Plus More Marvel Emasculation

I made the mistake of watching another Marvel movie. Even worse, I bought it.

I was tired of my 1995 integrated amplifier. It was great in its day, but in a 2018 living room, it’s like a demented grandfather in a room full of Silicon Valley whiz hipsters, yelling into a disconnected candlestick phone while everyone else Whatsapps.

It can’t do HDMI. It can’t switch video sources. It’s not fun hooking it up to a subwoofer. To watch TV and use the computer, I had to juggle remotes way too much. Finally, it didn’t sound good. I have DirecTV (the Less-Attractive Rob Lowe of TV providers), and the only way to connect the box to my amp was to use an S-video adapter which provided pretty bad sound.

I did what I believe was the smart thing. I bought an Onkyo receiver which was discontinued a year or two ago. I paid less than 40% of MSRP, and all I’m giving up are some ridiculous Amazon-compatibility features. I don’t want that stuff. Amazon spies on me enough as it is. I would never have an Amazon spy device in my house.

The new receiver has fewer wires hanging out of it than the old one, and it does more. It has crazy video menus that allow you to set your system up to work with your speaker inventory and its positions. I can aim movie dialogue at my head when I sit in my favorite seat. It’s also nice to be able to switch video sources without touching the TV remote.

I got it hooked up, and I realized I needed a loud, trashy movie with lots of special effects. In short, I needed Marvel.

The latest Avengers movie won’t be available for a couple of weeks (something like that), so I chose Spider-Man: Homecoming.

I didn’t understand the significance of the “homecoming” connection. It turns out the movie takes place during homecoming at Peter Parker’s high school. That doesn’t help me all that much, because I don’t know what “homecoming” means. Every school celebrates homecoming, but no one ever explains what it means. No one comes home on homecoming, and if they did, wouldn’t they celebrate at home instead of wasting the occasion on bepimpled, empty-headed cheerleaders and wedgie merchants?

I will spew spoilers at will, so if you run into one after this sentence, it’s on you.

Here’s how the movie works. Peter Parker (British actor Tom Holland) has been discovered by Tony Stark, who has provided him with a stupid electronic suit that talks to him. In the comics, Spider-Man has incredible strength and agility, and he’s pretty capable. He doesn’t need a set of computerized long johns to look after him. In the movie, he is an inept 15-year-old who is lucky to best common street punks. He can’t find his way around. He can’t make anyone respect him. He can’t run fast. He gets winded easily.

Yes, Spider-Man gets winded easily. Evidently someone on the writing team failed to look “superhero” up on his iPhone. A superhero is not a great, plucky kid who struggles to defeat stronger enemies with humor and humility. A superhero is someone who can do things like melting steel with his eyes or lifting an aircraft carrier with one hand. Nobody wants to see a superhero gasping for breath.

Tony Stark ignores Peter and leaves him in the hands of Tony Stark lackey (and real-life Obama lackey) Happy Hogan, who has turned bitter and jealous (not unlike Obama). In earlier movies, Happy was a good guy who supplied comic relief. In this film, he’s jealous of Spider-Man, and he treats him the way I treat telemarketers.

Hogan manages Parker by cell phone, hanging up on him and ignoring everything he has to say.

While Peter waits to be called up for service, he goes through the usual high school ordeals. He falls for a gorgeous girl, and people pick on him. Nobody tries to beat him up, so we never get the satisfying and anticipated scene where Parker humiliates a bully without even trying. But an obnoxious Pakistani kid manages to make him an object of universal ridicule.

Is it diversity when a movie has an obnoxious bully who isn’t white? I’m not sure.

Peter’s enemy is Michael Keaton, so in a way, we’re watching Spider-Man vs. Batman.

Keaton plays a blue-collar guy who runs some kind of salvage company. He gets a contract to collect superhero-battle debris after a big Avengers kerfuffle. Marvel-y government types show up after he has spent a ton of money hiring people and gearing up, and they throw his crew off the site without so much as a written citation.

Hello, Marvel: “due process.” It still exists, even after #MeToo and 911. In the real world, Keaton would hire a lawyer and either drive the government off or get a huge settlement. In the movie, Keaton punches a Peter Strzok type in the mouth and leaves.

Keaton still has a bunch of weird alien technology in his possession. The scraps come from the fight with Ultron, who was not an alien, but…okay. He decides to make arms and sell them to criminals. He builds himself a giant set of wings driven by what appear to be enormous computer fans, and he flies around causing problems. He wears goggles with little green lights in them. Put it all together, and you get the Green Goblin.

