I’ve had to give up on Disney’s chronological ordered MCU as I needed to watch Spider-Man which I’ve found on Now TV and Netflix at time of posting. I’ve also written about other Spider-Men recently so this has a focus on the Tom Holland’s Spider-Man movies available at the time of posting.

Spider-Man Homecoming – An even younger Spider-Man (Tom Holland) returns from his Civil War adventure to being a no-name local hero. Peter struggles with school, chasing a girl called Liz, and waiting to get called up for the Avengers again. There’s also a moody girl who shows up enough to be important but doesn’t really do anything. In the meantime, the Vulture and Shocker are salvage clean up men down on their luck, they turn to black market weapons dealing and are set up to be the villains of this film. Shocker’s really just a hurdle while Vulture is the big bad. Peter’s friend Ned quickly finds out about Spider-Man, Aunt May acts like a big sister who helps Peter a bit and Stark teaches Peter how to rely on himself rather than his suit. Of course the villain ends up involved in Peter’s personal life and isn’t a truly evil baddie, just another Stark hater. Most of the characters are fairly likeable, the plot isn’t too bad but Spidey does seem like more Spider-Boy than Spider-Man. It’s an okay film.

Spider-Man Far From Home – Spider-Man goes to Europe on a school trip. New elemental monsters emerge and Mysterio is there to stop them with his green magic. Anyone like me who had prior knowledge of Mysterio will be suspicious of this set up. There is an interesting plot because of this though. Peter also gets close to the moody girl from Homecoming and she’s MJ, Michelle Jones (not Mary Jane) and I didn’t like the character of this MJ, she seemed a bit bland as a character, she didn’t display qualities that made her likeable as the hero’s girl. Mysterio is well played and does more damage than anyone could have predicted. Once again, everything is happening because of Iron Man and everybody’s hate for Stark, I know he started out as a bad person and everyone upsets people now and then but Stark has half the world against him. It’s not an action packed movie but there are plenty of special effects that are impressive, there’s some humour there and it’s quite clever in how it all works. I liked it more than Homecoming.

I’ve written some extra thoughts on Tom Holland’s Spider-Man here.