SPOILERS FOR SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING 2017 — BEWARE IF YOU DO NOT WANT IT SPOILED, SKIP THIS ARTICLE UNTIL YOU SEE IT.

Okay, great let’s just get the whole Micheal Keaton “You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain” joke out of the way. It has been done to death; however, if you had not seen the joke before or not made the connection, then, yes…I made it up.

SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING REVIEW

Now onto the actual review. SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING, like so many Marvel films before it, was an absolute home run. HOMECOMING had intrigue, it had action and like its predecessors was rife with comedy. While still a reboot, HOMECOMING managed to avoid what the last two Spider-Man franchises did not; which was telling the same story differently.

Sure, this is a new Spider-Man. With the number of reboots done in the last fifteen years with the character, everyone already knows his origin. Marvel mercifully realized that and didn’t make us sit through another scene of Uncle Ben getting shot, or with yet another “with great power comes great responsibility” speech. Hell, we did not even get much about how he became Spider-Man, just a quick “Oh I got bit by a spider.” So it was great to able just to hit the ground running in that sense.

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What made SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING stand out from the rest of the MCU is that the stakes and the ambiance surrounding this film were clearly, for lack of a better term, JV. That is not to disparage the movie; it was fantastic. In fact, it is more of the opposite.

SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING was clearly about Peter Parker trying to grow, right? In every sense of the word. He is navigating his love life, his academics and being Spider-Man. It is a coming of age film. Parker, like so many teenagers before him, thinks he is ready for more than he can chew. He inevitably screws up and thankfully, unlike so many teenagers these days, actually learns his lesson.

The minor league sort of vibe permeated throughout the rest of the film as well. Whether it was Ned Leeds trying to operate as “The man in the chair” in his school’s computer lab, Peter leaving his homecoming dance to go fight Vulture, or the actual climax itself, it was evident throughout that this film did not have the stakes that previous MCU films like GUARDIANS 2 or AGE OF ULTRON did. But, that is okay because we as an audience were invested.

Why were we invested? To start out, Spider-Man is a fantastic character. It does not take a lot for people to go say “hey let’s go see that new Spider-Man movie” If there is one out, just take a look at the numbers. Spider-Man seems to have that same sort of drawing power that only Batman can rival.

On top of that, three factors made this film stand out. One, that HOMECOMING had a unique vibe of amateurism that no other Marvel film has had before it (as stated before). Secondly, because of Vulture and thirdly, because this was the FUNNIEST film Marvel has produced to date.

As we all know, Marvel has found the perfect formula for making a good comic book film. Part of that equation is a small but steady dose of humor throughout. Well, Spider-Man Homecoming amped that up. Maybe the aforementioned lack of consequences made the writers feel that they had to keep the viewer’s interest in another way.

Maybe it is just because being a teenager itself is awkward and Peter’s age naturally lent itself to the atmosphere of comedy. With the inclusion of comedians such as Hannibal Buress, Martin Starr and Donald Glover, the school support video’s done by Chris Evan’s Captain America and the fact that Marvel was a C and K away from blasting their first F-word, HOMECOMING cemented itself as a legitimately funny movie.

Another aspect that made Homecoming a much watch was the story arc of Vulture. Adrian Toomes is a textbook definition of a tragic villain. Okay, maybe not a textbook definition, but hell, in a capitalist society, you must keep up with the Joneses, right? Anyways, you do feel for Vulture.

You understand that he needs to do what he does to support his family. Sure, getting back at the government after what happened to his crew probably makes him feel a bit better. But, a lot of people can understand the whole mentality of “taking it to those greedy government and corporate fat cats.” That is not something we have seen in the MCU before. Up to this point, it has been “take over the world, kill all life in the universe” etc. For as great as the MCU is, having a tragic villain is something that is way overdue.

READ: Want to know what else Marvel is doing this summer? Click Here!

Once again, Marvel just keeps spitting out hit after hit after hit, and Homecoming is no exception. While the stakes were not high within the film itself, this was an incredibly important film for the franchise. If this is to be believed, then Spider-Man is about to become one of the most important characters in the MCU.

So getting him off to a good start was imperative; and while Homecoming was phenomenal, one of the more peculiar parts of the film has to be the after credit scene.

What Does HOMECOMING’s After Credit Scene Say About INFINITY WAR?

While I found Captain America getting in front of a white screen and basically telling the audience off for waiting hilarious, Marvel almost always does an after credit scene that pertains to the universe at large. Now, this can be interpreted one of two ways.

Either one, the writers were just going with the flow of the films and leaving the audience with one last joke, or two. The studio has nothing more to say about the build up to the INFINITY WAR. My bet is on the former rather than the latter; Marvel still has two films that come out before INFINITY WAR and given the tone of HOMECOMING, it would not be a giant leap to assume that’s what they did. Guess we will see after THOR: RAGNORAK.