With The Amazing Spider-Man 2 struggling to find a foothold with audiences, Sony cancelled the duo of sequels and the various other ‘Spidey-Verse’ movies that it had planned and began talks with Marvel in earnest about bringing ol’ Webhead home. Though the final agreement didn’t see Marvel reclaiming the screen rights outright, under it, Peter Parker would get to play in the MCU’s extensive playground for a few movies, as well as Marvel having the chance to integrate MCU characters into future Spider-Man solo movies, which Sony would continue to finance, distribute and have final creative control over. Could this be the magic recipe that the character needed?

By the time we first meet Tom Holland’s Peter Parker in Captain America: Civil War, he’s already acquired his Spidey-powers and is running around New York in a home-made costume that really does look home-made, helping out where he can and being a friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man. Aunt May is considerably younger than we have previously seen her portrayed on screen (which makes sense given that she’s his aunt and he’s 15 years old in this iteration) and Uncle Ben (we assume) is already gone, though whether dead or simply departed we are never told.

The MCU also has May and Peter living in a small apartment in a fairly run-down looking block, and we see that Peter is in the habit of ‘dumpster diving’, bringing home bits of old technology that other people have thrown out so that he can fix them up and use them for himself. This helps lend a credence to the poverty in which the character is perpetually portrayed that previous iterations didn’t quite manage (real estate prices in New York are such that it’s hard to credit either the Rosemary Harris or Sally Field versions of May were affording a house that size on the no money that they had – yes, I know that Harris’ Aunt May moved out of the house in Spider-Man 2 but how had she kept it running for that long?)

More importantly, while sticking to the basic template of the character, this version is brought bang up to date in the right ways. May is more streetwise, Peter is less a traditional knock-kneed, spectacles-wearing dork and more just another guy at a school full of extraordinary people, with a best friend who’s just as socially awkward as he is (and importantly not a rich kid with a CEO for a Dad). Flash Thompson is no longer a slightly dim bullying jock, but rather just a kid who’s got money and is superficially ‘cooler’ than the other kids at school while still basically being a nerd. We even deal, in Spider-Man Homecoming, with Peter’s first crush and it isn’t (shock horror) Mary Jane Watson or Gwen Stacy. This is a version of the character which feels as if it’s less beholden to the ‘staple’ elements of the source material, riffing off certain concepts to retain the feel of the thing, without having to go through all the same steps.

How that works for you will depend on your attachment to that source material. Many were quick to criticise elements like Spidey’s ‘proper’ suit being a Tony Stark creation, replete with the requisite technology, snazzy gadgets and on-board AI, though in fairness it’s the most believable way in which the character has acquired a well-crafted, stylised suit in any movie version so far. There’s an argument that the nature of the suit robs the character of certain core parts of what makes him Spidey. The voice of the suit, which he dubs Karen, for example acts as a substitute for the constant inner monologue that the comics show, as Peter doubts himself and wrestles endlessly with various moral conundra which arise in his life as a superhero. However, I’d argue that the solution of Karen works rather well for the medium – vocalising the thoughts of characters rarely works well on screen – if it’s literal it comes off as exposition dialogue and if it’s done as ‘internal’ it breaks flow and can feel cheap. Having another ‘character’ who isn’t actually a character who Peter can bounce off in a way he can’t with friends or family, or simply when he’s alone actually helps to drive that journey on which he must embark as he begins to come to grips with his powers.

Additionally, for setting the character in the MCU, it actually makes perfect sense. Like it or not, the MCU Avengers are mainly powered by Stark Tech at this point. Tony has the money and the brains to ensure that every other potential provider of tech for the team is irrelevant (though it’s going to be interesting to see that dynamic shift going forward now that Shuri and Wakanda are a part of proceedings) which means that any new superhero who is to be inducted (even part-time) into that pantheon is going to need Stark Tech to keep up with everyone else. At core, Peter has developed his own web fluid (which even Stark is impressed by) and a lot of what he achieves is down to the reflexes, strength and additional senses his powers have granted him. It’s not that the Stark Suit takes away from who he is as a character, more that a hitherto slightly hand-wavy part of the character now has a more sensible explanation which fits him in with the wider MCU while also allowing him to go solo.

