- UK release: July 2017
- Director: Jon Watts · Writers: Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley, Jon Watts, Christopher Ford, Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers
- Studio / distributor: Columbia Pictures; Marvel Studios; Sony Pictures
- Genre: Superhero coming-of-age comedy / action adventure · Runtime: 133 minutes (BBFC 12A)
- Main cast: Tom Holland (The Impossible, Captain America: Civil War) as Peter Parker; Michael Keaton (Batman, Birdman) as Adrian Toomes; Robert Downey Jr (Iron Man, Sherlock Holmes) as Tony Stark; Zendaya as Michelle
- IMDb: 7.4 / 10 · Rotten Tomatoes: 92% critics / 87% audience · My rating: 8.5 / 10
This is the sixth Spider-Man film in fifteen years and the third actor to wear the suit, which ought to be a warning rather than an invitation. Sam Raimi told the whole origin twice over, and the two Andrew Garfield films that followed never found a reason to exist. What is different now is the deal behind the camera: Sony still owns the character, but Marvel Studios is steering, and Tom Holland has already had a trial run stealing scenes in Captain America: Civil War. The promise is that nobody is going to make us sit through a radioactive spider and a dead uncle a third time. Spider-Man simply turns up, fifteen and already in costume, and the film gets on with being about being fifteen.
The setup
Peter Parker is back in Queens after his outing with the Avengers, vibrating with the need to prove he belongs in the big leagues. Tony Stark has fobbed him off with an upgraded suit and a polite instruction to stay friendly and neighbourhood-sized, which Peter ignores at every opportunity. While he chases credit, juggling homework, a crush and a best friend who has worked out his secret, a salvage contractor named Adrian Toomes has quietly built a black-market arms business out of scavenged alien technology, selling weapons that are far above any street criminal’s pay grade. Peter blunders into the operation expecting a quick win and finds something with real teeth, run by a man who has no interest in taking over the world and every interest in feeding his crew.
The cast
Holland is the best screen Peter Parker so far, and the reason is that he plays the schoolboy first and the superhero second. There is a genuine, unforced eagerness to him, a kid who cannot stop talking inside the mask, and the film lets him be small, clumsy and out of his depth without ever sneering at him. Michael Keaton’s Toomes is the smartest piece of casting. Keaton underplays it, a working man with a grievance against the rich who clean up after disasters, and one mid-film scene of his lands harder than any of the action because it is built on quiet menace rather than power. Robert Downey Jr drops in as Stark exactly as often as he should and no more, mentor and absent father by turns. Around them the high-school ensemble does real work: Jacob Batalon as the delighted best friend, and Zendaya’s deadpan Michelle stealing the corners of scenes.
The craft
Jon Watts came from the lean little thriller Cop Car, and he brings a useful smallness with him. The set pieces are built around a Spider-Man who is still learning the job: a sequence at the Washington Monument, a ferry torn in half, and a brilliantly tense suburban moment that turns on a doorbell. The web-swinging is deliberately scaled down, because Queens has no skyscrapers to swing from, and the film makes a virtue of a hero stumbling across back gardens. Michael Giacchino’s score keeps things light, and the John Hughes influence is worn openly, all hallways and house parties and the agony of a school crush. It is funny in a way the genre rarely manages, the jokes coming from character rather than quips bolted on in the edit.
How it stacks up
The obvious measuring stick is Raimi’s Spider-Man 2, still the high-water mark for the character, and Homecoming is wise enough not to compete on operatic tragedy. It reaches instead for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and the other Hughes teen comedies, and for the grounded, single-villain shape of Iron Man and Ant-Man. By skipping the origin entirely it sidesteps the fatigue that sank The Amazing Spider-Man, and by keeping the stakes local it avoids the city-levelling bloat that the genre keeps mistaking for excitement. This is a smaller film than its budget, and it is better for it.
Critics versus the rest of us
Critics have taken to it warmly, sitting around 92%, with the praise landing on Holland, Keaton and the high-school texture, and a general sense of relief that the character has been rescued. Audiences are a little cooler at 87%, and the grumble there is fair enough: the third act tips into the standard digital-smash climax, and a couple of the supporting villains are pure set-up for later. Neither dents the film much. The disagreement is really about expectations. If you want grand tragedy, this is not that. If you want Spider-Man to feel like a teenager again, it delivers completely.
Verdict
I came in wary of a sixth attempt at this character and came out grinning. What wins me over is the rewatchability: the jokes hold up, the doorbell scene is a small classic, and Keaton gives the film a villain worth taking seriously. It is not flawless, the final reel leans on noise and the wider universe occasionally tugs at the edges, but the core of it, a clever, funny, generous teen comedy that happens to wear a Spider-Man suit, is the most purely enjoyable thing the franchise has produced since Raimi’s second. It is the rare reboot that justifies itself. 8.5⁄10.
Availability: In UK cinemas now, in 2D and 3D and on IMAX screens. Worth catching with a crowd while it is on the big screen.
Update
Added since this review first appeared: Holland’s Peter Parker went on to anchor two further solo films, Far From Home (2019) and No Way Home (2021), the last of which pulled the earlier screen Spider-Men back into the story and became one of the biggest hits of its year. Homecoming has settled in as the film that proved the Marvel and Sony arrangement could work, and as the start of a trilogy that mostly kept its promise. It is now widely available on disc and digital and streams on Disney+ in most regions.
BBFC content advice
Rated 12A by the BBFC for moderate fantasy violence, threat, sex references, obscured strong language. The notes below may contain spoilers.
Violence: There are several fight scenes featuring crunchy blows, with people slammed into cars or walls, or blasted with energy guns. A superpowered character is struck with a bus but is not seriously hurt. There is barely any injury detail beyond a few small cuts and bruises on a superhero’s face.
Threat: A group of teenagers is trapped in a lift at the top of a crumbling building; the lift falls but the teens are saved. In another scene Spider-Man struggles to prevent a passenger ferry from sinking after it is cut in two, with people screaming but no one hurt.
Language: There are bleeped-out words implied to be bad language, with milder terms including ‘bastard’, ‘asshole’, ‘shit’, ‘bullshit’, ‘frigging’, ‘ass’, ‘crap’ and ‘ballsy’. There is also infrequent use of the rude ‘middle finger’ gesture.
Source: British Board of Film Classification (bbfc.co.uk).
