The dreadful ‘Amazing Spider Man’ reboot left most fans of the iconic web-slinger in shock, reluctant to see any more takes on the character that Sony had. Being some of them, we were pleasantly surprised to see the superhero in his own standalone movie again, envisioned by director Jon Watts as an ordinary high-school teenager this time.
Staying true to the comics, this portrayal of Peter Parker is possibly the most relate-able one yet. He’s constantly struggling to find a balance between his life as Spider-Man and his life as Peter – and not in the clichéd way shown in many other portrayals.
He’s seen doing all the ordinary things a teenager does – pursuing his high school crush and dealing with Spanish quizzes, all while slinging around in a superhero suit and fighting bad guys. He has common problems that all of us deal with, even though they’re applied to a context as complicated as that of a kid-turned-superhero.
This is what makes this Spider-Man so exceptional – at the end of the day, he is just a kid. He’s a kid with great ambitions and childish hobbies. He’s a Spider-Man who’s still learning to be a hero. This is, in essence, an origin story, without actually showing the highly overdone origin of his powers. And we do learn with him, eventually learning to embrace all the aspects of our lives rather than favouring one over the other.
Another very interesting aspect of the movie was the villain. Michael Keaton’s The Vulture is a surprisingly good character, and easily one of the best villain’s of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He’s not like most modern villains; he isn’t the maniacal, clichéd ‘bad guy’ who’s evil because something made him lose his marbles.
He has this sense of integrity, and an almost twisted sense of humanity. He has clear motives for what he’s doing. It’s not often that we’re shown a human side to a villain, a side that makes him strangely relate-able and a much better character overall.
The movie also features cameos from characters that we’ve seen on screen before, that show them in a new light.
We see Tony Stark being a sort of father figure to Peter; we see his security detail and sidekick, Happy Hogan, as a sort of irresponsible babysitter - and the cherry on top? Captain America in a Kennedy Fitness Challenge-style physical education infomercial. These new sides to the characters show some very interesting third-person perspectives on their personalities, and add a fascinating aspect to the movie.
‘Spider Man: Homecoming’ has a good balance of emotions and humour. As a Spider-Man movie, it has the inevitable humour that charms everyone, but at the same time, unlike most Marvel movies, it’s confident about its seriousness. We give it a staggering all-time-high Fresh Potato score of 91.5/100.
(Vidur Bahl and Imran Batra are both 16 years old. They are the brains behind The Nerd Philosophies, a blog and Youtube channel that is run by – as the authors put it – three high-school students who don't have much else to do, other than read comics.)
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