2017 Marvel Spoiler Wrap Up (Part 2: Spider-man: Homecoming)

Spider-man Homecoming Spoilers

So this spoilers review might be a little shorter because it has been a hot second since I've seen Spider-man Homecoming.  I actually just bought it on ITunes and did a quick re-watch just to get the main points of what really stood out to me. It won't be as long as the Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 spoiler rant but then again, this movie didn't have a lot of spoilers in it, at least none that I really think are worth mentioning almost 5 months later. Spider-man Homecoming might go down as one of my favorite MCU films and as cautious as I was in my first review, I have to say this was a really good film.

And it's ironic that I was just praising this film and I'm going to talk about the part of the film I really didn't like and that was the MJ reveal.

So for months prior to this movie coming out, there was this big controversy over Zendaya playing a character who a lot of people thought it was Mary Jane. Zendaya was always credited as a character named Michelle. For the entire film they were building her up as her own character named Michelle. She had no connection or resemblance of any version of Mary Jane we've ever known. And suddenly at the end, really casually she just says, people call me MJ, establishing that this is probably going to be our Mary Jane for the new Spider-man franchise.

And listen, I don't care about the race element of this. I laugh at people who do. While I'm not a huge comic book fan, there is nothing about the character of Mary Jane that says she could not be played by a woman of color. Nothing at all. Zendaya the person playing Mary Jane is not the issue.

The issue I have with it is the fact that Michelle the character is not consistent with the character of Mary Jane. Mary Jane is supposed to be the popular girl next door, she's supposed to be out of Peter's league.

Zendaya's character is Michelle, not Mary Jane. Michelle is a unique character. She's not bad, she's just not Mary Jane. And hey if they had just said her name was Mary Jane from the beginning and created a new character, I would  have been okay with it. But no they spend the entire movie establishing this character as Michelle (even though we all pretty much knew she was Mary Jane) and then tacked on at the end that people call her MJ like a really bad Easter Egg.

If Marvel wanted to make the character different, do it. If they wanted to create a new character, do it. But this half way in half way out bullshit they pull really frustrated me. Luckily Michelle's character is really inconsequential to the entire film, but it's just evidence that as powerful as Marvel is, they're still very safe with their properties. The reality is, while her nick name is MJ, this still leaves the door open for the real Mary Jane to pop up in future films if Zendaya doesn't work out or the audience doesn't respond to it well enough. That's not taking any risks and it feels cheap.

Now this could have been Sony's choice, but overall I think Marvel had a lot of creative control over this and they could have put the kabash on it and they didn't. I even cringed a little bit on my second viewing. I knew it was coming this time and I still thought it was cheap and not a great reveal.

The obvious phenomenal element of this movie is The Vulture or Adrian Toomes. As I said in my regular review, he might be one of the best Marvel Villains ever and of course, he is connected to Peter. It's not like he was a totally unrelated person, of course he needed to be the father of the girl that Peter likes in this movie.

When Peter picks up the girl for the Homecoming dance and Michael Keaton showed up at the door, my heart dropped. It was a great reveal and not anything that either I or anybody really saw coming. At first I wasn't wild about it but it didn't take long to really connect with me and especially when he has the conversation with Peter in the car with his gun drawn and he's pulling out his Michael Keaton scary as hell voice, I was on board one hundred percent.

The interesting thing about Vulture, especially with what we're shown in the post credit scene where he meets Scorpion in jail, is that there is definitely a potential for a Sinister Six film in the future, hopefully connected to the MCU.

The Sinister Six was a planned movie for the Andrew Garfield Spider-man franchise. It was scrapped when the Amazing Spider-man films were scrapped but there is definitely a possibility it could show up in Phase 4. I don't know what Marvel's contract with Sony is, if eventually they will go their separate ways when Sony can handle Spider-man on their own, but if I were Sony, I'd stay with Marvel as long as I can and get some of the Avengers in on the big fight Spider-man will probably have with a bunch of his iconic villains in the future... maybe.

While Adrian Toomes is a phenomenal part and he really does compete for the best part of the movie, the other competing element is Tom Holland as Spider-man himself.

There are a lot of really good themes that run through this movie and they mainly show up in his relationship with Tony Stark.

It's obvious from Spider-man's role in Civil War that he looks up to Tony, and while Tony is not in this movie as much as the trailers suggest he is, he does have a presence in the film. Honest Trailers recently did their take on this film and they called Tony the absent step-father of Peter and that's very true.