Keaton’s character is wonderful. He’s a better actor than Willem Dafoe, and the part is written well. He’s not just a nut who hates the world. He’s a small businessman trying to look after his employees and his family. I mean, yes, he murders people, but he has a little depth.

Peter discovers Keaton’s crew and starts following them around and screwing up their operations. In the process, the goblin crew accidentally cracks the Washington Monument. Peter’s friends are inside. They’re on some kind of nerd-competition field trip. His dreamboat love interest, Liz, is among them. He saves her, as Spider-Man. In a later scene, he asks her to be his date at the homecoming dance, and she agrees. Of course, she has no idea that the two awkward 5-foot-tall men in her life are one and the same.

It gets weird when Peter’s aunt (Marisa Tomei), drives him to pick her up and the Green Goblin answers the door. Liz the crush is Michael Keaton’s daughter. On the way to the dance, he figures out that Peter is Spider-Man, and he threatens to kill him and everyone he cares about if he doesn’t lay off.

Obviously, they end up fighting, and Peter wins (after losing badly), saving Keaton’s life in the process.

It sounds good, but throughout the movie, Parker keeps screwing up and getting bested. The Green Goblin’s illiterate thugs defeat him. Four random punks armed with Green Goblin merchandise defeat him. The Green Goblin defeats him twice. I’m pretty sure Liz could beat him up. Of course, she’s taller than he is.

What’s the point of putting radioactive spider venom in him and turning him into a freak if he can’t do anything? He’s even worse than Captain America. The Hulk is the toughest Marvel hero. Then comes Iron Man, because he has the best stuff. Then comes Thor. Then Captain America. Way down on the list, sitting in a corner listening to Justin Bieber MP3’s on an iPhone with a pink Hello Kitty case, is Spider-Man. He’s like 5 inches shorter than 5’7″ Robert Downey. He’s out of shape. He’s about as hard to ambush as Helen Keller. Why does he even get a movie? Even Ant Man is tougher.

His love interest is a former Disney girl named Zendaya, i.e. Mary Jane. Her character is a tortured urban kid with a very sour outlook on life. Sarcasm is her only talent. She’s very funny, and Zendaya plays her beautifully, but there is no romantic interaction between M.J. and Parker, and even if there were, it would be disappointing. I don’t want to be mean, but a female lead should have the looks to pull off her role, and this girl does not. It’s impossible to believe that Parker would want her.

The girl who plays Liz, on the other hand, is a stunner. Not only that; she likes Parker. You want to see them get together. And her dad is a villain. That makes for all sorts of writing opportunities for future films. No, we get the feminist version of Mary Jane. You WILL love the smart girl, no matter what she looks like. Dissent is not permitted.

No, no, no. Doesn’t work. I hope the next Spider-Man movie starts with Peter Parker finding out Dr. Octopus ran Mary Jane through a chipper, so Peter and Liz can go put an end to his shenanigans.

Mary Jane wouldn’t mind. She’s always depressed.

I’ll tell you something about men. We don’t fall in love with women just because we are ordered to. The feminists can’t make male moviegoers find Zendaya attractive. I don’t care how funny she is.

Movie heroes aren’t supposed to have ordinary lives. They don’t marry the homely girl who makes her own sweaters. Moviegoers want to see characters do things they can’t do. We are all perfectly capable of marrying disappointing women. Why would we pay to see Tom Holland do it?

Sure, Mayim Bialik is nice, but everyone wanted to see Johnny Galecki marry Kaley Cuoco.

Imagine a movie where the protagonist has a dream of becoming a concert pianist. He practices and practices, and his beautiful love interest encourages him and tells him to believe in himself. Then at the end, he gives up, gets a cubicle job, and marries a plain girl with a congenital odor problem that requires her to bathe with prescription soap. Who wants to see that? I certainly don’t. I want to see movie heroes do better than I do.

I’m tired of wimpy Marvel heroes. Thor got neutered in his last movie. Iron Man is on Zoloft. It seems like the Hulk–a certified moron–is the only real man in the bunch, unless you count Scarlett Johannson.

On the up side, the movie was a fairly good test for the new receiver. The room shook, and I didn’t feel like the characters were talking from beside the TV. I love this receiver. Given that I only buy new ones every quarter of a century, that’s a good thing.

Spider-Man: Homecoming is sort of okay. If it pops up on your cable system without an additional fee, it’s worth watching. Just be prepared for disappointment.

I had to buy it. Amazon didn’t list a rent option. Now I’m stuck with this thing for as long as Amazon acknowledges my right to it. Ten bucks, down the toilet.

I’m not buying The Avengers: Infinity War. I hope.