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The Preview Reel: Spider-Man: Homecoming

Scott Davis
The Preview Reel

Welcome to this week’s “Preview Reel” column, where we look at the week’s upcoming wide-release movies. Despicable Me 3 put up some mild fireworks last weekend at the box office with $72.4 million, while Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver over-performed with $30 million during its five-day opening. Hurray for original movies! This week sees one of the most anticipated movies of the summer open in Spider-Man: Homecoming. Spidey is now officially part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), but how many reboots of the webslinger can we take? Read on to find out true believers.

 

Spider-Man: Homecoming

What we are excited about: Spider-Man is home. The cleverly titled Homecoming is the first feature-length Spider-Man adventure to be part of the MCU. After making a brief, but insanely fun appearance in last year’s Captain America: Civil War, Tom Holland dawns the red and blue tights as the third different Peter Parker in just ten years. What’s got us the most excited about this movie is the fact that it’s bringing Peter back to high school. The Tobey Maguire/Andrew Garfield Spider-Man flicks were so eager to get Peter out of high school or tackle big scale villains that they lost sight of what makes the character special. In Civil War, Peter was worried about studying for a test and the trailers for Homecoming showcase that he’ll have to deal with similar high school problems as well. Spider-Man isn’t supposed to be saving the world, instead he goes out and stops robberies before rushing home to study for a Spanish quiz. He’s a “Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man,” not the “Save the World Spider-Man.”

What we are worried about: While we are excited that Spider-Man is finally part of the MCU, we are a little worried about Iron Man’s appearance in Homecoming. We want the focus here to be on Spider-Man and not have this turned into a mini Iron Man 4 or have Tony Stark be a co-lead like he was in Civil War. We think the trailers are showing more of these scenes to sell Iron Man along with Spider-Man, which is undoubtedly smart, but we want this to be a Spider-Man movie first and then a MCU movie, and we are confident Marvel is going to do just that given their track record.

The Buzz: Marvel movies always attract a large amount of buzz, and Spider-Man: Homecoming is no different. The public might be getting sick of Spider-Man installments (each Spider-Man movie has grossed less domestically than the previous installment), but putting him in the MCU might give the character the boost he needs. Reviews will certainly also aid the character as the movie currently sits at 92% on RottenTomatoes and 73 on MetaCritic. The glowing reviews will help this movie debut around $110 million, which is higher than The Amazing Spider-Man 2’s debut of $91.6 million.

Final Thoughts: Spider-Man swinging into the MCU certainly has comic book fans optimistic, and based on early reviews, it looks like every moviegoer should be too.

Scott Davis

Scott Davis is a recent graduate of Oakland University where he earned a degree in journalism. He worked for the student newspaper on campus, The Oakland Post, where he became the paper's managing editor. He also earned a minor in Cinema Studies at OU. Scott enjoys all things film and TV related, especially the blockbuster kind. He might be the biggest Christopher Nolan fan you know.
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