Spider-Man: Homecoming Review

The smartest decision was refusing the origin. No spider bite, no dead uncle, just a kid with powers trying to get out of gym class, which frees the film to be a teen comedy about a boy who cannot tell anyone why he keeps leaving. Tom Holland is genuinely fifteen in a way the previous screen versions never managed, panicked and eager and bad at this, and the sequence trapped under rubble in a collapsed warehouse is a rare set piece built entirely out of a hero's inadequacy.

Michael Keaton is the best villain in this franchise by a distance, a working contractor pushed out by federal cleanup contracts, and the car ride where he works out the secret identity while making small talk about the school dance is the tensest scene in the entire run. The weaknesses are familiar. The film leans on Tony Stark as a crutch, borrowing gravity it has not earned, and the suit's talking assistant undercuts the character's resourcefulness at exactly the wrong moments. The ferry rescue is standard issue. The drive to the dance is not.