How Homecoming Raises the Stakes

The first movies in Phase 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe aimed to be bigger and better than their predecessors. Movies about changing the entire landscape of the universe. Captain America: Civil War altered the relationship between almost all of the Avengers. Doctor Strange saw the hero stop an overlord from another dimension invade earth. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 was about destruction on a galactic scale. The stakes in both of these movies are very high. But when you look at the movie that followed them all, the stakes seem so much higher. And that’s because Spider-man: Homecoming doesn’t raise the physical stakes; it raised the emotional stakes by making them very personal.

Spider-man: Homecoming, on the surface, is a great teen movie. It’s got awkward teen romance, quirky teen subplots, and dozens of homages to the John Hughes movies of the 1980s. In a word, it’s fun. But when the movie really digs into its superhero side, it turns from fun and carefree to deadly serious. The movie feels big. But when you look at the plot it’s actually not. It’s about Peter Parker (Tom Holland), a poor kid from Queens, trying to stop Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton), a maligned blue collar worker, from stealing and selling technology from Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), a genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. Even if Peter fails to stop Adrian the world will keep spinning. The stakes, compared to the other movies in Phase 3 are low. But every time I watch this one, it feels bigger. It feels more intense. It feels like everything will go wrong if Peter doesn’t win this fight.

And as I watched the movie this past week I found the reason the stakes feel so high. It’s because this movie is deeply personal. Homecoming takes time to really let us get to know the characters and the world they live in. We see the neighborhood Peter spends time in. We watch how he interacts with the kids at his school. We see his relationship with Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) and Tony Stark. At the same time we meet Adrian and hear how he is doing what he’s doing for his family. We watch as his livelihood is taken away from him. We see the way he works with his crew and how he treats them when they respect him and what he does to them when they don’t. By spending time truly getting to know the major characters and their story we get a strong investment in them. And we end up with a stronger connection to the story as a result.

And while this makes their conflict initially personal, this movie raises the stakes in one of the best scenes in the MCU. Peter, picking up his date Liz (Laura Harrier) for the homecoming dance, arrives at her house to meet her dad… Adrian Toomes. And that’s when this movie raises the stakes. It makes the relationship between the pair deeply personal and we watch Peter struggle to navigate meeting the father of the girl he likes. It makes an already scary situation that most of us guys have experienced and makes it utterly nerve-wracking. And it gets worse when we watch as Adrian figures out the truth about Peter before threatening to kill him should he continue to interfere in Adrian’s work. It may be one of the absolute best scenes in the entire MCU.

And that’s why this movie hits so much harder than many other MCU movies. It makes us get deeply invested in both of these men and when they finally hit that conflict, we partially empathize with both of them. Even though Adrian is committing crimes we see his rational, literally. We meet the people he’s working for, and since we’ve been geared to like Liz through the movie, we want happiness for her as well. And watching Adrian interact with his family shows that his heart is in the right place, even if his methods are criminal. We often empathize with the plight of our heroes. But it’s even stronger when we empathize with the villains as well. It’s why Loki (Tom Hiddleston) was such a strong character in Thor. And it’s why Adrian is such a high stakes villain here. We know as much about him as we do about Peter.

The other thing that makes this moment so powerful is how the movie uses our racial prejudice towards same race families to it’s advantage. It establishes that Adrian has a wife and daughter in the beginning of the film but because of our instinctual prejudices we don’t put together that his wife and daughter could be black. And when I first watched Homecoming I remember my mind thinking that Adrian had gotten to Liz to get to Peter before connecting the dots that he’s actually her father and has been closer to Peter the whole time. I’m not saying our biases are good but the way this movie exploited them for a mind-shattering plot twist was phenomenal. And the scenes that follow up the tension that keeps you as nervous as Peter is during the entire car ride.

And while I didn’t talk about most of the movie’s content and how it works as both a teen comedy and a superhero movie. Its biggest lesson is the one I’ve talked about. A movie can be low stakes in terms of the plot but high stakes in terms of the personal conflict. The movie, while not having earth shattering impact the way many other MCU movies do, feels big. It feels life and death because we the audience are deeply invested in both Peter and Adrian’s stories. That’s the secret. When both characters get so well developed that we feel that we know them personally the impact of them colliding both literally and metaphorically hits hard. And when we watch Peter struggling to save Adrian from killing himself with his greed, we root for Peter. But we also root for Adrian. Not because we like Adrian, he is a villain, but because we have seen what he will leave behind if he dies. And that investment is how this movie keeps the stakes high throughout.

Just a quick refresher of my MCU ranking criteria.

Cast and Performances
Story and Plot
Best Fight/Action Scene
Rewatchability
Cleverness of the Stan Lee cameo

Each film will be judged solely by me and then placed against all the other films. And rated on a scale of 10 with a total possible score of 50.

So, here is the quick breakdown of Spider-man: Homecoming

Cast and Performances: The cast in this movie is incredible. Tom Holland has an adorable dorkiness that keeps Peter feeling like a real teenager from any neighborhood in American. Michael Keaton’s Adrian is ruthless but grounded and commands the movie as one of the MCU’s best villains. The supporting cast add fun personality that all gets moments to shine, especially Jacob Batalon as Ned, Tony Revolori as Flash, and Zendaya as MJ. The other members of Adrian’s crew feel a little overstuffed and lifeless and there are several minor characters who don’t get a lot of stuff to do other than serve the plot. But overall strong. (9/10)

Story and Plot: The plot is good. The story is simple but effective. And the twist that Adrian is Liz’s father changes the whole game and makes the plot far more interesting than many other  movies like it. (8/10)

Best Fight/Action Scene: Both the conflict on the Ferry and the final showdown between Spidey and the Vulture crew work well for different reasons. The Ferry is a great way to see Spidey in an area where his powers struggle and gives us our first real conflict with the Vulture. The finale as I stated is high stake and has a lot of fun CGI moments which land both emit cheers and touch the heartstrings. (8/10)

Rewatchability: I love this movie. And after dozens of rewatches it still has the fun moments that make me smile. It’s not just a good superhero movie, it’s a fun movie period. I’d watched it all the time if I could. (10/10)

Cleverness of the Stan Lee Cameo: Stan the Man is Gary, a citizen of Queens New York who threatens to whoop Spidey’s ass if he doesn’t stop making a racket while trying to stop crime in the neighborhood. It’s cute but mildly forgettable (7/10)

Total: 42/50

Current Ranking:
The Avengers
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Spider-man: Homecoming
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
Guardians of the Galaxy
Captain America: The First Avenger
Iron Man
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Captain America: Civil War
Ant-Man
Thor
Iron Man 3
The Incredible Hulk
Doctor Strange
Thor: The Dark World
Iron Man 2

I love Spider-man. And it was fun to spend a little time rewatching one of my favorite MCU movies. I’m excited because now the villains in these movies get way stronger. We’re going back to space next week for a little time with everyone’s favorite hammer man.

But in the meantime thanks for taking the time to get Ploominated!