Another criticism of this iteration related to the presence of Iron Man in Spidey’s own movie. Some felt that the presence of Downey Jnr was overbearing and detracted from proceedings, although in fairness he wasn’t in it for that all that long. If you examine the details of what the two studios set out to achieve – to ‘loan out’ the character to the MCU for ensemble movies and to explore ways of integrating MCU characters into his solo outings – it actually works rather well. Better by a mile than the clumsy efforts at universe building which occurred in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and helping to make the character feel less alone than in the Raimi trilogy. Part of the curse of comic book movies for so long was the inverse of what is so bemoaned now – back before the MCU, each would exist in their own separate onscreen franchise, but fans of the characters would know there was a whole wider comic book universe their favourites inhabited. This meant that those solo outings would feel somehow smaller and diminished by inevitable comparison to their source material. During phase 2 of the MCU, the inverse issue began to be raised – why would Iron Man face the Mandarin alone? Why didn’t the Avengers turn up to help Thor stop Malekith? It wasn’t that in those early days everyone wanted Batman and Superman to be constantly dropping in on each other, but the lack of any mention of the wider world these characters inhabited worked against them. In Homecoming, for me at least, the balance is just about right. Tony appears in appropriately short doses, and aside from that it’s all name-checking the Avengers and a couple of funny ‘education video’ shorts from Captain America.

And Tony is needed because Uncle Ben isn’t there. Again, in this iteration it’s unclear to this point exactly where Ben is or whether he indeed exists. Peter, possessed of an extraordinary set of powers, is in need of some sort of guidance. That it comes from Tony Stark, of all people, is admittedly hilarious. But it’s also important because here we get an opportunity for both characters to grow. Tony’s had a decade of fighting bad guys and surviving some terrible situations so he has the experience which a young boy like Peter would need for that side of his life. On the other hand, Tony is still an overgrown man child in some ways, with serious impulse control issues and an emotionally stunted nature. His relationship with Peter teaches him a lot about investing emotionally in another, about being directly responsible for the emotional and physical wellbeing of another and about stepping up to that responsibility. Many joke about the fact that Tony is a father figure to Peter, but in reality the reverse is true – Peter is a son figure to Tony. That’s important, because it relates to the fact that the core personality traits of Peter Parker very much remain intact in this iteration. He’s a kid, yes, and he’s eager to go and have big adventures with his new superhero friends but he’s also a noble individual, who always seeks to do the right thing even if he doesn’t necessarily always go about it in the right way. Much as his enthusiasm needs tempering by someone with the ability to match him physically and therefore exert realistic authority over him, his moral compass is as rock solid as can be in a boy his age. With Cap out of the picture at the point in which Spidey is introduced into the MCU, that’s an important role for him to fulfil. Once you understand that dynamic, Tony’s appearances in Homecoming become less about simply him stealing Spidey’s limelight and more about him need Peter’s help in ways neither of them can likely fully articulate even though they understand them at a primal level.

The New York in which the MCU Spidey lives feels more nuanced and balanced than what has gone before as well. Raimi’s version always felt a little sterile and like a movie set. Webb’s iteration nailed the vastness of the concrete jungle, but stumbled slightly in the living, breathing detail of the city as a whole. This version – as best evidenced in Homecoming – feels like it has a better ground level view of the whole picture. Peter is starting out – he isn’t ready yet to be swinging between skyscrapers down Fifth Avenue facing off against monstrous bad guys and crime bosses. He’s your literal friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man and we get to see that as he checks into the local bodega, helps an old lady find her way and stops a bike thief. Even as Homecoming escalates, it rarely finds itself in the centre of the big city, and there’s one particular sequence where Peter is in the suburbs and we are given a forceful reminder of the fact that his web-swinging from building to building is not an option anywhere outside the central mass as he runs frantically through people’s gardens and back streets to chase the bad guys.

