Grateful for this look at Spider-Man: Homecoming, from our friend Jeremiah Lawson.
When I finished watching the new Spider-Man film with my brother, he told me he liked it, but he couldn’t help but think of a military joke—if you break the rules and you fail, you get a courtmartial, but if you succeed beyond everyone’s hopes and dreams, you get a medal. That doesn’t mean that what you decided to do was necessarily ever a good idea. There are other ways of expressing this kind of concern about Spider-Man: Homecoming and the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general, but that joke about the difference between a medal and a courtmartial is what has stuck with me, not least because of the running gag in the new film about Captain America telling kids to follow the rules now that he’s become a fugitive since Civil War.
Spider-Man: Homecoming has so many, and so many well-executed, grace notes throughout its run-time that it can be easy to overlook all the ways in which the foundational melody seems out of tune from the Peter Parker we’ve seen in comics and in earlier films. This is hardly to say that the new Spider-Man film is a badly made film or that it isn’t bursting with charm and action. Tom Holland is the first actor in this century to have a firm grasp of both the Peter Parker and Spider-Man sides of the superhero. Where Tobey Maguire was strong as Parker and weak as Spider-Man; and where Garfield was strong as Spider-Man but foundered as Parker thanks to bad scripting; Holland strikes the right balance in handling both parts of the title role. Keaton’s turn as the Vulture makes him one of the few memorable Marvel cinematic villains. The supporting cast is by and large solid.
But something feels off about this new film, at least for this lifelong Spider-Man fan. Fans of the web-slinger have mentioned that there’s no mention of Uncle Ben, whose murder was the defining moment for Peter Parker in the comics. While on the one hand it was good we were spared yet another origin story, the problem is that this new movie gives us a Peter Parker who takes risks and ignores the concerns of others as if he were the Peter Parker who has not yet seen his Uncle Ben dead. It’s as though we’re in an era now that is so averse to feelings like guilt and shame nobody wants to write a script in which guilt is allowed to be the primary motivation for a character in a mainstream superhero film. Yet it’s impossible to understand Peter Parker without understanding that he is driven by guilt.
Parker is, for that matter, not just driven by any old kind of guilt. His guilt is very specific, and it’s a guilt that was perfected in Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man film. While in comics and film Parker has penchant for being a self-pitying crybaby who feels the world owes him more, this element of his character is always, at least eventually, overpowered by his sense of neighborly duty. Because Parker’s motivation is living with the reality that when he decided to stop worrying about others and only look out for himself, one of the people he loved most got murdered. Parker’s guilt is guilt over the deadly consequences that came because he decided to live first by his sense of self-pitying entitlement rather than his sense of social responsibility.
So when in Homecoming, Parker repeatedly beseeches Happy Hogan and Tony Stark to get a new mission because he feels he can do more, or when he repeatedly intervenes in crime scenes that escalate into life-threatening stand-offs that they simply would not have had were Spider-Man not jumping in, it seems as though we’re getting an impulsive teenage boy who doesn’t realize he’s making things worse. And if this were some character besides Peter Parker, that could make a lot of sense, but this is Peter Parker.
Yet this Peter Parker, though ably played by Tom Holland, seems to inhabit a completely different moral universe than either the Raimi/Maguire Peter Parker or the Lee/Ditko comics. In both those versions of Spider-Man, the knife-twist is hard and sharp, that it was when Parker indignantly embraced his self-pity and entitlement that he literally came face to face with the man whom he would unknowingly allow to kill his Uncle Ben. Most notoriously in the comics, the moment when Parker congratulated himself on how great he was at saving people was the night his girlfriend Gwen Stacy died, possibly because of his very efforts to save her.
The new Spider-Man film is good at establishing the people in the neighborhood of our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. There are a lot of funny and winsome moments, such as Parker incompetently attempting to shake down a petty criminal about where a deal is going to go down—the two men end up comparing notes about what sandwich vendors they prefer. Spider-Man’s inept attempt to stop a man from breaking into his own car lets us know this is a kid with very little experience or wisdom. All of that is certainly entertaining and effective.
Yet what all the movies have by and large failed to convey is that in the comics Parker lives daily with rude and bullying types of people with whom he gets angry and frustrated but against whom he knows he’ll never be able to retaliate. He knows he has the power to kill the people who frustrate him, but he realizes this would be evil. Parker learns how to grit his teeth day after day in the face of these humiliations and set-backs, and it’s only as Spider-Man, facing off against villains like the Green Goblin or Doctor Octopus or Kraven the Hunter, that he feels safe to resort to the put-downs and sucker punches he knows would be wrong to use on regular jerks on the street. It was in Raimi’s first film that we got to hear Ben Parker warn his nephew, “Peter, these are the years when a man changes into the man he’s gonna become the rest of his life. Just be careful who you change into.” As we saw across three Raimi films of varied quality, the defining difference between a hero and villain would turn out to be the difference between acting out of entitlement and out of a sense of neighborly responsibility. What Raimi’s Peter Parker would discover was that he was always caught between doing right by the people he loves as Peter Parker and doing right by stopping the people he dealt with as Spider-Man.
