Entertainment
The Greatest Ever Marvel Movie Is Now Streaming For Free
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
The Marvel Cinematic Universe spent years dominating the box office, but it began getting diminishing returns thanks to the onset of superhero fatigue. Audiences got tired of every film setting up future movies and shows rather than telling a good story, and it became harder and harder to find MCU films that could entertain the whole family. However, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) makes for the perfect, self-contained Marvel adventure, and you can now stream this blockbuster hit for free on Tubi.
The premise of Spider-Man: Homecoming is that Peter Parker is splitting his time between high school and his secret life as Spider-Man, a junior hero whose mentor is Tony Stark. It doesn’t take long, though, for this young hero to run afoul of a new villain with a grudge against Stark and the Avengers. Unless our titular webhead can figure out the Big Bad’s secret identity and discover how to stop him, he and everyone he loves may be destroyed by a foe who has spent nearly a decade hiding in plain sight and is finally ready to take over the city.
A Cast Of Marvels
The cast of Spider-Man: Homecoming is full of veteran performers, including Robert Downey Jr. (best known for Iron Man), whose Tony Stark character is pitch-perfect as a snarky and sarcastic father figure and superhero mentor to young Peter Parker. Marissa Tomei (best known for My Cousin Vinny), meanwhile, is all warmth and humor as Peter’s aunt, providing a decidedly younger take on the famous character. Meanwhile, Michael Keaton (best known for Batman) gives his supervillain both menace and pathos, creating one of the most complex Big Bads in MCU history.
While there are more great performances from older actors (including the return of Marvel mainstays like Jon Favreau and Gwyneth Paltrow), this movie is dominated by younger performers like Jacob Batalon (best known outside these movies for Avengers: Infinity War), who plays Peter Parker’s best friend and erstwhile “guy in the chair.” Zendaya (best known outside these movies for Challengers) is great as the ultimate cool girl, one who is out of our hero’s league but likes him anyway. Even Tony Revolori (best known for The Grand Budapest Hotel) sizzles as the bully determined to make Peter feel like even more of a loser.
Does Whatever a Spider Can
The best performance comes from Tom Holland, who had previously impressed audiences as Spider-Man in Captain America: Civil War. Previously, Toby Maguire (and to a lesser extent, Andrew Garfield) had won audiences over playing the same character, and audiences were naturally wary of whether Holland would screw up Marvel’s iconic character in a way that made them long for those earlier movies. Fortunately, Holland was a complete natural: he is believable as both a put-upon dork and a reluctant hero, and he managed to honor the performers who came before while putting his own definitive spin on the character.
Once it hit theaters, Spider-Man: Homecoming swung into the hearts of audiences around the world. Against a budget of $175 million, the film did whatever a spider can by earning a cool $880.9 million at the box office. Since then, there have been increasingly ambitious sequels (Spider-Man: Far From Home and Spider-Man: No Way Home), and Spider-Man: Brand New Day (which promises to put the title character against other Marvel heavyweights like Punisher and The Hulk) is currently in development.
Even though it had some big, webbed boots to fill, critics decided that Spider-Man: Homecoming was a worthy successor to the earlier Sam Raimi films. On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has a rating of 92 percent, with critics praising the movie for being a lighthearted, colorful adventure that was true to the title character’s comic book roots. They also commended the film for nestling itself snugly into the Marvel Cinematic Universe while still being completely accessible to franchise newcomers.
The Greatest Marvel Movie?
As someone who grew up quoting Sam Raimi’s iconic Spider-Man movies, part of me was ready to hate Spider-Man: Homecoming. Sure, Tom Holland did a good job with the character in Captain America: Civil War, but I worried whether he had the full emotional range that helped Tobey Maguire transform those earlier movies into mainstream pop culture hits. I was delighted to be proven wrong: not only did Holland instantly make this role his own, but Homecoming established itself as arguably the greatest Marvel movie, one that could be enjoyed as a self-contained adventure or as an indispensable part of Hollywood’s most ambitious cinematic universe.
Will you agree that Spider-Man: Homecoming is the blueprint other MCU movies should follow, or will you want to return to the earlier Raimi movies to see this friendly neighborhood web-head thwip it good? You won’t know until you stream this movie on Tubi for free (now, that’s the kind of price tag Peter Parer can relate to). Afterward, you might just need to deliver a glowing report to Iron Man himself: “Mr. Stark, I feel so good!”
