Too safe and lacking substance

Rating: 5/10 (19 July 2017)

The first Spider-Man movie is dated for sure, but it has one scene that makes it stand above any of the recent attempts. Remember that final fight between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin? It's pretty damn brutal, Spider-Man gets beat up badly and we are unsure whether he can even survive the fight.
Homecoming has no such scene like this. In fact, the final fight is very underwhelming and really has no tension. Sure, Spider-Man gets beat up a bit, but it's hardly a great 1v1 fight. What makes it terrible is the scene ends with Vulture just forgetting about Spider-Man to go pick up a crate and he blows up in the process. It's a really lame ending.
I think what makes the first two films so good is that Sam Raimi brought his own unique style to the films (his horror influence really shows in the Spider-Man 2 hospital scene where everyone is murdered). He's also better at directing action scenes.
We all remember the train sequence from Spider-Man 2. Spider-Man must use all his strength to stop the train and he reveals his identity in doing so. It's a very suspenseful, powerful scene and a strong character moment as well.
If I could use one word to describe Homecoming it would be this: bland. The ferry scene had potential to be intense, but ended too quickly and was wrapped up by Iron Man saving the day.
The supporting characters aren't that great as well. Ned is decent but mostly there for comedic effect. The bully character, Flash, is probably the most unconvincing bully I've seen in a movie. The love interest, Liz, is incredibly boring and I did not care for her at all. Same goes for Aunt May.
And there's really no powerful character moments in the movie. Nothing like from Spider-Man 2 when Peter tells the truth about Uncle Ben to Aunt May. Or when Harry finds out who killed his father.
To be fair Homecoming does have a good twist near the end, but since it's related to the already boring love interest, I didn't really care much.
What I did like about this movie was Michael Keaton as the villain. He has a good motive for the things he does and the design of his suit is badass. I should also mention that Tom Holland is a pretty good fit as both Peter Parker and Spider-Man.
But the whole film is just too safe to be memorable. I understand that this is the first movie in the series, but it's also the fourth attempt since Spider-Man 2 to give us something great. And when an action scene from 2002 is better than anything in this movie, you know something's wrong. Even things like the music isn't nearly as good. Almost makes me wish for the original crew to get back together and redeem themselves with Spider-Man 4.