With Spider-Man: Homecoming having conquered the American box office and several others across the globe last weekend, there is no doubt in my mind that comic book geeks all around globe are now discussing the story twist in the movie in which comic book mainstay Liz Allen was revealed to actually be Liz Toomes, or the daughter of the film's villain, Adrian Toomes, aka the Vulture.
At that point, I was so happy with the movie that they could have just given me a generic showdown and I still would have enjoyed it thoroughly. As it was, though, so late in the film the storytellers still managed to throw me for a loop. Peter Parker's reaction was portrayed to utter perfection by Tom Holland, who has, in my mind, at least established himself as the definitive Spider-Man and Peter Parker. Peter's profound discomfort at the discovery that his worst enemy was actually the father of his longtime crush and homecoming date was a superb piece of acting, and Holland didn't even need his perfect Queens accent; his expressions said everything. The car ride from Toomes' mansion to the high school was the real payoff, and I guarantee that people are going to be talking about that sequence for years to come, way more than they will be about the CGI fight sequences. It's easily one of the most tense confrontations in any superhero story ever put to film.
Quite a few of the films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have had story twists over the years, starting with the not-so-shocking revelation that Obadiah Stane had hired mercenaries to have Tony Stark killed, the slightly-out-of-left-field revelation that Ben Kingsley's ruthless Mandarin was, in fact, a drunken, washed-out actor, the disclosure that S.H.I.E.L.D. had been taken over by HYDRA, and most recently the blatantly-telegraphed revelation that Bucky killed Tony Stark's parents. As twists go, however, this one was, for me, anyway, the most effective one, considering that it came out of nowhere and had the most visceral impact. The car ride that followed the reveal was really something else. Also, while it's not the first time that a bad guy figured out who Spider-Man was without an unmasking (which, laughably enough, has happened quite a lot over the course of the five previous movies), the depiction of how Vulture figured out Peter's secret was the most well-conceived that I've seen so far.
And then, of course, just when we think the film is about to wrap up, there's the moment that Aunt May walks in on Peter while he's wearing the high-tech Spider-Man suit that Tony Stark has just returned to him. It's considerably less dramatic than the Vulture twist and played more for laughs than anything else, but it sure made for a heck of a cliffhanger. Truth be told, Marisa Tomei's Aunt May was tragically underused in the film especially considering how important the character of Aunt May is to Peter, but I get that the imperative of this film was more to establish his relationships with his peers rather than show him as the "aunt's boy" he was in previous films Still, this particular sequence seems to indicate that they've got big plans for the character for the inevitable sequel.
This film delivered on so many fronts for me I was more than ready to embrace it even without these little"bonuses," but these have just sweetened the pot all the more and now have me even more excited for the prospect of more movies from this team. May they make many more movies as good as, if not better, than this one.
I just hope they work his Spider-sense into the next film.
No comments:
Post a Comment