Spiderman: Homecoming Review: A promising and sensible series reboot to latch on to!

Movie: Spiderman: Homecoming

Cast: Tom Holland, Robert Downey Jr., Michael Keaton, Zendaya, Marisa Tomei

Production House: Marvel Studios, Columbia Pictures, Pascal Pictures

Director: Jon Watts

Rating: 4/5 Stars

The story of Spiderman: Homecoming takes off with an iPhone-shot video diary of Tom Holland’s 15-year-old Peter Parker through which he documents the accounts of his 10-minute stint from the events of Captain America: Civil War, which shows the dexterity in terms of cross-story stitching that Marvel is capable of.

The film circles around a 15-year-old Peter Parker, who, after the events of its predecessor Marvel outing, gets engulfed by the ambition of joining the big league. Instead of taking us through the protagonists’ whole character arc, the film solely focuses on Peter’s struggles as an ambition-rapt college kid who yearns to be taken seriously by girls and elders’ alike, and majorly his mentor, Tony Stark. Given that he has experienced what he has experienced as the web-slinging superhero, he begins to lose interest in his life as the ordinary school going teenager/petty crime-solving teenager.

It was pleasant to see that the reboot did not show us Peter Parker’s character arc from the ground up and got down straight to the business. Marvel’s take on the millennial Spiderman is quite interesting and relatable. He is, in NO way, an all-perfect Utopian grown-up dude who is well aware of his responsibilities. Instead, the millennial Spiderman is a young college kid who his struggling to get a date for the Homecoming dance and is desperate to join the big league(In this case, The Avengers, obviously! You’d be lying your mind if you say that you haven’t been in either of the situations!). As usual, Marvel stuck to the tradition of dropping in Easter eggs along the way, which do their job beautifully. The film will also be a testimonial to the fact that Holland can carry a film on his own, and can also make The Avengers look like a bunch of extras if given a chance. The story has quite a few twists and turns along the way outside the marvelously done action sequences.

Back to the story, where certain circumstances, which includes the discovery of a group of thugs sporting some stylish alien-powered weaponry, land him up in Washington DC, where he attempts to stop a heist orchestrated by the leader of the thugs, the nuanced baddie/air-borne Arms Dealer Vulture (Keaton), in spite of Stark warning him due to his inexperience in such scenarios. In doing the same, the Staten Island ferry and the Washington Monument end up being severely (and quite beautifully) destroyed. One thing leads to another, and the series of events lead to a whole different kind of character transformation of the Holland’s lovable Peter Parker/Spider-Man. In the end, Peter has to make a choice, which will put his true superhero that is germinating within to test.

Apart from the fact that Marvel has pulled off a spectacular reboot to the Spiderman franchise and has given a very bankable actor wearing the Spidey-suit, a special shout-out goes to Marisa Tomei for pulling off the Aunt May of today, Jacob Batalon as the superhero fanboy getting to living his dream, the Disney series sensation Zendaya (who we felt was grossly under-used) as Parker’s classmate Michelle and quite a few others, which is something that we will keep a secret from you. However, we have nothing but ONE complaint, that Marvel is still not giving the female superheroes their due importance and is choosing to keep them on the back seat. With DC already having a head start in that race, it is high time that Marvel wears their running shoes and begin taking (very long) strides if they want to catch up with them. Otherwise, it is definitely worth the soaring ticket prices, courtesy India’s newest tax system.