I was medium-skeps of this movie — did the world need another reboot of Spiderman? — but it was actually really really really good, easily the best Spiderman movie and probably the best Marvel movie since the first Guardians of the Galaxy or Winter Soldier, forget which order those came out in. Really sharp writing and performances all around.

Things:

  1. So they did a really good job with the high school stuff. The original comics, having been written in the 1960s by a dude old enough to have gone to high school in the 1930s, had a set of dynamics that don’t really exist in modern high schools, and too many adaptations have faithfully just taken those tropes and implemented them without really updating them at all. But this one feels way more realistic and modern in its social dynamics.

  2. The part where Peter Parker was the only white dude in his school makes not Miles Moralesing him seem like even more of a missed opportunity. Like, seriously, they already gave him Ganke as a sidekick (though calling him Ned Leeds, in a kind of Spider-Man Name Madlib). It’s so frustrating seeing this great diverse cast and then like the only white people in it who weren’t holdovers from Avengers movies are literally the main hero and the main villain. The hell.

  3. Best character of the movie: Hannibal Buress playing alongside televised Captain America PSAs. A++ grade there.

  4. Not recapping the origin story Yet Again was also a great decision, and yet they still give Spiderman a good story arc in the movie, more than just “can he defeat the villain.”

  5. The Vulture was really well-done, too. It’s not really the comics Vulture at all, but it’s the kind of villain that Spiderman often fights — the down on his luck mook who’s come into a device or a power, and tries to get ahead in the world with its help. I think this goes right up there with Dr. Octopus from Spiderman 2, and way better than the Green Goblin.

  6. One of the ways in which this feels like the Ultimate Spiderman is how he really doesn’t do it all by himself in the way that real-world Spiderman did. He has a friend who knows his secret and helps him out, he gets aid from Stark (Fury in the comics), and as of the end of the movie, Aunt May knows what’s what, too.

  7. The whole Zendaya mislead is kind of weird? Like, it’s cool that they didn’t do yet another Gwen Stacy/MJ Watson thing, and Liz Allan is a legit one-time Parker love interest (who legit has family ties to a villain in the comic, though differently), but why would you cast Zendaya in what was ultimately kind of a bit part? I mean, I guess you’re setting up Spiderman 2 or whatever, but still.

  8. The MCU ties were also good, with Stark being appropriately Starkish, and I really liked the “if you’re nobody without the suit, then you shouldn’t have the suit” line coming from him.

  9. If Mac Gargan is the villain of the second, seems like it’d be more boring? But idk.