I just got back from a quick round-trip flight, and used the opportunity to torrent a couple of comic book movies I hadn’t bothered to catch in theaters: Spider-Man Homecoming and Justice League. Here are my not-at-all detailed thoughts.
Oh, and I guess I should throw in a spoiler warning here, even though I’m not going to deep dive into either movie.
Justice League wasn’t all that bad! My expectations were low from the previous DC Cinematic Murderverse movies, but I actually found it decently entertaining, if not great. It probably spent too much time on the “Batman’s getting the band together” story and not enough on the rest of the plot, which was pretty damn simple.
But for the most part there was nothing overly stupid like Batman v Superman, maybe with the exception of the ridiculous amount of time setting up the backstory of that one Russian family who need to be saved by Flash during the big climactic battle at the end.
Of course, that climactic battle wasn’t very climactic once Superman showed up. It’s basically like, “oh hey Superman you’re here, great!” and he handles Steppenwolf. Cue end credits.
FYI, this image is not actually in Spider-Man: Homecoming. There’s a part where he gets stuck in a warehouse of alien weapons and has to pass the time before he can get out and he’s kicking back like this on a shipping container. I guess the advertising folks thought it would look good in front of the NYC skyline.
Anyway, I thought Homecoming was a pretty solid reboot to Spider-Man, although maybe a little too tied in to the MCU and I wasn’t a fan of the idea of Tony Stark having made Spider-Man a Spider-Iron Man suit, even if Peter was mixing up the web fluid in his science class lab on the sly.
There were a few other subtle tweaks to the usual Spider-Man tropes, which whatever, that’s fine, I have no great investment in whether everything is precisely as it should be as defined by the comics I haven’t read.
There were a few too many “oh look, Aunt May is hot” jokes. Some of the stuff trying to integrate into the MCU timeline also doesn’t make sense. But overall, entertaining, and a good take on Spider-Man.
Thus ends my not-detailed reviews of these movies!