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frasier-crane-style · 7 years ago

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So Spider-Man: Homecoming strikes me as largely a... ummmm... unholy aberration? In that it’s a comic book adaptation that largely isn’t based on the comic book, it’s based on John Hughes movies from the eighties. And then at the same time, it’s modernized and updated and diversified because it can’t be old and outdated like the Dikto comics (although Ultimate Spider-Man was largely the same), but then all that modernization and updating is based on... the eighties.

1. Diversity

I suppose we might as well start with the elephant in the room. In the lead-up to Homecoming being released, there were a ton of articles backpatting Marvel (or backpatting themselves, rather) over how much of the cast was non-white. Not that you’d know it from looking at the poster, of course.

I just have problems. One, the diversity itself. I see it as mainly Marvel trying to placate the fans who wanted Miles Morales, a little like a dad who forgot his kid’s birthday so at the gas station he got a Sandlot DVD or whatever. “No, you’re not Spider-Man, but you CAN be... Ned Leeds! Don’t ya wanna be Ned Leeds, negroes?” Like, does that really matter that much? Are there black people dancing in the streets because Liz Allan is biracial? Is it really that big a deal that Spider-Man’s sidekicks and/or love interests are minorities, when that was also the case in Captain America, Iron Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, etc. And all of them did it without this racebending that was apparently so necessary.

It also bugs me that Marvel justifies it by going “well, we’re just reflecting the real world diversity in New York! hashtag stay woke!” Yeah, they’re just reflecting the real world. Like in Captain America, when they reflected the reality of the segregated army of the 1940s.

Or how they reflected that all of the Norse gods were, y’know, kinda Norse.

It’s not that it’s such a bad argument, it’s just that I see it argued in bad faith a lot. When it suits their needs, people on the Left argue “hey, it’s realistic, you have to do X!” (see the Dunkirk “controversy”) Then when it doesn’t suit their needs, they argue “hey, there are dragons or aliens or whatever, it doesn’t need to be realistic! We can say that in 1966, the US army was all lesbian schoolgirls! Who cares?”

Just pick a position and stick to it. Also, maybe that diversity should carry over to the bad guys as well. Remember the head of a Middle Eastern terrorist organization, according to Marvel?

Or the head of a Far East cult?

Anyway, all this limp-wristed apologizing for Peter Parker being Spider-Man instead of Miles Morales comes off as especially galling when he’s getting his own movie. No other legacy character is getting that good a deal. There aren’t two Batman movies coming out, one with Dick Grayson and one with Bruce Wayne. And yet, Peter Parker’s movie still has to suffer and even incorporate a bunch of Miles Morales’s canon for no real reason. If you’re going to make a Peter Parker movie, make a Peter Parker movie, not this half-assed “oh, it’s Peter, but don’t worry, Miles is on his way, sorry, sorry, sorry!”

2. Flash

I don’t buy the Flash Thompson update at all. Like, is that really how bullying works now? The popular, cool nerd picking on the unpopular, lame nerd? It’s like, they’re both on the academic decathlon team. Flash is picking on Peter because he’s a better mathlete than him. Imagine Flash Thompson as a football player, and Peter is another football player who’s better at it than him, and somehow Flash is at the top of the social hierarchy and Peter’s at the bottom. Does that make any sense?

Of course, if they were really going to update Peter’s bullying, it would seem like they would at least mention cyberbullying, instead of just making Peter’s ‘tormentor’ a guy who makes passive-aggressive comments that Peter doesn’t even seem to notice. I feel like the irony of Peter being far stronger than Flash, but obviously unable to haul off and sock him one, plus the irony of Flash being a fan of Spider-Man but disliking Peter, is way stronger than whatever they’re trying to accomplish by giving him an ‘intellectual rival.’

Also, is making Peter’s nemesis a rich prick really that much more original than his nemesis being a jerk jock? REALLY?

3. MJ

I would argue their rendition of ‘MJ’ is way less faithful than the outright loathed Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Wolverine, you get at least a couple of scenes where Ryan Reynolds is playing Wade Wilson, he’s making jokes, he has two katanas... he turns into an abomination, but he spends several scenes not as an abomination.

