, but it wasn't anything amazing.
And I think the rest of the film can be summarised as that too: good, but nothing amazing. I was surprised at the 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but the average rating is actually a 7.7/10, which seems more reasonable.
What I liked about this is that it was very entertaining. It was funny, and the focus on the high school made Peter Parker seem very genuine.
It also helps that Tom Holland is actually the right age to play Peter Parker, and he's also very cute. Tobey Maguire was 27 years old when the first Spiderman (2002) was released, and he looks like a goofball. Andrew Garfield was 29 when The Amazing Spiderman (2012) came out, and while he looks young, he also looks very weird (like his head is too narrow?). So I was really happy with Tom Holland, the cutest and youngest Spiderman.
The film was also entertaining through its tie-ins with the Avengers universe. It's great that Spiderman is finally being able to be used in Marvel films, which means we can see what it means that Tony Stark, Iron Man himself, is mentoring Spiderman. This brings great implications for what Spiderman's suit is like, what sort of activities Spiderman does, whether Spiderman will be fighting alongside Avengers members, and even what Spiderman's motives for crime-fighting are. I think this brought a different spin on the story we all know too well and it was refreshing to see how Spiderman's actions and thoughts changed because of the Avengers being involved in the film.
Of course what this means is that it's harder to enjoy this movie as a standalone film. Someone who has not seen the other films, specifically the Avengers and Civil War, would find it hard to follow along. This problem is more prominent in the beginning, and the rest of the film can be a bit of a standalone, but there's still a really strong link to the rest of the MCU.
Of course, though, as a fan of the franchise, I enjoyed these Marvel tie-ins. Seeing Robert Downey Jr, and even the Stark and Avengers buildings, were great.
Michael Keaton was also great, and his character was pretty interesting and very cool. He's a very resourceful villain, and they made his backstory a bit more believable, which is surprising because usually Marvel villains are terribly written! You actually kind of feel sorry for him because he wasn't really doing anything large-scale diabolical like in other MCU films.
It's been a few days since I saw the film, and months since I saw the trailer, but I still can't get over the fact that Michael Keaton is actually playing Birdman. And considering that Birdman is a self-aware characterisation of Michael Keaton's Batman, and that the Avengers movie was shown in Birdman (2014) itself, there are so many levels of meta, I love it.
I also really liked Ned, who is Peter Parker's best friend. He was great as the comedic sidekick buddy.
Zendaya was also surprisingly good, but they make a decision with her character at the end that I'm not too sure about. It seemed out of character and not in keeping with the original Spiderman storylines, but we'll see how it goes I suppose.
I really liked the ending of this film, I thought it was great that Spiderman was finally taking up the MAN part of his name. He's been Spiderman for a while, but he's finally no longer a boy, and he's making very adult and mature decisions, and that helps him to be recognised and acknowledged for it.
So all in all, this was a great Spiderman film, possibly the best ever although I don't know if I'm just saying that because I haven't seen the Tobey Maguire ones in a while. Some of it wasn't as intense as the Tobey Maguire films, and the film seemed very long, but it was still very fun and entertaining. Tom Holland and Michael Keaton are great, and I really liked how they put a different spin on Spiderman's origin story. I'm very keen to see Spiderman fight alongside the Avengers in the upcoming films, and keen to see more of Tom Holland in Hollywood.
A few side notes:
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