Spider-Man: Homecoming- Not always cool, but Amazing to the end Review (no spoilers)

Spider-Man: Homecoming

2017. As the opening title suggests so very cinematically, the Marvel Universe marches on: so many successful, entertaining movies, and with the arrangement struck with Sony, last spring’s Civil War reunited them with the company’s flagship character: the best selling merchandise character in the entire world by a wide margin. Now, Spider-Man’s on, more or less, his new solo debut. We’re getting a lot of things I’ve longed for: no Origin Story repeat, for one, the most formulaic aspect of these wildly-popular movies. Humor. A full Marvel Universe. But as I read a few interviews to prepare a preview, some questions roll into my mind.

Is Heroism still hip? Is altruism relatable to modern audiences? What sort of attitude will Pete have?
How much actual teenager culture will we see in Peter’s life?
Any room for friends? After all: who’s a complete loner anymore?
How different will this villain be- from previous Marvel villains and from his comics incarnation?
Speaking of friends: how different will Spider-Man be with mentor Tony Stark as a supporting character? Not always, but most of the time, Peter was alone against trouble, alone in the angst of his secret identity- especially emphasized in his earliest years under Ditko.


The day’s finally come. Before we get to any spoilers, I have to tell you Spider-Man: Homecoming’s A-grade entertaining! The three ladies who went with me all enjoyed the movie very much- but Spidey always did seem like the type of personality appreciated as much by fans regardless of gender. The ten year-old boy joining us says “It was amazing!” Kids almost always enjoy a Spider-Man movie, and hey, most of all, this is definitely for them! The diverse cast offers a friendly attitude towards a future, in America and around the world. Classic fans get Liz, Betty Brant, an MJ, and best of all, a Flash Thompson, the popular kid who picks relentlessly on our nerdy hero.

As for the origin, with a pretty decent one featured in a film just five years back, maybe the “super-abilities” part is as simple as Presley put it: “I think someone getting bitten by a spider and gaining powers is cool!” Uncle Ben’s loss gets a meaningful glimpse in a line about keeping his I.D. secret from May, and the implicit “power/responsibility” part’s something we see Peter still learning all through Homecoming. Space that went towards the Twilight Zone-twist origin and the Daily Bugle and ever-curmugeonly J. Jonah Jameson, this time out, goes instead to Peter’s high school life. For once, he’s definitely a teenager- just as he began under Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.

Some of that space also goes to Tony Stark and his trusted valet, Happy Hogan, reprised by Robert Downey, Jr. and Jon Favreau. This gives Avengers fans- of which there’s so very, very many brought together by the organically-grown super storyline dating back to Iron Man (2008). This brings, to many, the deepest structural changes to the Spider-Man mythology this time out: he’s the junior superhero in every since. Captain America PSA’s are shown in the high school. (Hannibal Burress plays the gym teacher with the line: “...although I’m pretty sure Cap’s a war criminal or something by now, but I’m required by the state to show these!”

The move from Avengers Tower to the new upstate New York compound creates a huge part of the plot, and its climax. The fallout on the streets of New York from the battles of aliens and gods directly effect the life of that villain to whom I alluded earlier: a pleasantly-fleshed-out Vulture, complete with much more realistic and dangerous-looking equipment with which to take to the air, played by Michael (Birdman, Batman!) Keaton. I’ll publish another post with the spoilers, but let’s just say his alter ego springs a fascinating surprise- and gets one himself- based on his private life.

Super heroes always call forth a bit of inherently-optimistic futurism; it’s part of their wonder. From his original appearance on, Peter Parker always devised technology for his personal uses, inventions like his web shooters, webbing, and even back in 1963, his tracer tracker. I think the quantum-leap in his equipment-for which he’s clearly not prepared, but whatevs- makes him more appealing to the imagination of future audiences for some time to come. His use of special personal devices fits neatly with the lifestyles of millennials everywhere.