Michelle... they adapted a famously dancing party girl and all they had her talk about was how she hates parties. She’s literally the exact opposite of Mary Jane. Even the watered down MJs in the Raimi movies, Ultimate comics, and SMLMJ were still popular, positive characters.

Michelle, again, exact opposite. I have no idea why people are cool with this except that either they’re fetishizing, like, any black people at all--Chris Tucker could come in and scream “HELP ME, SPIDER-MAN, I GOT THESE CRIMINALS ALL OVER ME!” and they’d go yay, representation matters--or they hate Mary Jane in the first place and wouldn’t care if Marvel turned her into Norman Osborn’s chief assassin and baby-killer.

In which case, it seems you should complain a little just on principle. Isn’t any character entitled to a little better treatment than this? Especially a famous female character that has a lot of fans who she means something to? If you’re going to make this character a socially awkward nerd, why not at least name her after Gwen Stacy or Debra Whitman, who are at least something like that in canon? Even if you’re just a Gwen Stacy fan, do you want the waters muddied so that now a (nominally) completely different character has traits adopted from your fave? Do you like it when female characters are treated as completely interchangeable?

4. Ned

The last of the new kids/updates/whatever the fuck is Ned, and fuck him. Fuck him in his stupid Ganke face yes I said it. I guess we’re going to ignore the hypocrisy of Ganke being the most faithfully adapted character in a Spider-Man movie, but Marvel casting an actor of a different ethnicity, so they give the character the name of another character of yet another ethnicity to cover, because everything is stupid and sucks all the time now.

BUT ANYWAY, all this just so Peter can have “a guy on a computer”? He already has Karen, which is enough of a fucking departure already, and the movie even points out how cliched a guy on a computer is! Smallville did it, Birds of Prey did it, Arrow does it, The Flash does it, Supergirl does it--does Spider-Man really have to crib notes from those fucking pikers?

The bigger problem, though, is this.

5. Secret identity

I understand Marvel deciding Peter can’t just have an internal monologue, they need to give him a character to talk to so the audience can know how he’s feeling. The Amazing Spider-Mans did that with Gwen and, at least theoretically, I’m fine with that.

My issue is that Marvel took Peter, one of their most introverted and neurotic characters, and let his entire supporting cast know he’s Spider-Man!

Seriously. Let’s check who in the cast knows he’s Spider-Man by the end of the movie.

1. Ganke/Ned

2. Tony Stark

3. Happy Hogan

4. (presumably) Pepper Potts

5. Michelle suspects/could know (so should that be half?)

5.5. Aunt May

6. The Vulture

7. Karen

So... essentially everyone but fucking Flash. One or two of these would be fine, but he can fucking take everyone who knows out to a buffet and have a roundtable discussion on what to do about the Scorpion. What about him being a loner? What’s the point of a secret identity if everyone who matters knows? What about him having to figure stuff out on his own?

6. Rich uncle

So let me ask you something. Aunt May gets really sick--in fact, her being chronically ill would be a good way to replicate the comics’ elderly May instead of May being the bread-winner in a family that seems comfortably middle class, cough cough--what does Peter do? Does he go to the Daily Bugle and beg Jameson for an assignment? Is he tempted to rob a bank or just take some money from a crook he’s busted? How does he pay for this?

Well, in this canon, obviously he just asks Tony to write him a check.

It’s so odd, because you’d think the idea of Peter Parker as being financially unstable and constantly struggling with money troubles would be more relevant than ever these days. Yet, by making him Tony’s fucking surrogate motherfucking son, that aspect is totally neutered. Why does this Peter need to work at the Bugle at all? Why should he do anything except ask Stark--the guy who buys masterpieces he’s never even heard of on a lark--for money and then goof off?

In the comics, at least initially, Peter is constantly being Spider-Man not only to fight injustice, but also because the photographs he takes of himself fighting supervillains is the only way he has to make a living and support his aunt. Homecoming, May can support herself, he has Tony as the world’s biggest safety net, so the Spider-Man thing seems less a responsibility and more like a fun hobby he does for shits and giggles.

I’m not saying Spider-Man should be Batman, angsting and brooding over being a superhero, but shouldn’t there be some mixed feelings and conflict over it?

