Leo

I came to a realization - I HATE the MCU Spider-Man films. Here's why: To me, they strip away everything I love about the character. Spider-Man has one of the greatest origins in comics, yet they removed Uncle Ben. He has one of the best supporting casts, yet most of them were replaced with… Ned. I have nothing against Zendaya, but why make her "MJ" without actually making her Mary Jane Watson? She has a completely different personality, too. I want the "Admit it, Tiger… you just hit the jackpot" version of MJ. The MCU also took away Spider-Man’s independence and made him far too reliant on Iron Man. This trilogy also made me realize something else: Spider-Man isn’t at his most interesting in high school - or maybe I should say, he only works in high school when it’s a TV format, like The Spectacular Spider-Man. In movies they just don’t utilize that setting well. The most compelling version of Spider-Man on film is when he’s a young adult. As for Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, he’s easily my least favorite of the three live-action versions. He lacks the depth of Tobey Maguire and the charisma and humor of Andrew Garfield. Instead he often comes off as an overly whiny, immature kid. And that’s not even getting into the bland visuals, underwhelming action scenes and lack of any epic swinging sequences. The one redeeming quality of this trilogy is the villains. They’ve consistently been the strongest part of the "Home" films. I really hope Brand New Day changes my mind, but bringing back Ned already feels like a bad sign. We’ll see.