This summer, after years of fighting, Marvel Studios finally brought Spider-Man home. Having managed to wrestle temporary control of one of their greatest heroes back from Sony, they produced Spider-Man: Homecoming to build on the character’s introduction in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War. Tom Holland did a great job of introducing us to our third iteration of the hero in just over a decade and the film hit cinemas full of promise.
And when it arrived, boy did it deliver. Eschewing yet another contrived origin story in favour subtle nods and clever attempts at weaving its history into its present, Spider-Man: Homecoming was the first great Spidey movie since Sam Raimi’s 2004 sequel. In what was essentially a huge-scale action movie masquerading as a high school movie, pretty much everything worked. The lead actors carried their roles supremely well, with Holland in particular looking like he has the acting chops (and, let’s remember, the off-screen charisma) to carry the weight of a massive franchise on his young shoulders.
A franchise, it seems, that’s set to continue after the events of the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War. Leaked convention footage of the epic superhero smash has already confirmed Holland’s Spider-Man will play some part in the action and with a Homecoming sequel due in 2019, it seems as though he’ll at least be surviving this first part of the conflict with Thanos. While there’s all that to get out of the way first, the question of how a sequel can be better than Marvel’s first Spider-Man movie will still be on the minds of many fans.
So, how can Marvel Studios improve upon Spider-Man: Homecoming? Well, here are some simple things they can do to start.