My review without reading any other impressions. Saw it this morning in 2D.
It was great. If anything held it back, it was not the script or performances or effects, but just the unavoidable fact that it's the third modern telling of Spider-Man with a different Peter Parker. That does little to detract, though, and much of why the movie was great was thanks to the writers' conscious understanding of possible "Spidey fatigue" and how they made decisions to deliberately avoid those sticking points.
I'm gonna talk about that in a second, but first a few of the big things just to get them out of the way:
The whole cast was nails, especially Holland. Spidey fit seamlessly into the MCU. The movie had tons of great "little things" from the MCU that were a lot of fun. They also did a good job of setting up things for down the line without having to constantly wink at the audience.
So, on to the main thing I love about this movie: whenever the writers could divert away from doing it the same way as one of the previous versions, they did. Some of these things were pulled from comics, and other were knew. A quick list:
- Mae finds out that Peter is Spidey
- Peter has a friend that is not his love interest or the villain
- Peter is a dweeb, but not some total outcast
- Peter has a mentor who is not the villain
- Peter has a villain who is not his mentor or rival
- Peter does not unmask in front of everyone
- Peter is not tortured and angsty throughout the whole movie
- Hey, how many times did Uncle Ben get mentioned? How about ZERO? Only slightly referenced once.
- No mention of Great Power/Great Responsibility.
- The villain lives
- etc.
They made almost every possible choice they could the OPPOSITE of what previous incarnations did. And boy, did it pay off.
On to the suit. It was brilliant. It was the essence of the MCU, from how it looked to how it operated. To have it be anything else would seem so wrong in the MCU. And, the most brilliant thing about it was Karen, because it gave Spidey someone to be funny with when he was being Spidey. Other incarnations of Spider-Man haven't been funny enough, which is a common complaint, but Karen allowed that to happen very organically. The Vulture suit was also awesome.
The other huge win for the movie was that I thought it blended the teenage, high school, coming of age story very well with the superhero story. That's not a genre I have an encyclopedic knowledge of, but Peter Parker and his friends could well have been a character ripped out of Edge of Seventeen or The Way, Way Back or whatever. Hell, MJ could have BEEN Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club. It was like a teenage movie except that instead of ditching Liz and his friends and his guardian to hook up with a girl or talk about his feelings with the janitor or whatever, he was being rebellious saving the city on his own terms while ducking Stark.
Which leads me into another great aspect of the movie. When Toomes opened the door at Liz's house, I thought for sure that he had figured out Peter's secret and was keeping Liz hostage somewhere. I felt stupid after, because maybe I should have expected him to be the connecting point of the stories, but it surprised me. I can't help but think that I fell for something that I was SUPPOSED to fall for. I liked it.
Finally, I thought the movie was very tightly written. Peter didn't make decisions that I didn't understand. He was consistently who he was throughout the movie, with good motivations and character. He constantly strove to prove he could do more than he was allowed to do, and took every opportunity to push against that limitation. When he got the "dad talk" from Toomes, we think that maybe he considered backing down, but we then find out that he NEVER wavered. He was going to go after Toomes no matter what. He learned and grew over his adventure until he realized that he wasn't really ready, not just as a superhero, but because he wasn't ready to leave his "normal" life. But, he tasted the big time and now has something to really strive for.
If the movie had any downsides, I didn't love the score, and I thought the CG was a little shaky here and there, but overall those are very minor complaints.
I'm sure I'll think of more things as it simmers, and as I read your thoughts. I'm not ready to rank the movies, but it's up there. If this had been just the second incarnation of the character and not the third, it would rival for the top spot with Iron Man, Cap 2, Avengers, and the few others held in the highest regard, and it still might despite the lingering effects of "Spidey fatigue." I have to let it percolate.
One last thing that is a far-flung prediction: assuming Holland takes the long view and doesn't go all nuts or anything, Peter Parker will eventually (by the end of Phase 4) end up taking the mantle of Iron Man and the Spider-Man mantle will pass to Miles Morales (which is the no-brainer part of that prediction).
