It's really happening! The Spider-man/Iron man buddy movie we always never knew we wanted... or something. Immediately, from the two minutes trailer-cut footage one thing is very apparent. Spider-Man is fun again. I think with their #1 character back in their hands (kind of), Marvel is out to fix people's number one complaint about every previous Spider-Man film. Spider-Man is supposed to be fun, Spider-Man is supposed to be chatty, Spider-Man is supposed to be a smart ass who taunts and pokes fun at his opponents relentlessly. Yes, Toby McGuire's take on Peter Parker was far too introverted and Andrew Garfield's was... there, I guess. So, I won't go as far as to say we finally have a "good" Spider-Man film, but we are definitely going to have a fun Spider-Man film. And hey, if I'm totally wrong and the movie sucks the film's initials are "SMH", so Marvel can always pull a "hey, we subliminally told you so!"
Before I get too far into this, I feel it important to explain my qualifications on the matter. I love Spider-Man. Quite a bit. I exited my mother's womb loving Spider-Man. When I was very young we didn't have a ton of money to spare, I'm grateful for the necessities I had, but as a kid I wanted nothing more than a Spider-Man action figure to play with. I would ask my brother, Adam, to draw and color pictures of Spider-Man for me so I could cut them out with scissors and play with them as action figures. You can imagine they would get damaged easily, so asking my brother to draw them was a common occurrence. With this paper cut outs of Spider-Man I would act out different heroic scenarios that usually involved beating up my brother, Curt's Star Wars action figures or webbing my sister's Barbies to death. As I grew up I would often skip lunch in school as to save the lunch money I had received from my parents that morning, and any opportunity I got I would purchase Spider-Man comic books at the neighborhood pharmacy. In my adolescence, I spent all my money from the same source on Depeche Mode CD's, but that's neither here nor there. In my lifetime I've purchased some 700-800 comic issues of Spider-Man in some form of fashion, many of which I still have. Including the "Maximum Carnage" arch, and the "Life Theft" arch, which we will get to in a bit.
Another thing that I think is going to happen with this film is it's going to upset a lot of comic book "purists". You know, the annoying people who hate movies because they aren't true to the book? Sadly, they might have a case here, but there appear to be some things that are directly based on the comic books. Let's talk about the inaccuracies first. For starters, Spider-Man and Iron Man were never buddies, and in no way was Tony Stark ever a father figure to Peter Parker. The two characters never actually teamed up until Marvel's mini series "Secret Wars" in 1984, at that point in the comics, Spider-Man was a twenty-something, and Iron Man wasn't even Tony Stark. For a time, Jim Rhodes dawned the red and gold iron man suite and took up the mantle of Iron Man. Also, Spider-Man was never
really an Avenger. In actuality when he did team-up it was most often with Daredevil and spent quite a bit of time hanging out with the X-Men. In fact there are far more Spider-Man/ Wolverine buddy comics than Spider-Man/Iron Man comic books. And why not? In terms of comic sales Spider-Man, X-Men and Wolverine are the most popular Marvel comic books of all-time, So, there was a lot to be gained by teaming Marvel's two most popular franchises. Often.
One complaint I've already heard is "The Vulture doesn't look like that!" I beg to differ. Pictured here is the Vulture in his high tech Birdman suit that he actually developed from Skrull technology in the aftermath of the Kree/Skrull war.
I actually took this picture with my phone from the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man #388. Also known as "Life Theft: Part 3 of 7". A mini series in which it is revealed that the Vulture actually killed Peter Parker's parents. No, not Uncle Ben, his actual parents, Richard and Mary Parker. Wait... I mean, Spoiler alert! Forget what you just read. I have a strong theory with evidence to back it up that "Spider-Man: Homecoming" will be at least loosely based on the "Life Theft" arch. Now, If you've seen this trailer, Michael Keaton's Birdman costume might look somewhat familiar to you. It definitely did to me. It looks to me that the vulture developed his costume from old Chitauri parts. Now, the Skrulls are not the Chitauri, but they did fight the Avengers in downtown New York City, leaving the bowels of the city heavily damaged. After the battle the vulture managed to get his hands on some of the technoligy left behind and was able to upgrade his suit into the metalic, armor-like suit you see to your left. In addition, in the trailer Michael Keaton utters the words "Don't mess with me, because I will kill you and everyone you love". That line is LITERALLY taken from The Amazing Spider-Man #377, in which the Vulture utters those same words to Spider-Man. While we already know this film isn't going to include a Spider-Man origin story, if this film is based on the story line I before mentioned it very well may shed some light to audiences what actually happened to Peter's parents. I mean we all know what happened to him, right? (If you don't, that's fine, just don't ever talk to anyone. Ever.
So what about things we didn't see in the trailer?
Donald Glover.We know Donald Glover is going to be in this film. There's a lot of speculation, but a lot of people seem to think he is going to play Miles Morales, who would become Spider-Man much later in the series. Who Donald Glover is actually playing is a mystery.
Jon Bernthal. Several months ago, it was confirmed that Jon Bernthal would have a small role in this film as the Punisher. Yes, the very same Punisher that appeared in Daredevil season 2.
Carnage. At San Diego ComicCon last year, a teaser was released to a ComicCon only audience.When Is ay only I mean only. You cannot find it in any format on the internet. Filming of this teaser was strictly prohibited, and yet... oh wait, you can find it cause it leaked. In a video taken from a cell phone. As you can imagine it's very poor quality (Like hobbit barrell scene quality), but at the very end of the teaser there is indeed an appearance from Carnage. Kleetus Cassidy, himself. It is very evident that the Vulture is THE villain in this film, so it's very unclear what role Carnage will play. Heck, that shot could even be a post-credit scene of some sort. Let's pretend Carnage is a big piece of the story. If we're pulling from the "Maximum Carnage" arch, it would be very difficult to explain the origin of Carnage without the presence of Venom. Is Venom going to be in the film? We have no idea, but what we do know is too many villains in "Spider-Man 3" made it too convoluted and ultimately lead to the film's demise. I doubt Marvel Studios would make that mistake again.
At the end of the day, the trailer for "Spider-Man: Homecoming" made me very excited for the movie, which is literally the job of a trailer. So, good job, "Spider-Man: Homecoming" trailer!
