Spider-Man: Homecoming manages to keep its stakes relevant to the state of Peter Parker’s life. The young Marvel character is dealing with your standard high school but also stopping a super villain from an evil plot. It never quite escalates to saving-the-world level of heroics which helps the film feel relatable, in a sense, as audiences see Peter in social environments and struggling with internal conflicts regularly.
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Another element of the film which helped it feel so relatable is the cinematography choices made by Spider-Man: Homecoming director Jon Watts. Watts wanted the audience to feel as they were always right there, with Spider-Man.
“I wanted it to always be shot as if it was real, you know?” Watts tells Den of Geek. “If you actually had a Spider-Man who could do all of this stuff, you know, you would shoot it with actual equipment.”
“So, it’s really cool to do that [the swoopy camera]. I always call it the Peter Jackson camera moves, where the camera is going like ten thousand miles. But I didn’t want to do that for this, because I wanted to keep it all as grounded as possible. So, whether it was shooting with a drone camera or a helicopter or a cable-cam, or even just handheld, up on a roof chasing after him, I wanted it to feel like we were there with him, and everything was something you could actually film.”
It helps that the Spider-Man suit, which is heavily influenced by Steve Ditko’s classic art with the character, is completely real on set.
“It’s 100% practical when we’re shooting,” Watts told ComicBook.com. “[Tom Holland] has a full suit that he wears whenever possible. And then, what we do is we go in and then just sort of clean it up. You paint out the seams, you paint out zippers, and if there’s too many wrinkles in a particular part, you paint that out. Then, you animate the eyes.”
The moving eyes are the only part of the suit which couldn’t be pulled off on set. “They look exactly like the way they do in the movie,” Watts explained. “They just don’t move.”
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You can find the official synopsis for Homecoming below, which has a 4.13 out of 5 on ComicBook.com’s anticipation rankings young Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Tom Holland), who made his sensational debut in Captain America: Civil War, begins to navigate his newfound identity as the web-slinging super hero in Spider-Man: Homecoming. Thrilled by his experience with the Avengers, Peter returns home, where he lives with his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), under the watchful eye of his new mentor Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.). Peter tries to fall back into his normal daily routine โ distracted by thoughts of proving himself to be more than just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man โ but when the Vulture (Michael Keaton) emerges as a new villain, everything that Peter holds most important will be threatened.
The cast includes Tom Holland, Michael Keaton, Zendaya, Donald Glover, Jacob Batalon, Laura Harrier, Tony Revolori, Tyne Daly, Bokeem Woodbine, with Marisa Tomei, and Robert Downey Jr. It also includes Jon Favreau, Martin Starr, Kenneth Choi, Michael Mando, Selenis Leyva, Isabella Amara, Jorge Lendeborg, Jr., JJ Totah, and Hannibal Buress.