I approach movies differently if I intend to review them for an audience.  When I’m invited to a critic’s screening, I bring a notebook and I approach the story as though I would any other: with intent and an analytical eye.  “Spider-Man: Homecoming” wasn’t such a film.  As I buckled in to watch the third incarnation of the superhero I loved the most as a kid, I had already hit the off switch in the analytical portion of my brain, added vodka to muffle the last remaining bits of political analysis and foreign policy debate that’s constantly running through my mind thanks to being an active participant in the modern era’s never ending news cycle, and got ready for a movie I knew I’d like before it even started.

How did I know?  Because I’m a fanboy nerd, and in my book, it’s pretty tough to ruin a vodka filled evening full of masked vigilantes or Michael Keaton – and on a great night, you get both.  Usually, that means a romp back to the late 80’s, when Jack Nicholson was still known as the best Joker to ever live, and a comedian was playing a Batman that killed almost as many thugs as Batfleck.

I was, however, aware that this new Spider-Man movie represented an unnatural marriage between the Marvel Cinematic Universe, home to characters like Captain America and Iron Man, and Sony, a company that contractually has to keep making Spider-Man movies forever lest they be forced to surrender the licensing for their headline hero back to the Disney overlords that are swallowing up (and making competent films out of) just about everything great we remember from childhood.  I did wonder what influence Sony might have on the overall story telling of the film, or its depiction of the characters we’ve come to know so well over the years, like Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey Jr.

I’ll level with you, Downey’s Stark was more sass and less substance in this movie than he’s been in Marvel’s other films, but then, this movie was never supposed to be about him.  His name, and the character he plays that so closely resembles him, are a safety net for ticket sales.  Marvel and Sony both knew I’d give them twenty bucks to see RDJ mentor the Webslinger, even if just for a few minutes, and they were right, I did, and I’d do it again.

It wasn’t until after the movie ended that the gears in my brain started turning again.  Maybe the booze was just wearing off, but I couldn’t help but feel as though the conflict depicted in this movie closely resembles a real fight we’re approaching back here in the real world that we’re all trapped in.  Keaton’s Vulture plays a blue-collar, hardworking small business owner that was financially ruined by a combination of government interference and a huge disaster that rocked a major city.  In their world, that comes in the form of aliens invading from a hole in the sky.  In ours, that may potentially come in the form of a nuclear detonation.

Like Kim Jong un’s North Korean regime, Keaton’s crew manages to get their hands on weaponry so advanced, it gives them world-power level destructive capabilities, despite their utter lack of appreciation for the responsibility that power brings with it.  That’s right, the famous line, “with great power comes great responsibility,” wasn’t so much as uttered once in this entire movie, but you’re still stuck hearing about it in a review – because some clichés exist for a reason.

You won’t be able to dodge the obligatory super hero Christ imagery either.

As the non-stop technology train continues to steam ahead in our real world, super villain caliber doomsday weapons will become more readily available to lots of different groups.  Iran and North Korea, both nations that celebrate the idea of America’s destruction openly in the streets, are already flirting with weapons technology that could create unfathomable levels of destruction, and if we, as a global society, think UN resolutions and tough diplomatic peacocking will suffice to stifle other nations from following suit, we’re kidding ourselves.