Homecoming is Tom Holland’s only true Spider-Man movie

My Marvel hot take is that Tom Holland only has one actual Spider-Man movie in his trilogy, and that’s the first one. Despite the fact that Spider-Man: Homecoming doesn’t feature a single scene of him swinging from skyscrapers in Manhattan, it’s still the only film in the trilogy to focus on Peter Parker’s hometown — and not Europe or the multiverse. Although an unconventional Spider-Man movie compared to what came before, Homecoming is the only one of Holland’s that shows him as a street-level hero helping his community with his boots firmly on the ground in his traditional Queens settings. It’s also the only film to truly nail Peter’s everyday school life, striking a balance of realism and faithfulness to the character the subsequent sequels ignore (and the Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield versions never quite captured).

The more I rewatch Spider-Man: Homecoming (which just landed on the free streamer Tubi), the more I find myself hoping that Sony’s upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day will be the return to form promised in No Way Home’s final shot.

The perfect villain

One of the biggest reasons I hope Brand New Day is more like Homecoming is because of the Vulture. He reflected the sort of small-time crooks from Spidey’s rogues’ gallery that kept him tethered to street-level crime. Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton) is a blue-collar salvage worker who turns to crime after being pushed out of the construction business by Tony Stark and the Department of Damage Control. So he starts a criminal business selling alien weapons scavenged from the wreckage of the Battle of New York.

As the Vulture, Toomes becomes a grounded, working-class villain whose grudge against the Avengers directly fuels his conflict with Spider-Man. Despite Tony repeatedly telling Peter to stay a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man and leave bigger threats to the Avengers (or the police), the Vulture is actually the exact kind of enemy he was meant to face. They are both street-level characters, and their final fight in Coney Island (with Spider-Man relying on his old homemade suit after Iron Man takes away his new one) underscores the scrappy nature of Homecoming.

By comparison, the villains in the Sony follow-up films Far From Home and No Way Home feel far less personal for Holland’s Spider-Man. Mysterio is purely out for revenge against Tony Stark, and his origin story doesn’t really parallel Peter’s in any way. As for No Way Home, bringing in a trio of pre-MCU villains is fun, but also reeks of nostalgia-bait rather than engaging with the franchise as it exists now. None of them feel like Spider-Man villains in the way Vulture did.

Brand New Day has a chance to course correct, and maybe even bring Toomes back. While everyone in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has forgotten Peter exists, Vulture may be the exception. We last saw him in the post-credits scenes from 2022’s Morbius, which introduced him into Sony’s Spider-Man villains universe, making his MCU status even murkier. Being displaced to another universe may have spared Vulture’s memory from being tampered with, and Toomes already knows Spider-Man’s true identity. If he returns in the next movie, it could bring the franchise back to its roots in the best way possible.

School Daze

Another thing that makes Homecoming feel so grounded is its depiction of Peter’s school life. Thosee scenes capture authentic, multicultural students, using real locations and the borough of Queens like never before. By comparison, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man leans heavily into idealisations and stereotypes, depicting a New York from a bygone era and a school with mostly white classmates in what’s supposed to be a multicultural metropolis. His classmates also look far too old to be in high school (because the actors were all over 21). Andrew Garfield’s Amazing Spider-Man had a Peter who felt more millennial-cool than dorky. In Homecoming, even though Peter (realistically) goes to a specialized school for science, he’s still depicted as a proper dork, even in a school full of nerds.

Far From Home and No Way Home also pretty much ignore this core aspect of Spider-Man’s identity completely. The former is set over the summer on a school trip to Europe, which means we don’t get the classic tension of Peter racing to finish his homework while fighting crime. The latter pretty much forgets Peter is even a student, except for an early plotline about college applications that’s quickly abandoned.

Now that Peter is firmly in his college years in the upcoming Brand New Day, the movie can offer an authentic look at what it’s like to go to college as a city kid, something the Raimi films glossed over.

Homecoming, for all its flaws (including its heavy reliance on Stark tech and the lingering babysitter energy of Tony as a stand-in Uncle Ben), still comes closest to giving Tom Holland a truly traditional Spider-Man movie. From its villain to Peter’s academic struggles, it captures perhaps the most faithful version of Spider-Man that fans of the comics know and love.

With Brand New Day just months away, revisiting Homecoming is exciting, if only to imagine what director Destin Daniel Cretton could refine and improve now that Spider-Man appears to be heading back to his street-level roots.