Spiderman: No Way Home ★★★★
RIGHT now it’s all about Spiderman for me.
My two-year-old grandson is going through the stage where he is obsessed with Spidey and therefore, by default, so am I.
Well, it’s actually Spiderman as well as ‘Hulk! Smash!’.
To think he and I will have all the Spiderman and Marvel movies to look forward to watching.
Anyway, that probably sets the scene for why I agree with many others who thoroughly enjoyed Spiderman: No Way Home.
To get the sequencing right, this is Tom Holland’s third film following Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) and Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019). It’s also the 27th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
There are three things to cover – 1) this is a film absolutely for the fans, 2) the story and approach owe a lot to the ground-breaking 2018 animated Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse and 3) there are lots of great surprises so don’t let anyone spoil it for you.
At 148 minutes, including end credits, this is another blockbuster that may seem daunting; but the story has enough variety and is well paced with a good mix of action, drama and comedy.
The studio took a chance on Jon Watts as the director of Holland’s first Spiderman outing and the American has earned them enough money to helm the last three entries.
It’s sometimes hard to tell how good a job the person in charge actually does when you consider the thousands of people involved in a myriad of visual, special and sound effects, but I don’t think there is any denying that Watts has a good handle on his excellent cast and the interplay between them.
He’s aided by a good script by the writing team behind another recent and smart animated feature, The Lego Batman Movie (2017) as well as the three Holland Spiderman films, the second Ant Man film and the Jumanji re-boot sequel.
All those films share a lightness of touch and reverence for the material that caters fully to tried and true audiences.
Apart from Holland, others to return for this iteration include Zendaya, Jon Favreau, Jacob Batalon and Marisa Tomei. Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange is in the trailer and arrives early in the proceedings to set-up the key plot device that drives the rest of the film.
The trailer shows a couple of other familiar faces but there are many other surprises that will have the die-hard Spidey fans spinning in their webs. Actually, the story provides more than just fan service and, at times, some emotional depth.
Parker asks Dr. Stephen Strange (Cumberbatch) to use magic to make his Spider-Man identity a secret again following its public revelation at the end of Far From Home. When the spell goes wrong, the multiverse is broken open which allows visitors from alternate realities to enter Parker’s universe.
The latest Spiderman outing has gathered many good reviews from the critics and it continues to smash box-office records. It’s right up there with the most entertaining of Marvel’s output