Like in Civil War Iron Man’s again a support character instead of the lead. But his part doesn’t overshadow screen time for Spider-Man; in fact, there’s a long Marvel tradition of loose cannon Spidey getting down-country from the officially licensed Avengers. The close personal tie provides a rich surrogate older-brother figure, or some might say, a father-figure. Paternal instincts make an interesting mix with the aging but still vivacious playboy.

I loved the casting. The other big change, on a more subtle level, gives Peter- and Spider-Man- someone with whom he can talk. Ned’s an engaging best friend (played with fanboy awe and geeky charm by Jacob Batalon). And Karen’s maybe an even bigger change- but from director Jon Watts’ point of view, this A.I. gives Spider-Man another screwball companion to allow for extended suspense sequences that aren’t played in awkward, boring silence. AS my pal Dave Kraft, a dyed-in-the-wool pulp aficionado who grew up thinking of Spidey as a “second-stringer”- but eventually got to write him in many popular media-put it, Spider-Man’s a very talkative, witty, wise-ass guy. The movie plays up that part beautifully. His youthful naivete is touching, realistic, and grounded. Tom Holland above all really shines.

Stunts, special effects – a part they’ve been getting very right in Marvel Cinemaverse. The final battle’s unique nonetheless in its mid-air and Coney Island isolation.

Spider-Man, in the comics’ fifty-five year search for novel approaches, has basically evolved into a type of Tony Stark-like boss of his own technological corporation. I’m glad we didn’t have to experience that level of shock. Back to high school, and more ground-level simplicity than ever, while presenting novel gimmicks that enhance action and the ongoing comedy of Peter’s adjustment to his role: these six screen writers pulled together.

And oh yeah: is heroism hip? Oh, probably not. Without overwhelming the story in melancholy, Peter’s dual life, true to form (Parker Luck!), ruins everything he looks forward to as Peter Parker and complicates his every accomplishment. If one thing rings home, it’s as I told ten year-old Presley: “No matter how cool you become, stupid stuff still happens.” You just can’t be a spectacular figure in any realistic light without mixing it up with the occasional garbage can.

Jon Watts starts the myth anew with an appealing young star, an Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) with whom everyone’s flirting, a promising alliance with the Avengers- and a good old fashioned friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

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Spider-Man : Spill and the Spider : A Deadly Mile Below

"A Deadly Mile Below"


Spider Man’s freed the shipmates aboard the Lady Sabrina and Darby Mist boats, among other hijacked tug boats and other vessels used to skim oil from the Gulf Coast spill by Roxxon Oil! But what plan lies within the deep shaft leading into the cavern?



http://ceaseill.blogspot.com/2010/06/spill-and-spider-one-for-all-ages.html has the first part of two, if you missed it! However, you could just read on!!!




Within the island cavern, Spider Man observes a pair of ships leaving a dock secreted behind a sliding steel door. The fumes floating upon the ocean continue to affect him.


He crawls down a dry shaft of parched earth into darkness, following his uncanny warning sense.

“Deeper, hotter...must be the effect of under sea floor pressure!” thinks the wall crawler. The strain of the vertical climb would be far more than any man could bear. Nauseated, dizzy, he must carefully, quickly scale into this almost unimaginable crack into the floor of the ocean. Spider Man continues on, because there is no other way to know the face of the urgent danger.


Finally, he attaches himself to platform he finds descending below him, and hides. When it stops, he finds a secret labratory. In its midst stands a shock-haired man, pacing in a dark green jumpsuit, talking aloud to an image on what appears to be Skype, projected onto a screen. He releases a signal from his wrist watch; a laser sets a quivering ringing sound to work. Two of the captured boats enter the stormy seas pointed back to the shoreline.





“It’s the precise moment; the skimmers we’ve loaded with vibranium are safely on their way to our coastal laboratory," says the Thinker. "Your men prepare to evacuate this base, which is approximately 97.8 % safe from discovery before
our next and final phase is complete!"

