1) This was a top-notch Spiderman movie, and a very good superhero movie. If you like superhero movies, this one will not disappoint. But that's a gimme, I guess. The villain is sympathetic and complex, and well-played by Michael Keeton, who can simply drip menace when he wants to.
Absolutely. In that regard, he was simply the best villain of the Marvel movies, unless you count Tony in Civil War. There were times when I really wanted to see more of his crew's side of the story, especially instead of the high school drama, and absent a couple of absolutely villainous issues, like his homicidal inclinations, they would be plausible as a band of gray-area rogues or Robin Hood types. Maybe a slightly grittier version of Ant-Man's buddies.
Iron Monger (Iron Man I)
Whiplash and his drones (Iron Man II - Maybe blame Tony's dad for this one?)
Aldrich Killian/Fake Mandarin (Iron Man III)
Ultron (Avengers II)
Vulture & Shocker (Spiderman: Homecoming)
Spoiler character who will be obvious after you watch this movie (The next Spiderman movie)
His actions in this and in Civil War were a massive case of "physician heal thyself". He spent both movies running around accusing/suspecting/anticipating other people having his character flaws. If I were a character in these movies, I would grab him by the shoulders and say "Tony, no one else in on the planet has ever used superpowers, or operated sci-fi weaponry while drunk! You are the one with the problem, and YOU are the one who needs supervision and control. The number of real problems caused by superheroes using their powers or jumping into situations irresponsibly is still at zero, while the number of random tech geniuses who invented equipment, weapons or superpower processes is fairly high. But he goes around all paranoid about people with actual powers, while handing technology or funding over to people with the skills to misuse them. Including a room full of MIT students, with no mention of oversight or controls, and in the context of his announcement, the strong implication that there would be none. Peter might be the first tech genius who actual HAS superpowers, so Tony is having a schizo reaction. On the one hand, fellow tech-genius, so Tony hands him a dangerous piece of technology, and has him restrained only by his own willingness to check in with Happy and a set of programmed limitations that a child can disable without trouble. But on the other hand, he IS a super-powered individual, driven by altruism and conscience, so of course Tony has to be all paranoid and controlling and restrictive about what he should or should not do.
As I noted in the first Captain America movie, Steve proved himself a worthy recipient of the powers, not by the criteria his bosses & the mad scientist used to select him, but by his own willingness to acknowledge rightful authority and hold himself accountable, and Peter has a moment like that when he realizes he isn't ready yet for the role Tony offered him on short notice.
Meh. I'm really over the whole "superhero in high school" concept. It is especially annoying since I read somewhere that Spider-man in the comics was actually a college student when he got bit.
There were some well-done aspects to Peter's youth, however. The implication of his impatience, in the scene where he thought a lot more time had passed during his training montage, and the way he kept miscalculating and screwing things up. You would think that he'd come up with better places to hide his stuff BEFORE losing five backpacks. But kids are stupid.
Of course, there is also Tony, leaving a costume in a paper bag in the bedroom of a teenager living under adult supervision, so it's not like his getting caught is ONLY due to immaturity.
Some other thoughts:
This kind of answers, from an external perspective, why Iron Man doesn't spread his tech around to the other Avengers - it kind of takes over the story. It makes a lot more sense as a source for Peter's stuff than "high school student made a form-fitting costume and web-shooters in his bedroom", but Tony and the suit were as much of an antagonist as Tombs.
The timeline of this movie is a little confusing. It clearly takes place AFTER Civil War, what with Peter having the costume he got at the end, plus all the references to the Sokovia Accords and Captain America being a fugitive, but the Avengers moved upstate at the end of Avengers 2 and before Civil War. That was where Wanda was when Hawkeye rescued her from Jarvis. Yet, the events are set around the time of the move.
Is Peter's dead-eyed classmate supposed to be Kirsten Dunst's character? She has a bit of a stalkerish vibe in this, whereas in the first movie, she was basically Liz, for all intents and purposes.
While it has been noted that Aunt May gets younger in each iteration of the story, another point is that Spider-man is played by a successively less famous actor, resulting in the fortuitous event that they have fewer and fewer action scenes with Spider-man's face exposed. It was pretty ridiculous in the Maguire movies how often he ended up doing stuff bare-faced.
“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Inde muagdhe Aes Sedai misain ye!
Deus Vult!
*MySmiley*