In the comics Parker’s desire to join a super-team had practical motivations. He was a teenager who was too young to enter the full-time workforce but he was vexed to see his Aunt May pawning her belongings to pay the rent so they would have a home. Half out of desperation and half from ambition, Parker tried to turn Spider-Man into an entertainer/superhero but once he was dubbed a menace by the Daily Bugle and framed by the Chameleon, Parker began to worry that the only way to get money to provide for himself and Aunt May might be turning into the criminal everybody seemed to think he was. In Homecoming, Spider-Man’s attempts to save the day make situations worse, to the point that Iron Man feels obliged to take back the suit he designed for Peter Parker.
What makes this Spider-Man’s recklessness more jarring, on reflection, is that his adversary the Vulture, as played by Michael Keaton, is fastidiously risk averse. Perhaps the ultimate Hollywood distillation of a “mancession” patriarch who has lost his job to crony corporate/government technocracy, Adrian Toomes resents that Stark and his Avenger friends wrecked New York and then had the power of the federal government to rescind Toomes’ own contract to salvage alien wreckage in the city in the wake of the Avengers’ battle with Loki. Determined to stick to what he’s good at, he becomes an underground arms dealer and mastermind behind a theft ring that steals Chitauri technology from the Department of Damage Control under Tony Stark’s nose. Yet Toomes’ heists are so meticulously planned that, barring intrusions by Spider-Man, these heists would be the first in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that could comply with a kind of supervillain OSHA standard of safety—avoid civilian casualties, kill anyone on the team who threatens the secrecy of the job, and do everything for the benefit of your family. Vulture’s minions, save one Shocker, might as well have union cards and OSHA certification. It’s only when Spider-Man interferes that things go bad and people nearly die. A second viewing (or even a first) shows us a Spider-Man who increases the risk that people will get killed by trying to stop the Vulture’s heists.
This new movie is still a lot better than The Amazing Spider-Man 2. There’s none of the Webb films’ penchant for Peter’s loved ones giving him pep talks about how awesome he is from beyond the grave, having died because of some error of his judgment. There’s certainly no dancing emo Parker. But it’s as though in all the fun of the new film, the guilt has been erased, despite the fact that for half a century that guilt has been the single most defining trait about Spider-Man. Spider-Man: Homecoming is certainly fun, and yet for fans of the old Spider-Man comics, its great flavor and plenty of frosting can obscure the fact that something tastes a little bit off about the cake itself.
COMMENTS
9 responses to “Spider-Man: Homecoming … With Frosting So Good You Can Forget There’s Something Off About the Cake”
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Good read, but I disagree. [Mild spoilers follow.] Peter is reckless, but he’s clearly, painfully, trying to help, to be responsible. Every time he has a chance to use Spider-Man for his personal benefit, he turns it down. Liz’s party, the dance, joining the Avengers… and suffers. He skips the pre-competition party. But he is a teenager. This movie really makes him a teenager, which hasn’t really been done before. He doesn’t forsee the consequences, expected (meddling with a superpowered crime syndicate) or unexpected (ATM robbery). The car theft scene captures this in miniature.
That makes this so identifiable to me. I am a learner, too. All I can hope for is to learn from those moments of grace. Hopefully as well as this Peter Parker did.
I saw it first by myself and then again with my brother a few days later. The second time I was struck by how Parker’s motivations (by way of the script, not Holland’s immensely likable performance) seemed a bit too steeped in a “theology of glory” motive, to use Mbird lingo. Parker doesn’t want to lose the suit and he wants to also officially be an Avenger. In the comics Parker’s quest to join a super-team was urgently connected to his desire to be financially solvent and stable enough so that Aunt May wouldn’t have to sell her possessions just to pay the rent. With a much younger and obviously more employable Aunt May in the form of Marisa Tomei Parker’s desire to be on a superhero team has been stripped of the sense of filial responsibility that drove Parker’s desire to be a team player, if possible, in his comics stories.
The other element that comes to fore, particularly the second viewing, was that Parker was so confident in his academic superiority he didn’t realize, despite Ned’s warnings, that he was imperiling his academic future by trying to be Spiderman in a way that would let him “level up” to a more official Avengers role. Making so many abilities and inventions that Parker developed himself in the comics (Spider-tracers and webbing variants most conspicuously) into Stark-tech gifts in the suit, makes Parker’s feeling of reliance on the suit more of a “glory” quest than less one. Paradoxically this comes from Parker’s feeling dependent on Stark-tech he wouldn’t need if we were given a Parker closer to the inventor we got in the comics. So while this was stuff that was easy to overlook on the first viewing (for me) it really jumped out in the second viewing.
