Interesting article. It's definitely a well-thought out opinion, but I feel I can offer a rebuttal to him.
From what I gathered, this is his argument:
Here's what (almost) every single post-phase one Marvel movie is "about" on the dramatic level of the storytelling: "I'm awesome and/or right! But everyone around me is telling me to wait, be humble, or that I'm wrong! But I wanna go nuts and get ahead of myself! Oh, I got ahead of myself and there was a surprisingly mild consequence to this dangerous thing and I feel bad, so here's a brief moment of humility that doesn't actually stick. Now I'll just wait run around, not actually change, and then just do the same exact thing I was doing before to prove that I'm awesome/right/or learned some lesson I didn't actually learn... Yay, I did it! I win!"
And how this applies to Homecoming is elaborated here:
All [Peter] wanted to do at the beginning of the film was get called by the team, so maturity would mean that he comes to understand that he's still young and he has his place in the smaller part of the world. But if that's what you want it to be about 1) How do you not call back the line of "I want to be like you, but better" (which I admit is just dumb writer thing) and 2) What is it about this final confrontation with Vulture that actually makes him learn that specific lesson?
Because in going after Vulture and the plane, we just saw him revert back to start-of-the-film Peter Parker with no real difference in philosophy. He's impetulously denying the lesson because he feels he "needs to." And in fact, Peter's denying of Tony's offer at the end actually highlights the very fact that the change was not made in the first place, so it becomes this chicken/egg problem when it comes to our main character: When did he psychologically learn this lesson in terms of the dramatic action? And it doesn't add up because I don't quite know what this film actually thinks responsibility "is" beyond some vague allusion to just knowing your place.
There's a few other mentions he makes regarding Peter and Liz, but I take this to be the bulk of his argument.
First, I disagree with his interpretation of what the film is about. He says it's about a teen "coming to understand that he's still young and has his place in the smaller part of the world", but I don't see it that way; it's a story of a teen becoming disillusioned with the responsibility ideals of his childhood when learning of the impact his 'idealized' heroism has on the smaller world, and realizing that actual responsibility is something entirely different from what society always told him it was.
Now that's not to say Peter understands what actual responsibility is by the end of the film, nor does he know what new ideal to strive towards. What he does learn is what it's
not, and gets a minimalist idea of what it
should be from the consequences resulting from the actions of the Avengers. I look at it similarly to a new intern at a big company. Many young people with romanticized views of their careers join corporations like Apple with the intent of climbing up the ladder, only to learn of the restrictiveness and negative political impacts those companies really have on the world. From that point on many of them will quit and look for a more independent route, something they feel fits closer to their values. I see Peter being in similar shoes to such a person by the end of the movie.
But anyways, what is it about that final confrontation with Vulture that actually makes him learn that specific lesson? For one, it's not a lesson that's learned at any one moment. Peter's frustrations with Tony start at the beginning of the film and escalate throughout it. His final confrontation with the Vulture is when the lesson reaches its ultimatum, mainly hearing Toomes' story and seeing Tony ignore the threat of the Vulture all the way through. How do you not call back the line of "I want to be like you", he asks? Simply put, Peter doesn't feel that way anymore by the end of the third act, for reasons stated in my last paragraph.
My only complaint is that Peter should've been made aware of what Damage Control did to Toomes in the first place. I feel like that would have strengthened the lesson even further.
There's some truth nevertheless to what FCH is saying when he alludes to Peter not feeling ready yet to be an Avenger, and a lot of it is informed by the fact he failed Liz. Thing is while he no longer looks at the team as the perfect applicators of "with great power comes great responsibility", he still holds a level of respect for the Avengers position or what he thinks it should represent. Going back to my intern analogy, this is similar to the interns who quit big companies but swear to do things differently if they ever reach a CEO position. It's precisely
because Peter went from "just do what the higher-ups are doing" to "figure out how you'd improve first, then maybe think of becoming a different kind of higher-up" why he rejects the Avengers membership. So ultimately I think the reasons for his decisions are very layered in the same way a real person's would be.
I have a habit of rambling on but I hope this covered the core of the article.
