[8.6/10] The great promise of *Agents of Shield* and then Netflix’s *Defenders* series, was that these shows would explore what happened when The Avengers weren’t around to save the day, in the places below their notice. They would show the meat and potatoes work of corralling threats in a world where aliens attack and superhumans combat them and the street-level problems that could not be solved with energy blasts and theater-shaking explosions. But while each of the MCU’s television series have done their share of noble work, they’ve rarely felt connected to their cinematic brethren. Rather than exploring what it means to live in the shadow of Marvel’s biggest heroes, more often than not, these shows feel as though they exist within their own separate worlds.

Enter *Spiderman: Homecoming*, a film devoted to the notion of what happens in the lives of people who live under the pedestal that Tony Stark and The Avengers occupy. Despite Spider-Man’s dive into the fray during *Captain America: Civil War*, *Homecoming* spends most of its runtime with Peter Parker (Tom Holland) yearning to be a part of that super- team and feeling like he’s on the outside looking in and not significant enough to rate much attention from Tony Stark (or from his driver, Happy Hogan, who’s the “point man” on the Spider-Man project).

But the script, credited to a six-man team, smartly parallels Peter’s sense of being beneath his idols’ notice with a villain who’s motivated by the sense that the Tony Starks of the world don’t care about the little people like him. Adrian “Don’t Call Me Vulture” Toomes is the working class head of a local clean-up crew. In the film’s opening flashback, a combination of the federal government and Stark Industries nabs Toomes’s contract to clean up and salvage after The Avengers’ Battle of New York out from under him. Between then and “the present day” (whenever that is in the MCU timeline), Toomes and his team have used the alien wreckage they’ve scavenged to create a sophisticated operation, one with fancy tech that allows them to find more alien detritus, make superpowered weapons, and sell enough them on the black markets to keep food on their families’ tables.

Parker and Toomes are funhouse mirrors of one another. Peter is a young man, worried that Stark and his friends view him as too green to hang with the big boys. He’s constantly reaching out to Stark and Hogan in the hopes that they’ll pluck him from obscurity and let him live the life of his dreams. Toomes (played with a spectacular, unassuming menace by Michael Keaton), by contrast, is an older man, disdainful of the people who fly above him, literally and figuratively. He seeks no approvals, but simply takes to the sky and get what he views as rightfully his and to regain the livelihood that flashy men like Stark have robbed him of.

The film finds creative ways to connect and contrast the two figures, and to link the themes of two men in very different parts of their lives making very different gestures toward the great and the powerful of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But it also does a superb job of establishing the everyday world that Peter Parker lives in.

*Homecoming* is the first Spider-Man movie that feels truly set in and around a high school in Queens. Beyond the admirable diversity of the film, there are oversized hallpasses, relatable social dynamics, and the lived-in feeling of how a bunch of teenagers would see Iron Man, Captain America, and the rest of the Avengers. Part of what grounds Spider-Man’s aspirations to join the superteam is how he feels very much of a world where those heroes are gods and rockstars, a world that feels very far away from Sokovia and Berlin and even Manhattan.

It helps that young Tom Holland is a revelation as Spider-Man. Again, there is a genuineness to his gee whiz excitement at being a remote part of The Avengers’ world, his struggles to balance his humdrum life with the thrills of fighting crime and save the day, and the “still figuring this out” qualities he brings to the character. Whether it’s Peter’s endearing friendship with his best buddy Ned (played with nerdy gusto by Jacob Batalon), his conflicted crush on fellow academic decathlete Liz (Laura Harrier), his bullying at the hands of Flash (Tony Revolori), or the way he gets the business from his sarcastic, oddball classmate Michelle (a delightful performance from Zendaya), this is the first Spider-Man film whose cast of characters come off like real teenagers and not just little adults.

That’s truest for Parker himself. One of the best qualities of *Homecoming* is how it allows for a Spider-Man who is still new at this, and consequently not quite as polished at heroing as his avenging counterparts. In the same way that the MCU’s Daredevil was distinguished in combat by how much damage he took from his opponents, the uberfranchise’s Spider-Man stands out for how many mistakes he makes when trying to save the day.

That means an attempt at foiling an ATM robbery can lead to Peter’s favorite bodega getting blasted to kingdom come. It means a big attempt to foil the bad guys may require a great deal of help to avoid turning into a complete disaster. And it can, just as effectively, mean that despite his own superpowers, Peter Parker still loses his backpack, fumbles considerably when trying to use his Stark-designed supersuit, and even manages to fall flat on his face. The original conception of Spider-Man was as a real teenager, one not nearly as polished or sharp as the Batmen and Supermen of the world. *Homecoming* vindicates that original notion, with a protagonist who is well-meaning but very raw, giving him a palpably different flavor from the other superpowered pugilists of the MCU and beyond.

To that end, even as director Jon Watts takes care to imbue the film with as much Robert Downey Jr. star wattage as possible, *Homecoming* is a movie devoted to the notion of its hero as the little guy. The script belabors the “friendly neighborhood Spider-Man” line a bit, but takes the time to depict the teenager-in-tights foiling petty thieves, giving churro-brandishing old ladies directions, and above all, seeing as much value in helping the regular people of New York City as in foiling the latest globe-threatening plot.

That’s the cinch of *Homecoming*. The film stumbles a bit with the usual third act rumble, and some belabored moments of cheese to cement Peter’s arc. But as a whole, it gives this new Spider-Man a character of being a little guy in a big world that makes him refreshing and different, not a perfunctory third wall-crawler in ten years. It gives him an antagonist nominally devoted to the same notion of protecting the same average folk, with drastically different means that expose the fissures between them. And most of all, it affirms the worth of those parts of the world, the problems a little too small or prosaic to warrant The Avengers’ attention, and the people who live there and tackle those problems every day, with power, responsibility, and a little help from their friends.