"It’s the Thinker! I'd know that calculating cackle anywhere!" thinks Spider Man.


“Got to fight my sickness from those oil fumes, and listen for some clue! Any minute, now, Thinker-Bell will start explaining his calculations! For such a shy, reclusive type, he certainly loves to hear himself talk!”




NEXT: SHOWDOWN WITH THE SPILL!!!

Spider-Man : Spill and the Spider (one for all ages)

“Spill and the Spider”


Today, Peter Parker is a photographer visiting the Gulf Coast, aboard a skimmer,
the Lady Sabrina. The boat was recruited to help retrieve the oil from the water’s surface, as dark clouds gather overhead.

He feels sick and sad. Fumes and brown globs cover its waters.

“My spider sense,” he thinks, “keeps buzzing, as though there’s some form of
danger all around! And these gases give me a terrible headache! Compared to this, web slinging in New York City is a breath of fresh air!”
“Storms are bringing wind speed up several knots,” remarks the captain next to Peter. He is scrubbing a brown pelican with detergent. “Glad we are heading back to shore.”
“Wish these pictures had better news,” says Peter.
“I hope, when people see this, they will not forget,” says Captain Steven, shaking his head.
“Trouble with the radio, Captain Steven!” says a crewman. “No signal going out.”
“Looks like we have company,” says Captain Steven. “That’s Captain Eldon Kelli’s boat, the Darby Mist.”
Peter’s warning buzz grows stronger. “They’re siding up to board us. Captain, do you see those strange guns?”
From the prow of the Darby Mist, costumed Pirates appear. “Stand down! We’re armed and coming aboard!”
“Let’s take these hostages before storm blows in,” one says. “See what these lasers can do? They can cut through metal---and you, too, if you don’t cooperate!”
Nothing I can do for now, Peter thinks, except watch out for my fellow shipmates.
I’ll help if necessary...but at my first chance...
Soon, as the Lady Sabrina and Darby Mist approach an island in the distance, one of the thugs says, “We’ll be docking in a few minutes!” At this point, Peter swiftly gets up off the floor and runs for the edge. “What’s that nut doing?” says a thug. “He’s falling overboard into the water!”
“He doesn’t stand a chance out here, with his hands tied,” says their leader. “Let’s prepare to dock!”
As he falls overboard, Peter snaps the ropes and flicks the hidden nozzle of his web shooter open. “Keep a tether onto the boat with my web! Otherwise, in this wind I may never fire a straight shot, and I don’t want to lose them!”
Then he quickly spins a web around himself.
“Hope this cocoon will do the trick while I change.” What no one aboard the ships know is that Peter Parker is secretly the Amazing Spider-Man!
“Use my webbing to make a paraglider, catch wind...” he thinks, as the storm catches up his huge webbing kite. “Lifting me up...perfect!”
“Not the ideal day for para-sailing, but so long as they can’t see me at this distance, I can follow them the rest of the way! My spider-tracer I left aboard Sabrina is all I need to find the boat inside.”
From far above the waters, Spider Man is treated to a
heartbreaking sight. “Man, Roxxon Oil’s exploded rig was a big enough disaster---but no one realized how bad the deep water leak would be! These poor animals!”
“I’m glad Captain America called for, pleaded for, the donated time and efforts of boats who can skim oil. This stuff could decimate the marshlands---and those are all that protect the coast when hurricanes come along!”
He sees rows and rows of absorbent tubing called booms stretched out. Some of them are catching oil; some are overturned. “If only someone were out here overseeing the boom!” he says aloud, while trying to snag a line of the boom as it floats above the ocean.



“The boom can’t stop the oil if it’s tangled up along the coast! I wish my web could substitute, but it dissolves in an hour.” With great difficulty, he manages to pull the boom straight again from his paraglider.


