SpiderMan movies will continue till morale improves

Rating: 6/10 (3 August 2017)

So, SM:H comes across with a breezy tone, snappy dialog and pacing, bright colors, and the normal technical expertise we expect from the Marvel Universe. If this were the first-ever Spider-Man movie, it would be pretty great.
But it's not. It's the sixth Spidey outing (or 7th if you count CA Civil War). And by this time frankly I've had more than enough of Peter's high school angst, webslinging, and predictable acrobatics without any accompanying depth to keep us more than superficially entertained. We've just seen it all before. Not that there aren't some good things about the production: Tom Holland (age 21) does about as well as you could expect putting across the persona of a puppy-eager, hero-worshipping, earnest but awkward 15-year-old. Michael Keaton is impressive as the in-your-face villain who can genuinely frighten. And Marisa Tomei gives us an Aunt Mae who's quite engagingly different from the previous versions by Sally Field and Rosemary Harris (which were also good).
But then we get a big dose of Tony Stark ... for me, this was a BIG mistake. Connecting Spidey up to the Avengers universe so closely is a strategic blunder. In reality (i.e. the actual comics) Spiderman always stood alone, had his own adventures, made his own mistakes, and followed his own learning curve complete with Gwen Stacey and Mary Jane Watson and all the rest. Now, Marvel has essentially turned him into Iron Man Lite with a suit that's just a junior version of the grown-up edition. Tony Stark runs the MCU and we're supposed to expect that everyone else will fall in line? (Does that sound politically familiar?)
But the worst thing is that if you look under the hood, there's not much there. It's all surface, and a lot of the time I found myself strangely just bored. Going to the theater to see SM:H pretty soon after seeing Wonder Woman was the biggest possible contrast you could imagine. In WW, the stakes were high, we could build emotional connections with the characters, and somehow things felt like they MATTERED. Some of the scenes moved people to tears -- did I see anyone reacting that way to SM:H? Not a chance. In this summer's sweepstakes, WW wins. It actually changed my standards for what superhero movies can be, whereas this Spider-Man is just a placeholder in the MCU.