Wednesday, July 5, 2017

The First Marvel-Made Spider-Man Film is a Swinging Success: Our Review of "Spider-Man: Homecoming" (2017)

Director: Jon Watts 

Starring: Tom Holland, Michael Keaton, Robert Downey, Jr., Jacob Batalon, Laura Harrier, Zendaya, Marisa Tomei, Jon Favreau, Bokeem Woodbine, Logan Marshall-Green

Rating: PG-13 for sci-fi action violence, some language and brief suggestive comments

Run Time: 2 hours, 13 minutes

Synopsis: Months after helping Tony Stark (Downey, Jr.) during the events of Captain America: Civil War, Peter Parker (Holland) is doing his best to balance his dual-life being a high school student and Spider-Man. In the process of trying to impress Stark in hopes of joining The Avengers full-time, Peter stumbles upon a gang - lead by Adrian Toomes (Keaton) - that's selling black-market weapons powered by Chitauri technology, and decides to take things into his own hands.

REVIEW

Andrew: Hello dear readers! In what may be a bit of surprise it turns out Two Tickets For... is not dead, it's just been dormant. We've been absolutely terrible at reviewing the movies we've been seeing and we'll try our best to get back to reviewing on at least a semi-regular basis. That's our goal, especially since 2017 is turning out to be a pretty good year for movies!

For now though we're back because we were fortunate enough to see an early screening of one of this summer's more highly-anticipated blockbusters - Marvel and Sony's Spider-Man: Homecoming!

Sarah: Yes we did! Spider-Man: Homecoming is the sixth and newest installment in Sony's on-going attempts to bring Spider-Man to the silver screen, but unlike Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy with Tobey Maguire or the two Amazing Spider-Man films starring Andrew Garfield, Spider-Man: Homecoming was produced by Marvel Studios!

A: Yes! Marvel worked out a deal with Sony where Marvel would actually control the creative process and make the film while Sony got to keep marketing and distribution rights. In the process Marvel gets to use Spider-Man in other Marvel Studios films and Sony gets to have some other Marvel characters appear in their Spider-Man films. A fair deal, if you ask me.

Spider-Man: Homecoming stars Tom Holland (The Impossible) as Peter Parker, reprising his role from 2016's Captain America: Civil War. This new Spider-Man movie is a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and includes appearances from some other MCU characters such as Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) and his bodyguard/chauffeur, Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau). But this is a new Peter Parker, a younger version than Maguire or Garfield's...

S: Maybe not necessarily a younger version, because he's still in high school in the other movies, but Holland himself is younger.

A: Right, Holland was only 20 when they filmed Spider-Man: Homecoming as opposed to Maguire being 26 and Garfield being 28 when they first portrayed Peter Parker/Spider-Man, respectively. Though this film does state at one point that Peter is only 15 years old as opposed to being a high school senior like Maguire's version was at the beginning of 2002's Spider-Man

S: That's true.

A: Anyhow, this is a film I know I've been looking forward to because it was a Marvel production instead of a Sony one. Sarah, now that we've seen Spider-Man: Homecoming what did you think of it and how did you feel it fit into the MCU?