Not this Father's Spider-Man

(Mild spoilers, maybe?)

It's hard to imagine now that we're at our third Spider-Man movie series since the turn of the century, but there was a time when comic book movies were rare. Back then, the conventional wisdom was that the movies might help sell the comics. A lot's changed since Marvel Studios began its shared universe project and left other studios scrambling to catch up with interconnected properties of their own to varying success. Whereas the comics was once the core of what Marvel was, now it's clearly the movies. These things make a boatload (Staten Island Ferry load, even) of money and now it's the job of the comics to sell the films. Take a good critical look at the Marvel comics in a shop near you and I bet it won't take long to come to that same conclusion. So with that in mind, the way these films go about trying to please their target audience has changed a great deal, with much less of an interest in old guys like me who read them before there was any Spider-Man movie to speak of. That was undeniably clear after I saw Spider-Man: Homecoming.

So you may be thinking "Who cares, Rob? Is it any good?" Well, sure I guess. It's quite entertaining in that typical Marvel way. The studio's gotten very disciplined at putting out fun, unoffensive blockbusters with a welcome emphasis on character-based humor. They're usually good but almost never great and always too cool for opening credits. They are disciplined about their world-building, which is a good skill after seeing how The Amazing Spider-Man 2 crashed and burned three years ago as it tried to start its own cinematic Spidey universe single-handedly, failing to learn the lessons of Raimi's Spider-Man 3 and stuffing the film with so much backstory, villains, and lore that it went down in flames. Sony hit that brick wall so hard that it crawled on bloodied hands and knees to Marvel's doorstop, offering to share the profits if they could just help come up with a movie that felt like an actual movie and not just a checklist.

This incarnation of Spider-Man has actually already appeared in an amusing sequence in last year's Captain America: Civil War. He's played by Tom Holland as one of those Hollywood nerds who is very charming and quick-witted and yet somehow totally unpopular. Say what you will about Tobey Maguire, he played Peter Parker as a bona fide awkward geek. He's in high school, which I think was a smart place to start. Poor feeble Aunt May is also a lot younger, played by Marisa Tomei as a total AILF. (Seriously, she hugs Peter and I'm like "that lucky little bastard.") Ned Leeds shows up for the first time, not as a Daily Bugle reporter but as Peter's best friend at school. Jacob Batalon is really funny as this new Ned, one that I can't ever imagine becoming the Hobgoblin. But let's be real - the thing that makes or breaks the movies most of the time is the villain, so how did we do?

I might have cast Charles Dance as the Vulture, but Michael Keaton is damn good as Adrian Toomes. The Vulture is a fairly one-note villain in the comics, so there's a lot of room for a movie to experiment with him. This version is a working-class mechanic/construction type who gets screwed over thanks to bureaucratic bullshit before making a name for himself as an illicit arms dealer (unlike respectable arms dealer Tony Stark, but we'll get to him later). The flying costume itself is the same armor-plated look that we've seen in a hundred movies like this already, but Keaton is great. He's at the center of the film's best scene, when Peter Parker unexpectedly encounters him in a civilian environment. Plus, his right hand man (Bookeem Woodbine_ is the Shocker, a nice way to fit in another villain without succumbing to bloat.

So that's what I liked. What I didn't like, ironically, is what was supposed to make this one superior to its predecessors - the connection to the Marvel cinematic universe as a whole. In the comics I remember, Spider-Man could be standoffish around other superheroes. It made sense, he was picked on so much in school that he didn't trust people to treat him fairly so he generally operated as a loner. I don't mind the "guy in the chair" friendship with Ned Leeds in this movie, but Peter's desperation to be a part of the Avengers and impress Tony Stark/Iron Man just hits a sour note. Especially when we find out that the Stark-designed Spider-Man costume has all sorts of hidden systems and gadgets in it and even a Siri-esque artificial intelligence. Really? It's all just such corporate cross-promotional wankery.

But Marvel's not worried about what a old-school Dad like me thinks. Not anymore. Marvel needs kids to be obsessed with the Avengers, so Spider-Man is obsessed with the Avengers. This Spider-Man is tailored to this era, not my era, and I think kids who have grown up over the least several years of Marvel movies will find this one delightful. I can either reject that and tune out entirely, or keep watching them with the interest of what directions they will take the characters. Plus it's always fun to speculate about the upcoming movies. This one makes it pretty clear that the Scorpion will be showing up next time, although I'm still waiting on Mysterio, preferably played by Bruce Campbell.

There's also some other rumored Spidey content on the way, from characters that Sony has held on to. Tom Hardy is set to play Venom in some kind of solo movie, and how they will introduce that particular character without Spidey himself should be pretty interesting. At least it's better casting that Topher Grace. Another benefit of more movies for old Dads is that new collected editions of the old comics usually show up when a movie is coming soon. Always a silver lining.