How We’d Fix It: Spider-Man: Homecoming Is a Good Movie Hiding a Great Movie
To counter the protests that this is going to be some kind of classic backlash-laden hot-take, it feels necessary to say first that Spider-Man: Homecoming is a totally fine movie. It’s charming and funny and has a stupendous third act. It’s good. Here comes the “but” though:
We’ve been watching totally-fine superhero movies for almost a decade now. Marvel has rarely made a wrong step—Thor 2 and Avengers 2 are probably the worst movies in the crop, but even those aren’t offensive or terrible, just kinda average—but the MCU movies in totality are like contact hitters in baseball. They’re going to have a high on-base percentage and score a lot of runs, but you’re not going to see a lot of home runs. The new Spider-Man is another single. A character as marketable as him and a company as shrewd and successful as Marvel should stop looking to just tap things past the infield. They should go for the godforsaken fences.
An example of a superhero movie that took a swing like this is Logan. That movie abandoned all commitments and obligations to the X-Men franchise and told a singular, contained story, and that decision resulted directly in some of the movie’s most memorable moments (case in point: Logan couldn’t have ended the way it did if it was worried about world-building or worried about a sequel). It wasn’t a full-on grand slam by any means, but it took a big hack, struck a good piece of the baseball, and took a couple extra bases. For the first time in a long time, you left a superhero movie as excited as you entered it.
What characterized Logan’s distinction? Well, aside from isolating itself from its own franchise and universe, Logan felt fresh because it injected the superhero genre with flavors from other kinds of movies. A lot of people have said Logan is a Western (that might be a bit overblown—just because a movie is set in the West doesn’t mean it’s a Western), but there’s a fair bit of road-trip movie in here, too, and a touch of science fiction, maybe even post-apocalypse influences. Regardless, the Wolverine character was dropped into a new context. That was exciting, and most important of all, surprising.
A Marvel Cinematic Universe movie hasn’t surprised us in a long time. A couple of the movies have thrown curveballs (Iron Man 3’s villain switcheroo, most notably), but these gotcha moments aren’t the same as telling audiences to just be ready for anything. That latter feeling is richer, more dynamic, and more fun. Spider-Man had a chance to do that, but it chose to play it safe instead.
Some critics have compared Spider-Man: Homecoming to a John Hughes movie (He’s the guy who wrote all the great high-school movies of the 80s: Sixteen Candles, Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. He also did Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, as well as Home Alone. Yeah, John Hughes was pretty good at his job). It’s a tempting comparison, given Homecoming’s commitment to making Peter Parker an actual teenager again, but it doesn’t quite clear the gap with the movie at-large. Spider-Man: Homecoming is still a bloated, overwrought superhero movie. It contains some coming-of-age elements, and those are pretty good, but the movie still can’t shake off the obligation it has to the Avengers universe, and that’s a shame.
There’s a version of this Spider-Man that cuts things down by 40 minutes and offers a hilarious, endearing, small-scale high-school superhero movie. That idea seems so much fun. Here’s how we might make it happen:
[Note: We are most definitely about to spoil a lot of Spider-Man: Homecoming.]
1. Only cash in once.
Homecoming has four major action-oriented set-pieces. There’s a suburb chase, a Washington Monument crisis, a Staten Island ferry disaster, and a final airplane fight that’s the best piece of action in the movie. This is a stupid amount of money-throwing. It sort of smells like the writers planned the action first and then put the story second.
Not in our leaner, meaner Spider-Man movie. In our version, we toss out Staten Island (it’s a total rip-off of Spider-Man 2’s all-time great subway scene anyway) and shift Spidey’s important “earn the suit” lesson to the Washington Monument. We still give our hero room to grow, but we do it more efficiently. This movie works best when Peter's high-school conflicts are tied to his Spider-Man conflicts, and the Monument is the ideal showcase for that. Plus, each set piece will build upon the last, giving our new Homecoming a finale that isn't competing with our past action scenes, but maximizing their drama.
2. Sub in Marisa Tomei in place of Iron Man.
Eliminate our Avengers obligations by kicking Iron Man out of the movie (this will save us a lot of cash, too—you’re welcome, Disney!) and replace his wise-mentor role with Marisa Tomei’s underserved Aunt May. Tomei is shafted in Spider-Man: Homecoming. She’s there to be an AILF, and that sucks. She’s too talented. Since the movie already plays around with the Spider-Man origin story and the nature of his secret identity, let’s have Aunt May know Peter’s secret right away. She’ll be the one lecturing him about being more than the suit, about maintaining his boyish heart in the face of—you know what’s next—great responsibility.
Weshould note, like the script doctors we’re pretending to be, that shoving out Iron Man makes Peter’s mistakes much more consequential. With no Tony Stark here to swoop in and save the day, innocent people might be seriously hurt because of Peter’s ambitious, rebellious, all-too-teenage mode of decision-making. For the sake of our new story, that’s okay. Part of growing up is learning that your actions have ripple effects beyond yourself, and the current iteration of Homecoming only filters all consequences through Peter’s personal privileges. No failsafe Iron Man gives him the chance to learn greater, if graver, truths about being a superhero.
3. Finally, lean all the way into the high school stuff.
The handheld-camera introduction to our new Peter Parker was enjoyable, but it should’ve opened the movie. The first 10 minutes we saw instead were a sort of cliched and uninteresting Vulture intro (thankfully, he proved to be more serviceable than this would have you believe). For a movie that branded itself as a free-wheeling and goofball superhero flick, it sure didn’t open that way.
Let’s change it. Save the Vulture stuff for later and put our new Spider-Man right at the top of the show. Let’s have some establishing shots of his high-school. Let’s have some corny, winking voiceover on cliques and clubs and classes as the camera swoops through the hallways. Let’s land our lens on an uber-loser Peter Parker (biggest plot hole in the movie is that anyone thinks Tom Holland is a loser at all—he dresses well, has good hair, is super capable, and exceeds socially—how does this guy only have one friend?) and watch him go about a mundane, downtrodden high-school day before racing out at the bell, doning his suit, and reveling in the blessed freedom of being Spider-Man. It would make us instantly love the character (the movie as-is kinda just assumes you like him, which isn’t a misguided choice, but is a lazy one), invest in his emotional arc, and launch the movie with a sense of joy and a sense of surprise. Huh, this isn’t going to be like the other superhero movies. Nope. It’s gonna be closer to 10 Things I Hate About You than Thor: Ragnarok. Wouldn’t that be a treat.
Again, what Spider-Man: Homecoming gives us is a perfectly fine movie, but it’s nothing that’s going to make you eager to discuss it at work or recommend it to friends or compel you to see more movies in the new franchise. It should’ve gone for broke. At this point, fans respect Marvel enough to know that at-worst, we’re going to see something average and considered for the price of our ticket. Marvel should respect us enough to want to exceed our expectations.
It’s not enough anymore for a studio to “renew your love for the character.” Our love for Spider-Man never left. A few bad movies aside, we’ll still line up and we’ll still pay money to watch him sling his way around New York City. Reward that faith with something truly surprising. Reward our loyalty with something that doesn’t just affirm our feelings, but allows us to see our favorite hero in a whole new light.