And, for a character who iconically has to repair his own costume with a sewing kit, does it not seem really inappropriate for him to now be wearing a Harrier jet? They try to adapt the part in Civil War where he rejects the Iron Spider suit, but since the Iron Spider suit is here the classic costume we all want to see him in, now he rejects an even more advanced powered armor suit, while keeping the still very advanced powered armor suit that is somehow supposed to be down-home and authentic.

(I guess no one pointed out that the entire Tony-Peter relationship throughout Civil War ended with Peter realizing what an anus Tony was and rejecting him.)

6a. Rich spotlight-stealing uncle

By the way, this totally takes the emphasis off Peter as a genius in his own right (which is, remember, the reason he’s supposed to have this deep bond with Tony in the first place). Who cares if Peter invented webbing and webshooters if that’s only 1% of what his suit can do and everything else is this stupendous stuff Tony Stark came up with? You might as well go whole-hog and say that Peter was just doing parkour before and Tony invented everything. Peter isn’t even the one to hack into his own suit, he needs Gankned for that.

7. Rich SUPERHERO uncle

Also, we’ve established that this Spider-Man isn’t qualified to fight supervillains and is expected to call for back-up whenever he runs into one, unless he’s just stupidly prideful (which is, y’know, irresponsible--not very Spidery). For the plot to work, thus we get this dumb conflict where Tony and Hogan apparently ignore Peter’s ass, only for them to ‘heartwarmingly’ reveal that they really have listened and paid attention to his missives. They just, you know, never actually tell him that or really anything (doesn’t Tony seem like the kind of guy who would at least text Peter? Probably a lot? He seems to love hanging out with the Avengers and chatting about superhero stuff otherwise...)

I know Tony is supposed to be that stupid, even after ten movies where the theme is “Tony learns not to be that stupid,” but does that really sound like something Hogan and especially Pepper would go along with?

It’s contrived enough in the first place that we’d end up in a situation where Peter is trying to call Iron Man in on this supervillain hoedown going on right now, but they won’t take his calls, so what happens in the sequel? Peter runs into the Lizard, he calls the Avengers, they say “sorry, kid--we’re all busy”? I’m not ungenerous, I’ll accept that in most solo movies, Thor or Captain America won’t call in the cavalry, but with Spider-Man, isn’t it just child endangerment to say “yeah, we know we’re supposed to help you, but it’s your solo movie, we’re not springing for ScarJo and Hulk’s FX team, we’re already giving Sony fifty percent”?

Maybe when they were ripping off Supergirl’s ‘guy at the computer,’ they should’ve realized how bad it looks when Superman is out there somewhere protecting the world, but won’t help out Supergirl no matter how bad it gets, because either she or he is an idiot.

8. The Vulture

I guess everyone likes the idea of a sympathetic, Walter White Marvel supervillain they didn’t notice the movie doesn’t actually do that? In the very first scene (before the studio logos, even!), he seems like a decent enough guy, but one time-skip later and he’s the Vulture, without seeming the least bit conflicted or remorseful about his actions. (We also immediately see him in costume, and it seems like they should’ve saved that until his first attack on Spider-Man.)

He talks a good game about how oppressed he is, but really, he seems to just do typical supervillain shit like killing his underlings for failing him, only then he literally says “whoops, I meant to use the NOT killing him raygun!” Ambiguity! Who gives a shit?

I, too, like the idea of a supervillain who starts off maybe not that bad and then becomes more desperate and dangerous as Spidey closes in on him, but really, Vulture is just another supervillain with a doomsday plan, only it takes him until the end for him to finally say “yeah, let’s go ahead with the doomsday plan!”

9. There is going to be Iron Man in your Iron Man/Spider-Man team-up movie, right?

I know a lot of people were worried about Iron Man dominating what is, after all, a Spider-Man movie, but I feel somewhat the opposite. If you’re going to have trailers ending in big money shots of Spider-Man and Iron Man running around side by side (shots that weren’t ever in the movie but were filmed just for the trailer) and posters with giant Iron Man front and center.

(This is actually three posters joined together and it’s depicting a scene that doesn’t even happen a little!)

