Review: ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ excels fans’ expectations

Marvel welcomes fan-favorite wallcrawler to its cinematic universe

Courtesy of Marvel.

Marvel’s “‘Spider-Man: Homecoming'” hit theaters Friday, July 7 to much-deserved acclaim.

This third reboot to the Spiderman franchise sees Peter Parker (Tom Holland) take on the Vulture (Michael Keaton) with the aid of Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), while simultaneously balancing all the hardships of being a teenager.

This film does what no Spider-Man film has ever done before: Cast an actor who actually looks like a teenager. While the first trilogy of films managed to get past this by having Peter graduate high school at the end of the first film, the second trilogy did not.

The film does a great job of tying Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe and separating him from Sony’s Universe (eagle-eyed fans might notice a lack of Sony product placement), although it might drive the point home a little too far with constant reminders that this film is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Reminders include names being dropped left and right, fans noticing a history class lecture about the Sokovia Accords (see “Captain America: Civil War“), and Captain America being used for motivation in Peter’s school. While this doesn’t take away from the film much, it did get annoying after some time.

The criticism fans will most likely have against this film is its marketing campaign and how one trailer in particular basically gave away the plot of the film. This proved to be incorrect, and Marvel gave fans plenty of twists and turns to keep loyal fans entertained.

Speaking of fan loyalty, Marvel really tested it with SMHoCo’s end credit scenes. While one was amazing because it might have re-established that the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Marvel Netflix Universe are truly the same universe, the second scene featured one of the funniest things to ever grace the silver screen: Marvel trolled everyone. This scene featured the Captain America videos seen throughout Peter’s high school; it talked about patience and how sometimes you wait for something (like an end credit scene), and it’s not what we as fans were expecting.

Overall, this film exceeded expectations. With many plot twists that not even the most diligent of fans would have expected, this movie secured Spidey’s place in Marvel and brought with him many familiar faces to fans of the wall-crawler. Both diehard fans and novices alike will find great joy in this film and will hopefully will get to see more of Holland’s Spider-Man in the future.