Spider-Man: Homecoming (4 Stars)

This is the 16th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, released in July 2017. Let me say straight off, Tom Holland is the best actor to play Spider-Man so far. Tobey Maguire looked more like Peter Parker in the comics, but Tom Holland is the first actor who really looks like a 15-year-old kid. The excitable way he talks fits the role as well. Looking at Tom I can really get a feeling for Peter Parker.

On the other hand, I don't like the high-tech suit he wears in the first half of the film. It's a clone of the Iron Man suit, which is obvious enough since it was designed by Tony Stark. I wonder what his next suit will be like. Come to think of it, I already saw it in "Infinity War", but I didn't pay attention. Wait a few days until I watch it again.

Everyone else in the film is poorly cast. Betty Brant has blonde hair? Liz Allan is dark skinned? Ned Leeds is Hawaiian? Flash Thompson is South American? Aunt May looks sexy? The casting is so bad that I think they did it on purpose just to annoy people. If I just picked random names out of a hat the casting wouldn't be as bad.

At least Stan Lee is Stan Lee, the Watchers' eternal informant. We see him in a nine-second scene looking out of his window to see why a car alarm is going off. His neighbour calls him Gary. I thought at first that the name might be a subtle in-joke, referring either to a character in the Spider-Man comics or one of Marvel's staff members, but I haven't been able to find anything relevant. The best known Gary who worked for Marvel was the writer Gary Friedrich, but he never wrote any Spider-Man stories.

This is what Aunt May should look like.

Not like this. It's just wrong.

Michael Keaton plays the Vulture, only two years after playing the title role in "Birdman". John Malkovich would have been the Vulture if Sam Raimi had been allowed to make "Spider-Man 4". He knew about casting. Even though Michael Keaton is a very different Vulture, nothing like the character in the comics, I like the way he's portrayed in the film. Deep down he's not a bad guy. He wants to make a living, and he also cares for his employees. More than anything he loves his family, and he'll kill anyone who tries to harm them.

To justify his chosen career of selling illegal weapons, the Vulture holds a small speech. It's not enough to convince Spider-Man not to fight him, but it makes him pause to think.

"Those people, Pete, those people up there, the rich and the powerful, they do whatever they want. Guys like us, like you and me, they don't care about us. We build their roads and we fight their wars, but they don't care about us. We have to pick up after them. We have to eat their table scraps. That's how it is. I know you know what I'm talking about, Peter".

Yes, Peter Parker knows exactly what he's talking about. In the comics he struggled with poverty, having hardly enough money to pay for his Aunt May's medical bills. That was in the 1960's. Things are worse today. I know that people blame Donald Trump for modern American poverty, but that's not where the blame lies. Things have been going wrong in America for 10 years, maybe longer. The people up there are getting richer, while the guys like us are getting poorer.

Success Rate:  + 3.0

	Order from Amazon.com
	Order from Amazon.co.uk
	Order from Amazon.de