Marvel tries another reboot in the franchise of the popular web slinger, this time with Tom Holland, who was well received in his small role during the Civil War movie, as Peter Parker. In this iteration we spend more time on Peter’s daily life as he tries to come to terms with his new found role as a super hero. Spending his days as a normal high school kid and at night, becoming the local law enforcement watchdog.

But Peter is becoming frustrated at dealing with minor petty crimes and after tackling the likes of Captain America and The Winter Soldier in Civil War, he feels that his talents are being wasted dealing with bicycle thieves and muggers. After a run in with a set of bank robbers carrying some unusual weaponry puts Peter and local residents in danger, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) visits Peter asking him to stick with the small stuff and leave the bigger fish for the Avengers to deal with.

This only leads to further frustration for Peter as he feels as though he has been brushed aside after assisting Stark when called upon and when he and his friend Ned (Jacob Batalon), manage to unlock further abilities in his suit (voiced by Jennifer Connelly) he decides to follow up on the bank robbery and puts himself, friends and family squarely in the firing line of Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton) and his alter-ego, The Vulture.

 

 

Keaton is excellent as Toomes, driven by a need to look after his family, a reluctant villain who believes his actions are justified by being done wrong by others. He just wants to be left to his own devices and doesn’t want the fighting to occur but after being consistently disrupted by Spider-Man he realises that he needs to take action and when the reveal about Toomes character appears (one I did not see coming) it adds great emotional turmoil to their battle.

 

 

Marvel have done a good job of making the Spider-Man character feel very rooted in his comic book origins without making this another back story. Because we given the details in Civil War there is no need to go right back to basics and by beginning the movie with a recap of the Civil War events through Spider-Man’s eyes via a POV type documentary he is filming, it saves having to start from scratch and let’s us focus on Peter dealing with his dual life.

Being an unseen, shy kid in school dealing with the tribulations that all teenagers have, but having abilities that he cannot tell anybody about is a dilemma which would test any kid and Peter both passes and fails in equal measure. He wants to do right and all his decisions are for a good cause but, because of this inexperience, he doesn’t realise the secondary damage his actions can create.

 

 

With a John Hughes ‘coming of age’ vibe through a lot of the movie, this one is less action orientated and more character driven. Although there are some very good action sequences, particularly the scene at the Washington Monument, they are sometime let down by some poor CGI, but not in any great way that ruins the film. This film felt more at home when it was dealing with Peter and his attempts to live his day to day life with his aunt May (Marisa Tomei), deal with his infatuation with Liz (Laura Harrier) and his friendship with Ned, trying to act normal while dealing with his dual life and the moralistic choices he needs to make.

A fun filled two hours with a good range of humour, action and drama with some great nods to the Spider-Man and MCU lore in general for fans of the genre, in particular the appearance of Donald Glover as Aaron Davis, the uncle of Miles Morales an ‘MJ’ link which may have future developments in the franchise and a post credit scene leading into a possible Sinister 6 link, this is a step in a different direction from Marvel but they have still managed to maintain their high standard of MCU movie releases.

DJ Speaks rating: 6.5 Out Of 10

©Darren Jones 2017