There are two types of superheroes; the ones we wish we could be, and the ones we feel we could be. Superman is the former – an alien child raised on Earth, with unattainable power and perfection. Spiderman, meanwhile, is the latter; a normal teenager who stumbles into heroism (and adulthood) via a series of weird, puberty-style body changes. Maybe that could happen to us, we dream. Maybe every embarrassing bodily discharge could also be the thing to catapult us to greatness.
But the thing about telling the tale of ordinary white boys becoming extraordinary, is that the world is already saturated with them. And the story of the ordinary white boy who becomes Spiderman is also a saturated genre – this story has been told onscreen three separate times, in six films over the last 15 years. This new imagining, featuring Tom Holland (fine, not inspiring) as the 15-year-old intern of the Avengers, needed to feel fresh. Unfortunately, Spider-Man: Homecoming does not.
Writer and director Jon Watts cut his teeth on the crime thriller Cop Car, and his skills lie in slow-burning action, not the energetic, fantastical fun needed for a film about a teen with superpowers. Mercifully, we’re spared another spider-bite origin story, as Peter Parker has already been taken under the wing of Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr). Peter’s journey is thus not to become Spiderman, but to become an Avenger, and he’s desperate to the point of reckless.
Peter’s desire to play with the adults is endearingly childlike, but Watts indulges this thread for over an hour, until watching feels like babysitting. While Michael Keaton plays the villain with teeth-gnashing relish, the relevance of his storyline becomes clear so late that the stakes feel low. An early sequence of Peter saving his friends from inside the Washington Monument is exciting, as Peter struggles with a fear of heights and the pressure to conceal his identity. However, it’s a flash of fun in a dragging film. Spidey Senses are set to snooze.