Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

The Marvel Cinematic Universe added a major player with an agreement was reached with Sony to get the rights to Spider-Man. For a quick recap, in the 80s Marvel Comics was losing money, so they sold the rights to various characters to many different companies - this is why we haven't seen Wolverine fight the Hulk (or any other cross-overs between the Avengers and the X-Men) and why we have two Quicksilvers. The newest iteration of Spider-Man was introduced in Captain America: Civil War, and "Homecoming" is his first solo movie.

Spider-Man is one of my favorite superheroes. I enjoyed the first two Tobey Maguire movies; I can agree the third one was a trainwreck. I "boycotted" the Andrew Garfield version because I didn't want to get into a reboot just a few years removed from the previous series. Since this newest new Spider-Man was part of the MCU, I was more inclined to give it a chance - his solid appearance in Civil War gave me hope as well.

The biggest difference in this story is that we don't have to go through Peter Parker's origin story. The funny thing about that is that while I was watching, I felt like this was already a sequel. Part of me was asking "so, what happened to Uncle Ben, are we not going to see the radioactive spider, where is MJ or Gwen?". As much of a relief it was to not sit through it again, it still somehow managed to break a bit of my suspension of disbelief by letting real-life decisions impact my viewing.

Ignoring all that and just focusing on the movie: I laughed at the jokes, I enjoyed the action, but nothing really sticks out as memorable. It was good, I liked the way they tied things into the very first Avengers movie, I liked the mentor role of Tony Stark, I always like Marisa Tomei...but it's not the sort of movie I feel like I'll watch again. Most of the MCU features movies that I've seen numerous times, to the point where I can throw on Captain America or Iron Man or Thor and just keep it on in the background. It's not that I disliked "Homecoming", but it just felt a bit unfinished. While I was watching it, it was fine, but looking back, something was missing.

Obviously Spider-Man will have his own trilogy, plus involvement in the Infinity Wars saga, so there are plenty of places to bring the character, and hopefully the success of the MCU overall will continue with Spidey.