Ever since the new trailer for Spider-Man: Homecoming landed this morning, I have been seeing a growing dissent about it online. Overall the new footage seems to have been well-received, outside of a few understandable “it’s showing too much” complaints. Among those bummed by it, however, there seems to be an air of disappointment about it just looking like “another Spider-Man movie”. While I understand that to a point, I’m honestly a bit confused by it.
To a degree, I get it. This will be our sixth big budget Spider-Man movie since 2002. The characters has been through a lot of ups and downs on the silver screen since then. We’ve seen a lot of characters come and go, as well as a lot of balls dropped in terms of tone and narrative. So when a new film arrives and it just looks like another Spider-Man movie, it can temper one’s enthusiasm.
After all, they’d been carrying on forever about John Hughes movies, right? They have and I’m sure that stuff is still in there to a degree. Hell, it’s what the first trailer mostly centered around. This latest round of promotion, however, is less focused on selling those aspects and more focused on giving a better look at the superhero story and the action. Besides, this was never literally going to be The Breakfast Club with superheroes. No matter what, it was still going to have explosive action setpieces and pulpy villains
At the end of the day, while this might be the sixth Spider-Man movie and you are craving something very different than what came before, you might consider the fact that you are coming at this all wrong. What came before does not matter to Marvel Studios. To them, this is their first Spider-Man movie and as a result, they’re going to do their best to make the best version of that possible. That means we’re going to be getting Peter dealing with high school drama, a father figure who has screwed up (Tony Stark), and a villain intent on wrecking Spider-Man’s life as much as he does New York City.
Whether or not Marvel succeeds in making one of the best films out of the six we’ve been tossed is unknown at this time. Come July, we could be speaking of it in terms of Sam Raimi’s first two films or in terms of Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man duology. I’m willing to give Marvel that benefit of the doubt, as most of their movies have at least been good, but there’s always the chance for another dud like Iron Man 2 or Thor: The Dark World to creep in again.
Bottom line? This is the SIXTEENTH installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As such, it will look, sound, and feel like an MCU film. For better or worse, this is a producer-driven saga, not unlike the James Bond franchise. A house style has set in and all characters and stories will operate within framework for the foreseeable future. What we have to embrace are its quirky differences, not its more formulaic elements. When the time comes, if it is a mediocre entry in the MCU oeuvre, then absolutely take it to task for its flaws on that front. Taking it to task for just being an MCU film in general seems like folly to me though. That’s like getting mad at a Fast & Furious movie for having Coronas and constant discussions about family.
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