But Tony brings a great dynamic to the film because he teaches Peter the importance of understanding himself as an individual apart from the suit. And before it gets too Iron Man 3 on us, it also is specified to Peter in that he realizes that he is still a kid and while he can be a great hero who is more than his suit, it is still a coming of age story where he realizes that he can still be a kid by the end and that's okay.

The scene in the trailers where he is on the ferry as its falling apart and then he has the conversation with Iron Man and he takes the suit away from him is still a really great sequence of scenes. Not only

does that scene happen and it puts Peter at his absolute lowest, but then he goes home and has to face Aunt May and they have a really touching scene where he breaks down in front of his aunt.

But probably the most heartbreaking scene in this movie and the one that really hits home the emotionality of the movie is where Peter goes to confront the Vulture and he gets caught under a bunch of debris. Tom Holland does a great job because throughout the movie we've seen Peter as trying his best to be brave and be a hero but when he's trapped underneath those rocks he cries out for help and it really shows Peter at his most vulnerable. Those are the points in this movie that make me really love this movie.

And the best part is, it wasn't undercut by a joke or some bathos effect that Marvel really likes to do even in their most dramatic scenes of 2017 like Ego telling Peter he killed his mom, it was a genuinely sad moment where they just let Tom Holland act and they let the audience feel. MARVEL DO MORE OF THAT! Not everything needs to be a joke.

Something that I had actually kind of forgotten about was Spider-man's suit made by Tony Stark. He has his own Jarvis voice in his suit voiced by Jennifer Connelly named Karen and not only do we have a lot of fun seeing a montage of Peter's new suit functions, we also get a really cute relationship between Peter and Karen.

Karen of course is an AI so she doesn't totally understand human nature but at the same time it's Jennifer Connelly and she has this really soothing voice that Peter actually becomes friends with.

Something I have been realizing since watching this film is that Peter goes through a similar initiation phase with his suit that Iron Man does... I get a strange feeling that Iron Man is going to go away one way or another and Spider-man is going to take his place... but that's speculation for a future post about Infinity War.

But now that I'm thinking about it, I really enjoyed that element of the movie and it was pretty important in the second act of the film. But then Tony takes the new suit away and after the ferry scene we never hear from Karen again. It's not a plot hole by any means but we never really get much closure between Peter and Karen.

That is kind of nitpicking at this point, especially since Peter gets the suit back in the end. But it would have been nice to have Peter put the suit back on and have Karen's voice come back on and say, "Hello Peter, I've missed you" or something.

Oh and speaking of the end. Apparently Aunt May knows that Peter is Spider-man. I laughed out loud when that revelation happens and Aunt May yells "WHAT THE..." and then credits.

But this will be an interesting change of pace. In both the Tobey McGuire and the Andrew Garfield Spider-man films, Aunt May never figured out Peter's secret identity. When the sequel to this film comes out, we'll be starting with Aunt May knowing that and knowing for any other sequel to come. How will that change things? I don't know. I really like Marisa Tomei in this role so I'm sure she'll do a great job and I hope her role continues to grow.

Those are the big story plot points I wanted to cover. The other things worth talking about are the loads of Easter eggs littered throughout this movie, there are almost too many to count. The great thing about it is that they all felt pretty organic to the movie. This was more something I noticed after my second watch. I know I said that they might be promoting future films that haven't been put into development yet, but I am kind of going back on that statement because honestly I can't really think of anything that they're really promoting without it feeling organic to the story Spider-man is going on.

The one exception to that rule is Donald Glover's character. The only reason he is in this movie is to give fans an Easter Egg and the nod that Miles Morales is in this universe and he's coming. There were other ways that Spider-man could have found out when the deal on the ferry was happening and it did feel kind of out of place.

HOWEVER, after a second watch and a revived appreciation for Donald Glover after spending a few days watching Community, I will say, he is pretty funny in this movie. Honestly, I could watch a spinoff with just this guy going around and hanging out in Queens. Miles Morales doesn't even need to be in it. Did he need to be in this film? No. Did Hannibal Buress need to be in this film? No. But what we are given is pretty fun.

I think the second watch helped me come to terms with a lot of things that stuck out the first time and a sign of a good film is the fact that you notice more about it upon second or multiple viewings.

Spider-man is going to have a huge role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the future and this movie makes me incredibly pumped for that. I plan to talk more about him when I get to the end of this seemingly endless Spoiler Wrap Up.

But was there anything I missed? Any great scenes I need to talk about? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Stay tuned for part 3: Thor Ragnarok spoilers.