Spider-Man: Homecoming

My, my, how far we've come my friends.

Three years ago just recently, Sony shat the bed so hard with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 that they were desperate to get the franchise off the ground, so desperate that they had to cut a deal with Marvel to finally do something with this character to give it justice. Spider-Man: Homecoming is the film we've all been waiting so long for, it's a movie/comic nerd's dream in the shortest sense of the word. And it fulfills all of our wishes so, so well.

The high points start off right off the bat with the main story of this film. Instead of doing the standard origin story of Spider-Man that we've seen like twice, instead we get a look at a world post-Uncle Ben, with Spidey already swinging himself around and saving folks. In fact, it takes place right after Civil War, so it manages to meld itself beautifully in with the rest of the MCU without being too heavy-handed, something a lot of standalones don't manage to do nowadays (looking at you, Thor 2).

In a short sense, Peter Parker is an average high school kid, with average high school problems. Also he's Spider-Man, in case you forgot. But in this film, he's been tasked with keeping up his image while also being enamored with impressing Tony Stark and hopefully nabbing a job with the Avengers. Just his luck, a threat arises from the darkness and he tries to take him down, but it turns out it might be a lot more than he can handle as both Spidey and Peter.

And the high points just keep rolling, because in all honesty, this was the most fun I've had in an MCU film in a long time. It's got a nice sheen of 80s teenage film to it, while still keeping with the semi-grounded reality and severity that comes with movies of this type. Spidey acts like he should: a jokester when he should be, and serious when he should be, in a nice balance that's played so wonderfully by Tom Holland.

Speaking of which, the cast of characters here are pretty top notch. Michael Keaton manages to have this fatherly, average-Joe type style while being quite menacing as our villain, Vulture. Marisa Tomei, while not as homely as Rosemary Harris, brings a real nice style to her version of Aunt May. All of the kids in school are also well-done, bringing some grounded reality even to an average hallway scene. And the gratuitous MCU cameos are all great as usual, RDJ still proves he's the perfect Tony Stark.

Misses? Well, I suppose there are a few. There's a few secondary villain types that roam around that seem a bit out of place, they feel a bit tossed in at the last second, like Venom or Rhino from before (though admittedly, much better acted). Also, Zendaya's Michelle/MJ character is kinda too kooky, it feels like she's just, "lol i'm random and moody," for no reason, which I'm not a fan of.

If Spider-Man movies could stay being made like this, then we'd finally have a much beloved franchise on our hands that we've needed for 15 years now. It's such a fine breath of much needed air, to finally look at a Spider-Man film and be proud of it again, and I think for that alone, it deserves a fine 8.5/10. It's really a beautiful film...not quite on the level of Raimi at his best, but still very, very solid.