Let’s get the data out of the way. Box office $880 million (over five times the budget!), Tomatometer rating 92%.
Did it deserve such success? Yes.
This project was a gamble. Although Sami Raimi’s 2002 Spider-Man was an absolute smash, becoming the first movie ever to make $100 million its opening weekend, (my friend Christian and I were among those people, watching it at AMC Century City in Los Angeles), and the sequel was even more acclaimed, the 2007 second sequel was reported to be the last one. That decision was made easier by everybody’s hating Spider-Man 3.
A reboot happened just five years later, so we got to see another origin story only 10 years after the first one. The Amazing Spider-Man, as the new movie was called, did well enough to warrant a sequel, but 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 did badly enough critically and was underwhelming enough commercially to kill that franchise.
When Disney bought Marvel in 2009, it created sticky situations with Marvel characters whose rights were already owned by other studios to some degree. In fact every non-Disney studio other than Warner Bros. (which owns the DC empire and thus doesn’t have a need for Marvel) had licensed something. Fox has continued to not only distribute but make its own X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Deadpool movies, although Disney has now dealt with that by just buying Fox LOL. Paramount eventually agreed to have its distribution rights for Iron-Man, Thor, and Captain America bought out. Universal has allowed Hulk to be used in the MCU as a supporting character in others’ movies but retains right of first refusal if another standalone Hulk film is made.
That leaves Sony. The studio that once counted Spider-Man as its biggest cash cow was looking to partner up with Marvel after the disappointment of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. That meant that not only was Spider-Man introduced to the MCU in Captain America: Civil War but the following year that new Spider-Man got his own film.
That new actor is honestly one of the best things about the film. The casting of Tobey Maguire in the original Spider-Man movies was initially met with a lot of derision, with Saturday Night Live calling him a “low-key mumbler” and having a hilarious parody of him on Weekend Update. Once the movie came out I wasn’t hearing any complaints but I’m wondering how much that had to do with the quality of the film itself. I still found Maguire kind of annoying in the role. To be fair I loved him in Pleasantville where he played a geek who loved pop culture history (he reminded me of someone). Notice how he hasn’t accomplished anything major in over a decade since last donning the red and blue tights though.
I definitely find Andrew Garfield more charismatic than Tobey Maguire but he has a different problem. While some iterations of Spider-Man in the comics have been less nerdy than others, Garfield seemed like he should have been an outright jock instead of a put-upon nerd.
Honestly my biggest problem with both those guys was that they looked so damn old! Peter was supposed to be a high school student yet Maguire and Garfield were both in their late 20s by the time their first installments came out.
Tom Holland was an actual teen when his first appearance was released and that’s not even the best part about him. He’s exactly what a Peter Parker should be, – dorky and hapless but wide-eyed and innocent, plus charming in a goofy way. Think maybe a teenage Hugh Grant. Or Christopher Reeve in Superman: The Movie, if it’s not sacrilege to compare him to a DC character 😉
All those traits were exhibited in Captain America: Civil War. Now in his own movie Parker and Holland remain charming, partly because of how great everything else is in the film.
The plot features Peter addicted to the adrenaline from the previous film’s signature battle and obsessed with experiencing more such adventures when the outside world, including and especially his mentor Iron-Man, are trying to get him to be a regular kid. We get to see his regular teen moments – succeeding in academic decathlon, having a major crush, getting bullied, bonding with his best friend, getting nurtured by his mother (or rather by his aunt who’s raising him) – and they’re all engaging but the best scenes in the film might be the ones with Iron-Man. Tony Stark the character and Robert Downey Jr. the actor have both shown remarkable growth since the first Iron Man, as the character becomes a caring but firm father figure to this child. I mentioned how the MCU movies seem to draw the right specific talent – one of the people behind this story and script was John Francis Daley, Sam Weir himself for you Freaks and Geeks fans (read: anyone who has ever seen that show). If he’d been 15 years younger Daly might have been perfect as the star of this movie but as it is he helped created a fabulous one for Holland.
The specific crime-fighting plot involves Michael Keaton as a man disgruntled with a government he feels doesn’t care about the working man and who turns to illegal weapon manufacturing and sales instead. He’s quite a foil for young Spider-Man, especially for a reason we find out late in the film. As far as Spider-Man’s home life, it was a bold but great move going with a young Aunt May. Really, when Peter’s supposed to be a teenager why are his uncle and aunt always depicted as elderly? Marisa Tomei, for whom I’ve expressed my admiration, is delightful in the part and there are hilarious jokes about how every man she meets, including Iron-Man, lusts for her.
If all that sounds like a lot for one movie, I want to make clear that there isn’t so much as a dull second. Watch it so you can have a remarkable time!
Game: Three Oscar winners (Tomei, Jennifer Conelly in a voiceover, briefly Gwyneth Paltrow), two nominees (Keaton, Downey)
Up next: One hero steps up, another steps down.
Bottom line: AMAZING! (pun partially intended)
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