It kinda seems like Iron Man should be important to the plot. Like Black Widow in Winter Soldier. That was a Captain America movie, clearly, but Widow had a big part to play. Homecoming, it seems more like Tony Stark cameos, only that makes it into all the trailers and posters. Why is there not a scene of Spider-Man and Iron Man fighting together? Or even of the Vulture hacking Iron Man and forcing him to fight Spider-Man? Or some development of this Vulture/Iron Man feud that’s alluded to, but then pretty much has nothing to do with anything (tell me, how would the movie be different if, say, Danny Rand had founded Damage Control instead of Stark?).

I’m just saying, if we’re going to have this character in the movie at all, why not use him to the fullest, or somewhere near the fullest? Kinda seems like the most important thing Tony does in this is get back together with Pepper so we can tie up that dangling plot thread from Civil War.

10. The Shocker

Okay, I know this is pedantic, but it bugs me. So they have the Shocker in this as Vulture’s henchman. That’s fine--Shocker was never going to be anything other than the Scarecrow to other people’s Ra’s al Ghul. But why did they have to handle him in such an awkward way?

First, what happened to his costume? I remember there were behind-the-scenes pictures of it that looked perfectly serviceable.

Even the old video games did a ‘grounded, realistic’ take that looked halfway decent.

The toy looked fine too.

Then in the actual movie...

Oh... he’s that guy with the yellow sleeves holding a laser gun. Wait, two guys. Great.

Fucking Whiplash is dressed to the nines in comparison. What happened?

Then there’s this sequence of events. So in the movie, the OG Shocker is Montana Bryce, played by Logan Marshall-Green. (He really has nothing to do with the Shocker except in Spectacular Spider-Man, where it made sense because the Enforcers were already established characters, so they basically handed the character the tech and said presto, the Shocker.)

(Hence my theory that they’re not so much are adapting the comics than they are the comics’ Wikipedia pages. Well, that and fucking John Hughes movies, because instead of the covers or iconic panels, that’s what they pay homage to.)

Anyway, he fails Vulture, Vulture says “you’ve failed me for the last time” and kills him, then says that Herman Schultz (Shocker I in the comics) is now the Shocker. Herman Schultz--which sounds like something a black teenager would get on his fake ID in a Wayans Bros movie--is played by Bokeem Woodbine, who also seems way too intimidating and competent for the character.

But I guess he’s the official Shocker now and the whole Montana thing was just to show how ruthless the Vulture, except that they walked it back because he’s really sympathetic and honorable, except, except...

I can understand wanting a black supervillain for their Sinister Six movie and it would actually be fitting to the canonical, hard-luck Herman Schultz to end up being killed off and replaced by a more capable character. Y’know, unlike the time von Strucker got defeated in the opening scene then killed off-screen.

The point is, if they’d just switched it so that Logan Marshall-Green (or a more comedic actor) was playing Herman Schultz and Bokeem Woodbine was playing, I don’t know, John Cena/Shocker II, it would fit a hundred times better. But they just didn’t care.

11. “My friends call me MJ” is stupid and I hate it and I hate you

I shouldn’t have to explain that making a character the exact opposite of any shred of prior characterization she’s had, then ‘revealing’ she really is the character she’s purposely been given no resemblance to is stupid Mystery Box bullshit. It’s like if the next Star Trek movie had a character named “the Sarge” with round ears who constantly guzzled beer and got emotional and said that logic sucked, then at the end, he said “well, my real name is Spock” and then the producer had to go online to say that he’s not the Spock but he is a Spock and him having pointed ears is something only racists care about and anyway he’s a new take on the character, get off our backs!

It’s not even a twist! It’s just giving the audience incorrect information, then declaring that incorrect information is suddenly correct.

But okay! I guess nothing means anything anymore and life is pointless. So let’s say that you have an audience who has never read a Spider-Man comic in their lives. (We’ll call them the target audience.) In fact, they’ve never even heard of Spider-Man. Not Green Goblin, not Doctor Octopus. They didn’t see the Sam Raimi movies or the Marc Webb movies or any of the cartoons. As far as they’re concerned, Spider-Man didn’t exist before he showed up in Civil War (which was very confusing for them, because they didn’t explain his powers or his origin or why he was living with his hot aunt instead of his parents or anything at all).