Below, he sees the pirates reaching their destination. From his webbing glider, Spider Man swings down and crawls inside on the cavern ceiling, where he sees many other small yachts captured.
He watches the hostages carefully; first he makes huge, sticky web. Then he dives into the gun men.
“What? Spider Man!”
“You were maybe expecting Abbie Sunderland?” he jokes, referring to the teen sailing her boat solo around the world.
With spider-speed, Spider Man begins throwing the Plunderers into the web to hang stuck.
The last one tries to shoot Spider Man, whose webs fly over either side of his shoulder. “The Plunderer’s gun will fry you where you stand! And you missed!”

“Oh, I won’t miss you one bit!” Spidey says, throwing another gun man into him so hard that he slams into the webbing, which stretches , then catapults them both over Spider Man’s head into the huge web. He then turns to Captain Steven:
“I’ve got to trust you on your own...try to radio Coast Guard and I’m going to explore this base!”
“Get me in touch with Admiral Thad Allen!” says Captain Steven, as Spider Man swings away.
“Someone’s got to have a plan for stealing all these skimmers,” says Spider Man. “If the buzz my spider-sense is giving me is right, I might find the answer down this mine shaft.”
(End of part one of two)


NEXT: Danger from below!

Letter about dads and old comics

Dear R.J.

How are you guys doing now? Your son must be about the age I was when I started buying my own Spidey comics. How well have your Mom and bro and sis dealt with your papa's passing?

I'd taken on a rather spiritualist's bent pretty thoroughly before my Dad passed away at the age of 59 of pulmonary fibrosis. I know what you mean; I miss his voice, miss asking him practical things, miss bugging him for old stories. I almost immediately began to
feel as though he was near me when I would sit down to draw, in particular, as I had free-handed an old Western four pager, called "The Man Who Lost the Fight" to send him for what became his last birthday, which he spent with all his old work buddies gathered 'round.



PF seems a particularly fearsome disease, as breathing is that most basic thing for which you and I should give thanks. I wish he hadn't worried about his eternity or dwelt on guilt, even though he spread God's word the way his Baptist church recommends like a truly desperate man might, with tracks and testimonies. We could talk at length about a God kind enough to create us and yet apparently send many of us to burn forever (a solar racial memory?); I digress. I believe salvation should be worth something in terms of inner peace, as it so rarely seems to figure into the minds of many adherents.




Nowadays, on the occasions we're together, I try to consider MOM more, because Dad loved her and insisted we be consistent in our contact and affection for her sake most of all. Kindness to the living is without a doubt the best answer to that last enigma of the consciousness. I try to stay on the side of seeing Dad as part of infinity and not wasted, enjoy his memory, value what he taught me. They were men of seemingly simpler times. His were street smarts---the kind of thing an aspiring geek sometimes acquires more slowly, having the luxury of abstract thought and scholarship.

Spidey was on the first cake I can remember at age 4 (think so; Popeye was #5) and his cartoon played every possible afternoon, even tape recorded (!) for later eventually. ASM #250 was the first issue of that title I bought with my own coin.

My collection is 3000 miles away in Georgia, so this (spideykicksbutt.com) has been the best way to rifle through the old long boxes on this day after Mom's bus took her back East.

Dad's sister and her many kids stayed at our crowded house for several months when I was 7. On the suggestion I might be feeling neglected (really?), Dad took me to the mall for Baskin Robbins and bought me a Viewmaster which introduced me to the Lee/Ditko origin of Doc Ock. That was a rare treat indeed.

Here, Joe is shot---not fatally---and is replaced as the new fastest trigger in town...who gets himself blown away. "See, I really won after all!" Joe tells them. "I'm still alive!!"

Holy cow! I felt him with me Christmas morning, as I pulled out, mostly, some terrific Gerber Defenders issues found cheap on EBay, and just stared at them for the longest time, remembering the box of about 30 comics I got for Christmas '81, all salvage store finds for cover price. I glimpsed the joy he must have felt, being the Dad he never felt his could be for him, picking them out and driving them home with Mama. That image really just hit me for the first time ever just now. How do I thank you...for THAT?



Regards, C Lue Disharoon