Worthwhile reboot - fun, exciting and different enough

Rating: 8/10 (2 January 2018)

'Spider-Man: Homecoming' (or Spider-Man 6, technically) is Sony and Marvel finally playing nice and bringing Marvel's most popular comic book character into the MCU - will be interesting to see how he's involved in the upcoming Infinity War. A lot of people will ask "do we need another Spider-Man film?" The answer is, clearly "yes"! This is just as good as each of the other first Spider-Man films, and is different in that it's not an "origin story" - there's no Uncle Ben - and we've already seen Peter Parker (Holland) with his powers in 'Captain America: Civil War', so the film starts with a lot of momentum, where Peter's trying to impress Iron Man (Downey Jr.). Also, excellent use of the Ramones!
This is the most age-appropriate Spider-Man so far - Tobey Maguire was 26 when 'Spider-Man' came out in 2002, Andrew Garfield was 29 when 'The Amazing Spider-Man' came out in 2012 and Tom Holland has just turned 21 - which lends a fair bit of authenticity to Peter being a high school kid with teenage problems. There is an actual homecoming dance, so plenty of teenage awkwardness, but it's all very watchable, due to Holland's charm and enthusiasm. He's helped by his best friend Ned (Batalon), who gets a lot of great lines and there's other comedic relief from the coach (Buress), the debate team teacher (Starr) and, surprisingly, the PSA's from Captain America (Evans)! The plot is all about stopping the Vulture (Keaton), who's constantly stealing alien technology left over from Avengers battles. His wing-suit is pretty great to watch and he makes for a suitable villain.
The film differs a bit from the comics, with no (thankfully, at this stage!) Norman or Harry Osborn, Mary-Jane Watson, or Gwen Stacy. However, there is Flash Thompson (Revolori) and Aunt May (Tomei), as well as Tony Stark, Pepper Potts (Paltrow) and Happy Hogan (Favreau) - and a multitude of references to other MCU happenings - to link it all together. Peter's suit was cool, but probably a bit too Iron Man-ish for my liking. Still, it's great to see Spider-Man still learning his powers (especially trying to web-sling through suburban backyards with no skyscrapers) and there's plenty of great action scenes. It's not quite the best of the Spider-Man films - a little long and sometimes a bit listless - but it has a satisfying ending and a lead actor who I hope to see play Spider-Man for quite a few films to come.