Spider-Man Homecoming:
(2017)
Directed by Jon Watts
Starring Tom Holland, Michael Keaton, Robert Downy Jr., Marisa Tomei, Jon Favreau
Rating: ******
2.5/6
This is one of the MCU films,
But because it features Spidey,
I’ll regard this as largely separate,
Though its place in the MCU’s tiny.
Tom Holland is now playing Spider-Man.
He plays a young man very well.
This is because his youth isn’t faked.
He’s good, and he does his job well.
He plays a good Spidey and a good Peter Parker,
Something not too easy to do.
He has the right balance of vulnerability and wit
To make him believable, too.
His Spider-Man is a little different
Than those that had come before him.
He has a high-tech suit like Iron Man’s,
And he relies on it too much to win.
He even gets in arguments
With Iron Man when he sees him,
But Iron Man rarely visits,
Because he quickly gets sick of him.
Michael Keaton plays the villain,
In a role that he was born to play.
He plays a guy named The Vulture,
A criminal who keeps getting his way.
I enjoyed Spider-Man’s adventures.
The action is good, and that’s plain,
But the best thing about Tom Holland’s Spider-Man
Is that he’ll stop, sit, and just use his brain.
This is far from a perfect movie.
It has a few really big flaws.
So drastic are the changes to the characters
That to see them would give you some pause.
If you’re familiar with the comic book Spidey,
You’ll recognize some of the people in his life.
There’s his Aunt May, and his girlfriend
Named Mary Jane Watson. She’s nice.
She’s a smiling and beautiful redhead,
With creamy white skin and green eyes.
She’s a model who makes lots of money,
And her stardom is still on the rise,
But in the movie she’s black, and her name’s Michelle Jones
And she’s in all his classes in high school.
She’s not in this much and takes backstage,
But she’s certainly nobody’s fool.
In the comics, Flash Thompson was a muscular jock,
Playing football for his college:
Tall, white and handsome, all-American man,
Filled with muscles instead of with knowledge.
Well in this movie, he’s a short Indian guy—
East Indian, somewhat chubby.
He’s hardly the ideal athlete.
He’s more like a fast food buddy.
Every marriage is a mixed marriage.
The Vulture has a black wife.
Peter Parker keeps falling for coloured girls,
Throughout which this movie is rife.
Pete’s class has an apologist teacher,
A white male who hates his own kind.
He oft apologizes for what his ancestors did,
For he has mens rea—a guilty mind.
Too much of this film is political—
Engineered to drive home a point.
It’s Hollywood preaching to all who will listen,
And to the audience, it disappoints.
We don’t want to see this crap in a Spider-Man film.
We don’t want to see it at all.
This isn’t entertainment.
It’s entirely the wrong call.
This film is a mixture of action and crap,
Like many of the previous flicks.
I’ll give it a solid 2.5 out of six.
It’s not one of my recommended picks.