Still much better than ASM-2, though. I think FIlm Crit Hulk’s concern about the overall trajectory of the MCU is worth considering–the more of these films we get the more pressing the question will be as to why Steve Rogers or Tony Stark can break rules that an Adrian Toomes can’t. Toomes, of course, ,is one of the bad guys, but his central critique that the Avengers are a team of plutocrats, gods, super-soldiers and asassins who are allowed leniency ordinary people don’t get doesn’t get much of an answer. Toomes’ contract, a legit one with the city, was retroactively rescinded at a federal level in favor of Stark Industries. That Toomes chose a criminal way to deal with that doesn’t necessarily mean his critique is unsound. As Christopher Nolan said of his Batman villains, it’s important for a villain to work that the villain actually be right about something about the world.
Such a good write up Jeremiah, and great discussion here. I’ve seen all of the Spider-Man movies and read none of the comics, but my son has read them, and he always fills me in after each film as to how it fits into the Spidey lexicon.
As this one unfolded, I was a little miffed that there was no “origin” story, or mention of Uncle Ben, or development of the the criminally under-used Marissa Tomei for that matter – that is, until the final scene, which was great, and which actually served as a microcosm for the tone that the entire film had worked to create. That’s when it seemed that (on reflection) this was just a “friendly-neighborhood Spider-Man film”, without all of the angst that both propelled and plagued the previous iterations.
That’s why I would mostly disagree with your “theology of glory” take on Peter. As John points out, in this film, Peter consistently turns down opportunities to make his own star shine brighter – especially when it comes to the places where a 15 year old boy would be most tempted to – being a hero/rock star, and doing well with the ladies.
I do agree though Jeremiah that we don’t get much of a read on any of Peter Parker’s “inner turmoil” (especially compared to the previous films, which spent a lot of time there). There are likely a few studio decision reasons for this. Sony (who owns the rights to Spider-Man) agreed to partner with Marvel much more extensively on this one so that Marvel Studios could craft a way to weave Spidey into the Avenger universe. That meant that decisions had to be made about whether to explore Pete’s inner demons/motivations (which lets face it, has largely already been done, for better or worse) or find a way to develop him as a unique (and obviously very important) character among the Avengers. They went with the latter of course, as I think we would expect them to. There just isn’t enough running time allotted to delve into “Spidey guilt” when you’ve got Robert Downey Jr. signed on.
Again re: theology of glory and this film, I don’t see it. Rather than another Spidey origin story (which I would have still loved by the way, because I’m a sucker for those) they just went with developing a character with typical teenage boy aspirations and problems, and they have clearly sought to re-invent him into less of a tortured soul than the other Avengers. Granted, that is clearly not consistent with the Spiderman comics, but they weren’t trying to be. Nor do I think they were intentionally trying to go all “theology of glory” and give us a kinder/gentler Spiderman, void of acknowledgement of his own sin condition. They were however, going for a “friendly neighborhood Spiderman” (a moniker that I love, because it smells of a superhero who just wants to be a normal guy, and love his neighbor – what could be less theology of glory than that?).
I think there’s a case for the theology of glory reading with a small thought experiment. Take the script of Homecoming (not Holland’s spectacular performance) and have every line and every action done by a Shia Labeouf, a Zac Efron, or a young Matthew Broderick. How would those scenes read?
The idea that altruistic acts can be done from an ultimately corrupt motive or method is a given in this script, just look at Adrian Toomes decision to become the Vulture. So it’s not that hard to imagine that Parker’s motives can be mixed, having sincere altruism mingled with a desire for more than just being a street-level superhero.
I guess there’s always room for a theology of glory in that we don’t know the motivations for what people do. But here I think the actions, combined with the performance that is in the film, makes for another case. Even in our areas of giftedness, even with the best of intentions, we’re going to cause problems for ourselves and others. We’re going to reach a point of being crushed by circumstance. But, especially for those with a higher power, we can persevere.
I love where you are going with motives here Jeremiah, but I don’t think we can expect directors and writers to be with us on that. And, conversely, I don’t think we can infer glory motive onto a 15 year old kid, who’s brain is not even close to fully developed yet.
Regarding Toomes, he’s a great character, but not one to be painted in contrast to Peter. He’s the anti-Tony Stark, not the anti-Peter Parker (at least as this film suggests).
I think you’re right about deeper motivations (1000 %). I just don’t think that this film gives us any level of satisfaction at the level you’re wanting. So we can either call the film out on that (which is fair) or just accept it for the “something else” that it seems to want to be. FWIW, I love your cake/frosting analogy, and LOVE the frosting in this film…….but I also happen to perhaps LIKE the cake part too….because, Spidey/Petey is just a 15 year-old kid……. to ask him to do anything else but survive being a teenager is to require him to have a salary way above his SHIELD salary pay level, which the film said is ZERO.