Sophomore fail

Rating: 5/10 (20 July 2017)

Being quite the fan of superhero movies, I waited, like everyone else, rather impatiently for the latest reboot of Spider-Man – this time a team effort from Sony and Marvel.
Sad to say, I left the cinema feeling like how Spidey's rather uninspired date (Liz, it seems her name was) felt when Peter Parker left her house party abruptly to "put on the suit" and kick some butt – in other words, disappointed.
I was forewarned by Civil War that Tom Holland's rendition of Spidey was one talkative fella. That part proved to be true, yet that wasn't the main reason why the movie fell short of my expectations.
At the outset, it annoyed me with its try-hardness. We are forced to again "feel" Peter's excitement and put through the torture of seeing him in high-pitched, overdrive mode with the very jerky home video of his experience with The Avengers in Civil War at the beginning of the movie. Like, why. We know he was psyched by the experience already. Does the point have to hit home again?
Next, we have Ned Leeds – who strangely gave us some laughs yet was rather pointless at the same time. Quite clearly, the good-natured, fumbling friend of Spidey's is but a device for the audience to know Spidey's thoughts and feelings – never mind that the character is already talking nineteen to the dozen as he tries to justify his actions to himself, as well as his hero, Tony Stark, aka Iron Man.
Are the characters Ned Leeds and Happy Hogan quite necessary here? Does the suit have to be quite so high-powered? Must the movie feel so high schooly? Why does Aunt May (or rather, just May) need to be so young and ditzy? Where is the chemistry between Liz and Peter? To what extent does Tony Stark's involvement in the film help it to be better?
No doubt Stark's well-deserved anger and watchful eye balance out Peter's reckless enthusiasm, but that is about as far as it goes – a budding student-mentor relationship that incubates in the back woods as the movie is filled up with a ton of redundant nonsense, including underwhelming villains and some horrifically ho-hum sets, hoping to endear itself to the audience.
Try as he might, not even Oscar winner Michael Keaton can disguise just how blah The Vulture is as a baddie. In fact, he seems to be as unschooled in this area as our webbed superhero. He is merely a mercenary, opportunist and Protective Dad – with none of Green Goblin's deliciously depraved insanity or Doc Ock's well-meaning but misguided (yet strangely poignant) ambition.
As for the sets – from house party, from Midtown High School, to Staten Island Ferry, to Washington Monument all were just fugly. What happened to the gorgeously coloured palette of Sam Raimi's well-loved trilogy that showcased New York so vividly and beautifully? Not to mention the stunning shots of Spidey swinging effortlessly through the city . . . a feat never to be replicated, it seems.
That said, despite the too-long run time, weak storyline and uninspired sets, Tom Holland put forth an earnest portrayal of a 15-year-old youth well over his head – who, having once been part of a superhero alliance, wants desperately to fully realise his webbed identity – and in doing so, validate his existence and all the bad that we surmise must already have happened to him and May.
If Andrew Garfield's Spidey had too much of a boy-meets-girl-and-boy-just-happens-to-be-Spidey feel to it, then Holland's Spidey is one who needs to develop some clarity and calmness, much like how Jon Watts probably needs to rein it in a little – so that we as an audience, can have a sense of the magic appeal that Spider-Man used to have.
To date, no movie has come close to Raimi's 2002 Spider-Man, which truly took us for one hell of a spin.