Almost all of the films that we actually watch in the cinema are superhero action movies, a fact that I find to be both somewhat embarrassing and depressing. I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about this one either after so many superhero movie cinema outings so far this year and the fact that we’ve seen so many different iterations of the character already. This is why I’m far more enthusiastic about characters that have never been made into a movie before. In the end however the excellent reviews and great word of mouth on Broken Forum drew me to the cinema anyway.

Following the events of Captain America: Civil War, Peter Parker looks forward to being an active member of the Avengers, going to the extent of putting off his usual high school activities in order to be available for emergencies, but never gets called on to do anything else. He does his best to help out in his neighborhood but is frustrated at being small time until he encounters a gang robbing ATMs with scavenged Chitauri technology. This puts him on the trail of Adrian Toomes, a salvage contractor who was put out of business by Tony Stark’s Damage Control and has decided to sell the repurposed weapons to criminals instead. After Peter’s best friend Ned Leeds discovers his secret identity, they work together to track down Toomes. While all this is going on, Peter has to deal with both Tony Stark who wants him to stay away from the more dangerous criminals, leaving them to the authorities, and Liz, a girl he has a crush on at school.

As many others have noted, Tom Holland plays the youngest Spider-Man yet on the big screen, though I’m not sure that he looks 15 years old. What’s more interesting to me is that this version also seems significantly less powerful and far less experienced. For example, he takes ages just to crawl up the Washington Monument. I don’t think he even wins a single straight-up fight against a named villain here. He survives and perseveres, sure, but he doesn’t win. This cements his place as a more approachable, more down to earth hero who, as in the old comics, has trouble even navigating the suburban landscape. The big action set-pieces here aren’t anything special and director Jon Watts chooses not to even try to emulate the wide-screen, eyeball popping spectacle of web-slinging across the New York skyline that the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man did so well. Instead, this iteration chooses to differentiate itself by feeling much more like a John Hughes teen movie than a superhero movie.

That’s an incredibly bold decision and it pays off wonderfully. The character dynamics are a lot of fun and leverage the many years of the MCU’s world-building to convincingly paint a world of teenagers growing up in a reality in which superheroes are an accepted fact of life. I loved all of the small updates that deviate from the usual Spider-Man canon but actually reinforce the spirit of the character. For example it was smart to recognize that the stereotype of the bullying jock is outdated and change the character of Flash accordingly. Having so many ethnicities properly reflects the diversity of Queens, New York. Imagine how snobbish a school full of white students would look. Most intriguingly, this version of Aunt May and Peter Parker seem to not have gone through the tragedy of an uncle Ben dying as the character does not yet seem to exist in this continuity. So instead of the familiar ‘with great power comes great responsibility” dictum, the lesson for Peter is to avoid the temptation of using his powers for frivolous purposes, i.e. impressing girls and gaining entry to the cool kids club.

The updates apply to this version of Adrian Toomes, the Vulture, as well. Originally I thought that casting Michael Keaton was a bit of a joke move after Birdman, it turns out to be an inspired choice. His character has believable motivations, isn’t completely evil and as such is easily among the best villains so far in the MCU. I also love how Tony Stark is portrayed here. The film invites the audience to be sympathetic to Peter but on reflection Stark does nothing wrong and is every inch the responsible mentor. He is right to ask that Peter concentrate on his schoolwork and focus his superheroing to neighborhood-level threats. He even proves Peter wrong is that he is paying attention to Peter’s reports and is doing something about the Vulture. I like that the story doesn’t reward Peter for taking risks and going out to look for trouble. Pretty much every character here seems grounded and behaves in a reasonably realistic manner, such as Liz commenting that winning a competition doesn’t matter much after surviving a life and death situation.

I only have a couple of quibbles. One, the Spider-Man suit seems too full of gadgets, like the Iron Man armor almost, but the film cleverly recognizes this as well as resolves it. Two, there’s a discrepancy between the character’s impressive debut in Civil War and his lackluster performance that isn’t quite explained by Stark assertion that Captain America could have flattened him at any time if he was fighting seriously. Still these are only minor flaws in what might only be a middling action movie but is a great Spider-Man film.