Entertaining Superhero-Movie With Interesting Villain

Rating: 7/10 (2 December 2017)

As someone who had neither read any of the comics nor watched all Marvel-movies, I got to see a surprisingly (refreshingly) different movie from what I had expected. Having checked some of the 1-star reviews here I must say they are a bit misleading - whilst explaining valid complaints (especially from Spidey-fans) that I won't repeat here, they often highlight the performance of Michael Keaton as Vulture and mention other very positive points, which all summed up should not result in a 1-star rating.
Most of the points seen as disastrous by others, I saw as quite the opposite: Having Spider-Man appear weaker enormously helped flashing out a character who is easy to relate to with a great arc and personal motivation throughout the movie, for example. I liked that much better than other heroes who are just over-powered right from the beginning (or directly after getting their powers or learning about their powers in a short sequence) and therefore appear much less interesting in other movies. And the whole the-powers-are-suit-related thing was necessary for Peter Parker to really and truly become Spider-Man after almost giving up, because this way it was possible to take something away from him - that whole scene was a nice visual clue to Spider-Man's "birth" or, maybe a better analogy, a kind of "phoenix from the ashes". As an engaged viewer and experienced fan of cinema in general I did not need to be reminded of Iron Man's words when taking back the suit, but I guess it helped some of the clearly-younger-than-me target audience getting it.
Let's talk about one of the best super-hero movie villains of all time: FINALLY some fleshed-out (and believable) backstory, great acting and an interesting twist! Even all the way through to the mid-credits-scene, so nice... The cinematography was good, colourful, not too fast-cut (especially the action scenes were great and not just confusing like in many movies nowadays), overlaid by an interesting score (starting right from the Marvel logo I loved it). And the end credits were the best I have seen in a very long time, looked like they could easily win first price in a competition at some short-film festival.
That all put together, minus the negative points (oh, I should at least mention some: Occasional bad (over-)acting; strong feeling of "oh no we are not diverse enough yet, so we must cast more different skin types" which in my eyes is still better than a traditional Hollywood-all-white cast; too often too bad jokes; undercutting a great scene that could've given much more depth to Happy and which was already funny enough just by the setting (for people who understand the character types and relationship between Happy and Peter) by a cheap toilet-joke just because that formula has worked so often in Marvel movies before) gives a solid and definitely re-watchable eight out of ten stars.