‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ | Five years of Cabeça de Teia’s most “salt-free” film

For years, the introduction of Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been a big dream for superhero fans. The possibility seemed minimal, since the rights to the character were sold by Marvel to Sony during the severe financial crisis of the 90s. As a result, the world was able to fall in love with the Sam Raimi trilogy, starring Tobey Maguire, and so have fun do you with the controversial films starring Andrew Garfield, which have undergone recent revisionism and returned to have a considerable number of fans defending the feature films. In fact, the dream of Spider-Man in the MCU almost happened to Garfield himself, since Kevin Feige opened conversations with Sony to try a partnership and offered him the integration of The Amazing Spider-Man (2012 and 2014) with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. This ended up not happening due to the poor reviews The Electro Menace (2014) received, causing this universe to shut down.

Then, in 2015, amid leaked emails from Sony, which generated a very big internal crisis, the deal with Marvel for Spider-Man ended up happening on the condition that a new actor take on the role. arachnid role. Asa Butterfield (Sex Education) was all but confirmed in the role and even went so far as to answer questions about it on Reddit. However, Marvel had not confirmed the information officially, and Asa’s attitude turned sour with the company, which abandoned the boy and opted for the almost unknown Tom Holland.

Marvel’s idea was to have a young actor, who could follow Peter Parker’s teenage phase and grow with the audience. Thus, Tom emerged as the perfect choice and ended up completely stealing the show in Captain America: Civil War (2016). With his boyish manner and genuine fascination with debuting among his heroes, the boy captured the hearts of the public, and the anxiety for the solo film, which would be released the following year, was a thousand. The only problem was the hero costume. Even visually true to the comics, everything was pretty much done with hasty, poorly finished CGI, which left the web head looking like an animated doll.

Promising a John Hughes-esque take on the ’80s teen movie icon, the first trailer was very well received. And there was also hope that the movie’s costume would have a better calculation.

As behind-the-scenes footage emerged, having a real uniform was already a big win. To improve, they confirmed the legendary Michael Keaton (who has been going through a spectacular phase in his career since 2014) to bring the villainous Vulture to life, which theoretically would indicate a more “homemade” adventure, with the hero battling an urban villain. , like the best friends in the neighborhood. Everything seemed perfect, however… In the middle of the path, there was a Jon Watts.

The director didn’t have as much prestige or relevance in Hollywood to back up his ideas and visions for the film, so the result ended up being one of the most characterless movies in the entire MCU. The promise of an ’80s teenage theme became a “cut-and-paste” of certain situations from films of the era, but failed to capture the cool vibe of that type of film. At the same time, there is clear interference from the studio to bring the character into the shared universe, which has significantly limited the protagonist’s own growth, who ended up being subservient to his mentor in the MCU, Iron Man ( Robert Downey Jr.). Enjoy watching:

The idea of ​​giving a hero already established in this universe to mentor the starting hero wasn’t even that bad. In fact, given the context of the MCU, it made a lot of sense.

But the creative team lacked the tact to distinguish mentorship from submission. And that’s clear from the duo’s own framing. In all the scenes where Iron Man and Spider-Man are together, the camera frames the billionaire so that he always appears above the Spider-Man, showing his superiority over the rookie. And even in the moments when Peter tries to find his own way, the management manages to insert a mention of Tony Stark. To complicate matters even further, this arrival of Stark takes the boy away from urban intrigue, disconnects him from those moments, and reminds the boy that there are greater threats than New York City pickpockets.

And you know what’s worse? The teenage moments and those that brought more of that urban imprint worked too well. The interaction between Peter and the Vulture is perfect, not to mention the sequence in which the villain discovers the hero’s secret identity, which is very well constructed with wonderful tension, making it one of the best moments in the MCU. . The film could and should have gone that route instead of opting for moments of great emptiness just to try to bond with Stark and the rest of the universe.

There’s that old adage “less is more”, but it’s true. With studio interference and Jon Watts’ lack of clout to pay or stop some choices, Spider-Man: Homecoming tries so hard to be so grand that it ends up going the exact opposite way and making a movie. which, despite passing far from bad, lacks as much content as in CGI. It’s generic, “no salt”.

In the end, they even try to bring back a “homecoming” with Peter wearing the makeshift uniform, but that’s just another garish wrapper for an empty present.

Either way, the movie has good actors, great performances, but it’s lacking in both the script and the direction, which follow such a generic trajectory it’s annoying. The silver lining is that as the franchise progressed, Tom Holland’s Spider-Man managed to grow and win over fans with films that better understood the character and now, it seems, will bring him more Consistency, which is set to star in another trilogy this decade.

Spider-Man: Homecoming is available on Disney+.

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