Why "Spider-Man: Homecoming" Has Made Me A Spider-Man Fan Again

“When you can do the things that I can, but you don’t, and then the bad things happen, they happen because of you.”

When Tom Holland’s Peter Parker uttered this simple explanation to Tony Stark on why he decided to don a superhero identity and fight crime in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, I knew that the titular web-slinger was going to be special to me once again.

I, like most people my age, grew up on the heroic exploits of Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man which had transpired more than a decade ago. And what drew me to the character as a whole as I watched Tobey’s Spider-Man films wasn’t really the flashier superhero side of Spider-Man, but the mild-mannered and shy disposition of Peter Parker. Peter wasn’t a billionaire playboy nor was he born with any extraordinary abilities. Before he got his powers, Peter was just your everyday high school kid, an awkward geek who tried going about his life by keeping his head down and his morals high, despite the mockery and humiliation he faced from his peers on a daily basis. Through Peter, I learnt that being a hero wasn’t about being popular (although you can’t totally avoid some notoriety when you’re in a colourful costume taking down bad guys); it was about doing what’s right and not bragging about it afterwards. Peter always remained humble, even when he knew he could have boosted his popularity greatly by revealing to everyone the wisecracking, web-crawling side of him.

Rolling into 2012 with The Amazing Spider-Man, Andrew Garfield’s portrayal of the main protagonist never quite captured the same demeanour of Peter that I had come to adore, in my opinion. Andrew’s Peter acted more like an annoying hipster than a bumbling nerd (he was carrying a skateboard around for some goddamn reason!). Although Andrew’s Spider-Man was more in line with the witty nature of Spidey, I didn’t fancy this side of Garfield’s Spider-Man either as the hero came off a bit too dark and arrogant at some points. This was one of the main reasons why I fell off from the Spider-Man fan train (the frequent franchise reboots were getting ridiculous too).

Now, we fast forward to Spider-Man: Homecoming, where Tom Holland gets to step into the shoes of Spider-Man/Peter Parker in his first solo outing as the hero. And while Tobey Maguire’s representation will always hold a special place in my heart, I’m so glad that Homecoming has once again made Spider-Man an exciting prospect for me to wholeheartedly enjoy. Objectively speaking, Tom Holland gives a fantastically balanced performance as both Peter Parker and Spider-Man. If Tobey’s Peter Parker was 14 years old, it would’ve basically been Tom’s Peter Parker. Yet, Tom also adds another dimension to Peter that was absent in Tobey’s portrayal; the ‘teen drama’ side. Outside of the superhero escapades, Tom’s Peter is juggling his crush towards the most popular girl at school, his academic decathlon and his relationship with Aunt May. The fact that he never seems to have a firm grasp on any of these aspects in his normal life makes him much more endearing to me as someone who’s just trying figure life out, just like the rest of us.

In terms of the story itself, the one thing that strikes me more than anything else is the theme of duality that Peter’s trying to resolve between his heroic identity and his civilian one. In Civil War, Peter Parker was trying to be Spider-Man. In Homecoming, after previously experiencing an awesome time battling alongside the Avengers themselves, it’s mainly Spider-Man who’s trying to be Peter Parker. At the end of Homecoming, without spoiling too much, a balance between the two personas is finally discovered. Peter ultimately understands his place in the world at the moment, and to me, it’s a satisfying end to the narrative at hand.

Thanks to Tom Holland, whatever’s next on the cards for his iteration of our friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man, you can be sure to count me back into the fold, a fold which I’ve sincerely missed.