In the middle of Kevin Feige introducing the next new film at San Diego Comic Con the lights suddenly went down and familiar theme music played over a montage from Captain America: Civil War. It was the moment that I had personally been waiting for all day, the Spider-Man: Homecoming section of Marvel’s Hall H panel.
Tom Holland walked on stage and boyishly addresses the crowd with a, “Hey everyone” the same way he greeted the fighting Avengers in the last Captain America film and the crowd went wild. The entire cast present including Zendaya, Tony Revolori, Jacob Batalon, Laura Harrier, and even director Jon Watts seemed genuinely overwhelmed with the amount of people present and cheers coming from the audience.
Watts explained how Spider-Man: Homecoming was going to differ from the other Marvel films we’ve seen thus far.
“It’s a straight up high school movie about a 15 year old kid. This is the ground level of the Marvel Universe…we’re going to learn what it’s like to have just finished going through puberty and be in 10th grade.”
And that is exactly what they showed in the exclusive Comic Con clip. Set to “Bad Reputation” by Joan Jett, the footage opened like a yearbook featuring pictures of the Avengers in high school including a mullet wearing Tony Stark and an afroed Nick Fury. A bell rings and the clip opens on Peter Parker watching a YouTube video of the airport scene from Civil War. We see different scenes of Peter throughout his day crushing on girls (Hallier as the character we now know to be Liz Allen), hanging out with his friend Ned Leeds (played by Batalon), inventing new web technology during class, and trying to escape study hall while not tipping off Zendaya, playing a punky character named Michelle, to his secret identity. We also get a glimpse of Revolori as Peter’s frenemy Flash Thompson.
The clip ends with concept art and confirmation that one of the villains of Homecoming is indeed the Vulture. It was not confirmed if the character will be played by Michael Keaton, but it still remains a safe bet.
Overall the clip was everything that could be wanted from a Spider-Man film. It was funny and light and felt like all those high school 80’s films, but at the same time it also represented the world of today. The cast is amazingly diverse and looks like any group of students you would see walking into a high school in Queens today. Holland remains incredibly likeable in his role as the teenage superhero. If the film already looks this good only 10 days into production, I can’t wait to see what the rest. Holland’s reaction to the footage was really great since it was his first time seeing it as well. “Wow! Can we see that again?” he asked as soon as it was over.
Watch the whole panel (minus the clip) below thanks to Flicks and the City!
Spider-Man: Homecoming will be released in theaters July 7th, 2017. (Which is way too far away.)