If you hear any low whistles or sharp intakes of breath as you sit watching “Spider-Man: Homecoming” this weekend, they will most likely emanate from the lips of patent attorneys. How could they not sense an opportunity, given that the new Spider-Man isn’t much of a spider and is even less of a man? If that level of misrepresentation doesn’t warrant a class-action lawsuit, what does?
The role of Peter Parker, formerly assigned to Tobey Maguire and, later, Andrew Garfield (who always looked a little moist-eyed, as if someone had zipped him up too tight around the cephalothorax), goes to the young British actor Tom Holland. (He is all of twenty-one, but his character, we are informed, is a stripling of fifteen.) With his ebullient demeanor and elastic moves, he brings to mind the Jamie Bell who brought such verve to “Billy Elliot” onscreen; and, indeed, Holland himself has played Billy onstage. He has also played Spider-Man before, in last year’s “Captain America: Civil War,” but that was a teaser, and he was one fresh face in a flock of superheroes. Now he is the main event, and he pretty much has the place to himself. True, Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), better known as Iron Man, pops up here and there, but mainly as a sardonic mentor (“Don’t do anything I would do”), and the movie, mercifully, lacks the overcrowded feeling that sometimes descends on Marvel productions, with Hulks and Thors barging in and out to flash their bulging credentials. The result is smaller, leaner, and more parochial than the norm, and all the better for it. Forget the Marvel universe. How about we stick to the Marvel borough?
That immunity to grandeur affects the villain, too, so much so that he’s barely a villain at all. Toomes (Michael Keaton) has no plans to conquer or rescue the world; he’s in the salvage trade, and the only thing he wants to save is chunks of scrap metal—specifically, chunks left lying around after the Avengers have trashed the city in one of their flamboyant battles. When his job is snatched away from him and given to Stark Industries (the folks who made the mess in the first place), Toomes doesn’t exactly vow revenge but he certainly seethes with a low-level defiance, gunning for the rights of the little guy against the big corporation and building himself a clanking pair of wings on which to zoom around and steal junk.
As crimes go, this one seems pleasingly petty, and it only comes to public attention once Spider-Man takes it upon himself to stop the thief. And why? Because Peter, too, feels undervalued. Stark won’t give him a permanent slot in the Avengers (even the powers of the Spider-suit are curbed by a demeaning restriction called “the Training Wheels Program”), and Peter longs to prove himself in good works. That noble purpose, though, keeps hitting a rut; having looped down from on high and grabbed a stolen bicycle from a thief, Spider-Man can’t actually locate the original owner and is forced, rather sheepishly, to leave the bike on the street with an explanatory note. When he does foil a major heist, and cause mayhem on the Staten Island Ferry in the process, it turns out that the Feds were there before him and were perfectly capable of handling the situation, thank you very much. So, what is a frustrated teen-ager to do, except hang out with his Lego-building best friend (Jacob Batalon), stare moonily at a schoolmate (Laura Harrier), and produce more gloopy stuff, with a flick of the wrist, than he knows what to do with? To be honest, Spider-Man is not the natural enemy of Toomes; he’s more of a fellow-grump. They should join forces, not fight. Peel away the standard Marvel palaver, including a confused and redundant climax in midair, and what impels “Spider-Man: Homecoming” is the politics of the pissed.
There is a venerable—or, if you prefer, stale—tradition whereby older or more seasoned performers are slipped into superhero films to lend them gravity and heft. But what do these senior souls get out of the deal? What was in it for Willem Dafoe (Green Goblin in the earlier “Spider-Man” films), Jeff Bridges (Iron Monger in “Iron Man”), or Michael Douglas (the bearded sage in “Ant-Man”), aside from a turbo-boosted paycheck? Things are different, however, with Michael Keaton on the case, for one practical reason: twenty-eight years ago, long before he became the rusty grouch of “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” he was a superhero, too. His was the mouth that pursed so tight below the rubber hood in Tim Burton’s “Batman,” and throughout the new film, which is directed by Jon Watts, Keaton gives off a gnarled and weary empathy, as if to say, “Been there, done that, flown here, whacked this—and believe me, kiddo, the buzz wears off pretty soon. Good luck spinning cobwebs for a living. You’ll probably wind up like me, collecting scrap.” That’s why the movie’s most effective scene contains no special effects. It consists of Toomes, framed mostly in closeup, giving a ride to Peter, who sits in the back; glancing at him in the rearview mirror; and asking him politely about his plans. At the start of the short journey, Toomes doesn’t know the true identity of his passenger. By the end, he knows. There are no blurted confessions, no threats. Faces alone tell the tale.
What any superhero film needs, you might argue, is not a magic spider bite or a dose of atomic irradiation but the gift of time. Actually being a superhero is a kinetic but somewhat formulaic existence, coolly accoutred yet perilously friendless (hence the desperate air of multiple playdates that wafts through the “Avengers” saga), and ever dependent on a steady supply of baddies. But having once been a superhero or, at the other end of age, yearning to be one but finding yourself thwarted—those are predicaments that, despite the daftness of the genre, seem touched with human frailty and interest, and they explain the minor charm of Watts’s film. Some viewers warmed to the wiseass pose of “Deadpool,” but its blend of the cynical and the savage struck me as deeply unappetizing, whereas the spectacle of Spider-Man trying out a doomy voice on a low-grade crook (who kindly offers him some free advice, saying, “You’ve got to get better at that part of the job”) retains a welcome touch of innocence. More memorable still is the wide shot of our hero, clad in scarlet and perched as lonely as a robin on the front of a train as it clatters through the city, texting as he goes. The fate of the planet, thank heaven, is not his concern. He just wants to grow up.
