With overloaded cringy jokes, not even remote comic-accuracy in portrayal, & the inexcusable decision to insult Spider-Man making him a tech-copped Iron Man’s lackey, the aptly-acronymed SM:H thoroughly disappoints real Spidey fans. 4/10.

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Plot Synopsis: Spider-Man: Homecoming follows Peter Parker as he goes back to high school. After having dealt with the events of Captain America: Civil War and his inclusion at Tony Stark’s side, Spider-Man is thrown back into everyday life as he struggles to balance kid problems and being a superhero when a new villain called The Vulture shows up.

*Possible spoilers ahead*

Official CLC Review

I love Spider-Man. He’s my favorite Marvel hero and one of the first ones I followed as a kid. But, that does not equate to a good film, especially in the MCU I cannot understand how it keeps sneakily evading critics’ objectivity sensors in what’s objectively a bad film wholly incongruent with the character it claims to be about – and anyone who’s ever picked up a comic book will be downright insulted by. With overloaded cringy jokes, not even remote comic-accuracy in portrayal, & the inexcusable decision to insult Spider-Man making him a tech-copped Iron Man’s lackey, SM: Homecoming thoroughly disappoints real Spidey fans.

Let’s start with the bad. First, the jokes. Literally almost every line of dialogue in the movie had very cringy jokes forced in centering around immature and just plain stupid things like puberty, Larb (you’ll understand once you see it), male body parts (repeatedly, Flash is soooo clever with that joke man), pretend-hugging to open doors, and Zendaya’s hipster girl hating on everything & flicking off the camera for no reason. I understand Peter’s in High School, but the jokes were insultingly juvenile & unbearable even by MCU’s joke standards which have been bad. I really want to like Marvel’s movies and do for many of them like Civil War and The Winter Soldier, but I cannot explain this weird trend they’ve been on recently in that they’re killing their own movies with overloaded humor and insisting on making the movies jokes instead of art.

Also, the acting and characters except for Michael Keaton and Tom Holland were just bad. Usually don’t go into superhero movies expecting all Oscar-level acting unless it’s The Dark Knight, but this was so exceptionally bad I felt the need to point it out. Spider-Man’s overly giddy best friend is not intolerable, but very annoying and overdone in superhero movies, while every other supporting character like Zendaya as the hipster girl who hates everything, Flash Thompson who is completely miscast, and Aunt May who the movie crushes over bizarrely, are unbearably dull, uninteresting, & badly acted.

Next, the one I came into the theater fearing the most: Iron Man and his tech DOMINATED the movie when it’s not even his. I like Iron Man, but his forced shoehorning into a movie he had no business being in was a hated decision by many from the beginning (myself included), but was worse than I thought it’d be. He, Happy, and his tech in the suit literally make up 3/4 of the movie, so much that it’s made to seem like Spider-Man is weak and dependent on Stark’s tech when in the comics he doesn’t have an ounce of that sophisticated tech and still manages to be Marvel’s most famous and able hero (a fact that besides spitting in the face of the comics is just infuriating to me as a Spider-Man fan as he seems like an afterthought and nerfed in this movie)

Finally, the film is riddled with plot holes and few stakes, action scenes that weren’t nearly as wowing as other superhero films, and forced diversity in a bad way. A widely pointed out plot hole in regards to this movie is how it turns the MCU timeline and the dates of Avengers, Civil War, etc. into question and confusion of when they happened, among others like all these people not seeing Spider-Man when he sits five feet out the window without his mask on. The stakes are also almost non-existent in the movie, as every battle seems not to matter in the grand scheme of the world or even city, as Vulture in the end is just trying to steal the Avengers’ stuff so how does that put any citizen of NYC in danger, exactly? The diversity in the movie is overly forced to copy WW’s praised real diversity that it ends up rubbing off the wrong way like it’s a last-second afterthought to increase box office #’s instead of cleverly working it in. Every single couple in the movie is biracial, cheating diversity-wise as it’s the easiest by FAR to write in. Finally, there were sequences that were just unnecessary and questionable, like the whole selfie video sequence that lasted a good 15 minutes in the movie’s beginning.

While there was a tornado of cons, there were bright spots too. For one, the new suit looks amazing. Having an All-CGI suit was actually a good idea as it came out beautifully, even if I hate how they made it too tech-based in function. The CGI throughout the film was admittedly good as well, especially in The Vulture’s case, although with an insane budget like this movie had, that should be a given instead of an achievement. Holland as Peter was also good, although he slightly overplayed the role in parts by being a little overeager (and even screechy at times) and talking too much without knowing how to fight, but still got the vibe of a young Peter Parker well.

Also, Michael Keaton as The Vulture was great. Keaton is a gifted actor, of course known from his time as Batman and projects like The Founder and Bird-Man, but he gives a new light to a previously laughed-off/cheesy villain and makes him likable. His character was well fleshed-out and his motivations interesting in his take on the character, which is why he should be even more upset that the rest of the movie did not perform to his level.

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Conclusion

All in all, I came in wanting to love this movie as much as I loved Raimi’s originals or even the dicier and mixed (but relatively better) TASM, but was wildly disappointed. I’m absolutely shocked how the MCU keeps getting good reviews from the people supposed to be sorting out and analyzing movies for the public instead putting incredibly-mediocre products in undeserved spotlight cycling as audiences go in looking for self-serving good and ignoring the bad. With overloaded cringy jokes, not even remote comic-accuracy in portrayal, & the inexcusable decision to insult Spider-Man making him a tech-copped Iron Man’s lackey, SM: Homecoming thoroughly disappoints real Spidey fans.

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