But this audience watches the movie Spider-Man: Homecoming and takes this character Michelle at face value. At the end, she says “My friends call me MJ.”

Well... so what? That doesn’t change anything for the audience. It doesn’t affect the plot. It’s the equivalent of having Verbal Kint, at the end of The Usual Suspects, reveal that he has a limp and a canker sore.

Of course we, the prospective audience, do know that Michelle is Peter’s love interest, because she was the top-billed female lead and did all the press with Tom Holland and is the only woman who’s not a Parker family member on the poster. Oh, and because MJ is historically a big Peter Parker love interest. Except we literally don’t know or care anything about her personality or appearance or backstory or relationships with different characters other than that. But for the audience member who knows nothing else about MJ except that she fucks Peter Parker, this is a big deal. Unless in the sequel, they decide not to have her as the love interest after all.

Are you getting my point here? It’s not even a good twist. A good twist would be if the Liz Allan character were referred to as MJ, then at the end it was revealed that it stood for Marion Juliet or whatever, and that she had never been Mary Jane. Or if Zendeya (why doesn’t she have a fucking last name? You’re 20, no 20-year-old has ever been iconic, get over yourself, you’re not goddamn Cher) had said “my friends call me Harriet Osborn,” that at least would’ve been something definitive, because we would’ve known Norman is coming and he’s related to this girl.

But just... this bitch may or may not be their take on Mary Jane and she may or may not get with Peter and that may or may not come to anything... who the hell cares? It’s like a negative twist. Everyone saw it coming and it makes the story less interesting now that it’s been revealed. It’s like if the first episode of How I Met Your Mother ended with Saget saying “oh, I end up with Robin, spoiler alert.” Okay, why are we watching the fucking show now? Either you lied and that information is even more pointless than it already is or you’re going to fuck Cobie Smolders and the whole thing is a foregone conclusion.

12. Lights! Camera! Action?

The action scenes are all short and unsatisfying, especially given that they’re using the Vulture, yet their prequeletic decision not to let Spider-Man actually web-swing (because he hasn’t earned it yet, dontchaknow) means that they don’t let them have any real memorable aerial duels. I guess so much for the entire reason to use that character.

They have all the ingredients for it to work--numerous henchmen armed with high-tech weaponry, an inexperienced (and borderline incompetent) Spider-Man, yet he pretty much just steam-rolls through everyone by virtue of his Amazing Technicolor Spidey-Suit. It makes you think that’s all that’s keeping him from being completely invulnerable is his own ineptitude and failure to properly utilize his suit.

It’s like they knew they couldn’t pull off a better action scene than the train sequence in Spider-Man 2, so instead of at least trying to do so--like taking advantage of modern technology to give us a big Vulture fight among the skyscrapers, or giving us the Iron Man/Spider-Man team-up that was the whole point of this movie--they just turned the action scenes into open mic night. Oh, look, Spider-Man’s getting hit with golf balls! And he’s recreating Ferris Bueller jumping on a trampoline from 31-year-old movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, all very relevant and modern and updated and today’s youth! Hey, audience, we’re not taking this seriously, so why should you? Just give it a soft pass, c’mon, dontcha like Spider-Man?

I just think that, when you have this smug “we’re going to do it RIGHT” attitude of naming your movie ‘Homecoming’ and (deservedly) throwing the ASM movies under the bus, aren’t you obliged to actually follow through and do Spider-Man right instead of this bastardized hybrid of John Hughes, white Miles Morales, teen movie cliches, political correctness, Tony Stark branding, and all this other crap that has jack all to do with Peter Parker? Because they had the perfect opportunity, with the decoy Liz Allan love interest and setting multiple movies in high school, to actually do a very faithful adaptation of the comics, of Spider-Man’s supporting cast... even just having Mary Jane cameo in a few scenes, being this quipping fun-lover but not yet a love interest, would’ve done so much to make this feel like Spider-Man instead of an Iron Man spin-off. Which is what it is.

#spider-man

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