This extends to Peter’s school, which feels less like some ill-defined place for wunderkinds and more like an actual academy for people who are smarter than the average. It’s in the little touches – less than pristine gym, Peter being on the debating team, a DT lab that actually looks like the sort of DT labs I recall from my school days, all dirty tools, used benches and cheap flooring, as opposed to the sterile environments and (mainly) outside or hallway shots of the previous movies which felt like a school setting as a backdrop rather than a central place. Remember, Peter Parker is a schoolkid when he acquires his powers – that’s one of those fixed points of canon – and that means that he needs to feel as if school is a big part of his life. Tot up the total screentime of the character actually in school over the course of the five previous movie outings and I’d be surprised if you went north of five minutes. Tot up the actual time we see him in school and not in the hallways or the cafeteria and I’d bet that number drops below two. It helps that Holland is a younger actor than either Maguire or Garfield were when they took the role, but having him have a ‘normal’ friend and setting his first solo feature so heavily in and around his school and school activities really helps to ground the character where he needs to be.

And of course the performance which Holland delivers is key to this. Of course, his youth and slightness of stature are helpful, as is the slightly higher pitch of his voice. But there’s a physicality to the performance – the result of Holland’s background as a dancer, which gives him a rhythm and confidence in the way in which he moves which sits very well with the sort of character he needs to be when in costume. That verisimilitude is not something that can be simply faked with CGI and stunt doubles, and it’s welcome here in rounding out the character.

But perhaps the most central part of the character which was surprisingly retained here despite his inclusion in a universe which disposed of it early on, is the secret identity aspect. From the beginning, when Tony Stark stared down that camera lens and defiantly declared ‘I am Iron Man’ the MCU has set out its stall on this one. Spidey, by contrast has always had a secret identity as a core aspect. It’s a driving force of who he is, because it both allows him the freedom of being taken more seriously than her otherwise might be as a young teenager and protects the safety of those closest to him. It was absolutely unquestionable that this element must be kept in any iteration of Spider-Man, but it was unclear how this might work in the wider MCU where every hero is a well-known superstar. In fact, it works much as it does in the comics it’s sourced from – Peter’s identity has to be kept secret because of his relative youth – indeed in his first appearance it’s downright irresponsible of Tony to bring him into a fight he’s not prepared for. Fun is made of the age gap, with Peter citing the ‘really old’ movie The Empire Strikes Back and over-enthusiastically talking to the people he’s fighting as he fights them, but there’s a sinister undercurrent best exhibited by Tony’s concern as he finds an unconscious Spidey on the floor and then sternly tells him he’s done. Even Tony, overcome with emotion in the middle of the fight, and bolstered by his own indestructible sense of self-belief, is self-aware enough to realise in that moment what he’s done.

It’s a Spider-Man then, that bears all the hallmarks of the MCU approach to world and character-building. We don’t need a rushed montage of him acquiring his powers and then learning how to adapt to them. We don’t need to see him going from regular nerd to confident, web-slinging superhero in the space of 120 minutes. Even though when we meet him, he’s already been bitten and been out having adventures, he’s not the finished article, and the approach taken allows the character the time to breathe without having to hurtle itself towards that finish line. Even in Infinity War, Peter is still that enthusiastic kid, still excited to be part of the adventure without really thinking (until it’s too late) what the stakes are of the circumstances into which he is hurling himself. There’s the pop culture references, the wide-eyed sense of duty and the need to impress the demi father figure in his life (honestly I wonder if Ben just won’t be a thing in this version of the character and instead Tony will end up being the tragic father figure Peter tries to live up to) and most of all there’s the sense that he’s not even at the halfway point of his journey to becoming Spider-Man as we know him. That time that’s being taken to build the character up ensures both that we invest in him and his struggles, that the payoff when he does assume the mantle of Spider-Man proper will be so much sweeter and that crucially, there’s no need for artificial escalation of villains and set-pieces in his solo movies so that they become overstuffed and lose any sense of perspective as has happened in the past.

With Avengers 4 coming next year, and Far From Home slated to land not long after, there’s still much more to come from this latest iteration of Spidey, and for the moment it seems that he’s in good hands. Perhaps all he ever needed was a deal just like this, where he could occasionally pop into the bigger world adventures of other movies before returning home, and where characters from those movies could occasionally pop up in his solo efforts to organically remind us that he doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Whatever the case may be, Tom Holland is doing well enough with that great responsibility so far.