.
This is a tricky movie to review without any kind of spoiler so I have decided that this review will avoid plot spoilers only, but WILL reveal who is actually in the movie because I don’t think this can be properly reviewed without this and I feel like the surprise (or disappointment) is something people would want to know about in advance and does not ruin the film. Plus it is easiest to do a review here that avoids plot spoilers by focusing on the characters as this is very much a character movie.
You have been warned! I won’t be revealing this off the bat however and I’ll give you plenty of warning before I make the reveal.
So first up let’s go over the basics. This is the third MCU Spider-Man movie, the sixth MCU movie with Spider-Man in, the Eighth live action Spider-Man movie in general and the eleventh live action superhero movie with the character. For those keeping track, Batman has only nine, ten if you include his cameo in Suicide Squad and Eleven if you also include the 60’s TV movie. Suffice to say Spider-Man has quite the on screen legacy and unlike Batman all those movies are within the last 20 years.
Say No Go.
All incarnations of Peter Parker have been successful on screen and have had their own uniqueness to them. Tom Holland’s version of the character is no exception and his movies tend to hit the billion dollar mark. Not a huge shock given that Spider-Man is the most popular hero globally (WIthin the US Batman probably still takes that honour, but not by much and the only other hero near either of them is Superman). He is also my favourite hero and probably the one I have read the most of in the comics. MCU Spider-Man does attract a lot of well deserved criticism however due to how different he has become from the comics. It doesn’t help that his supporting cast is almost unrecognisable, but probably the biggest issue is his origin and I don’t mean the spider bite, I mean Uncle Ben.
See the MCU’s Parker doesn’t have an Uncle Ben, or at least if he did the man died before Peter gained his powers. He also has a considerably younger and well protected Aunt May that he doesn’t have to spend time worrying about too much. Instead of this as motivation he was given an attachment to Tony Stark as a mentor and felt that loss strongly. It was good character advancement but it made this Peter considerably different. I bring this up because it is probably the number one criticism that MCU Spider-Man gets and it does get somewhat addressed in this movie. There is definitely an element of course correction here.
Can U Keep a Secret?
Jon Watts is at the reins again with this instalment showing that Marvel is clearly happy with what he brings to the table and I think most fans are too. It’s worth noting he is attached for the MCU’s Fantastic Four movie so maybe there is reason to be hopeful. Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers also return as writers. Tom Holland of course returns as does his regular supporting cast including the not-so-popular Flash Thompson interpretation played by Tony Revolori who is basically just there to be the butt of a few jokes and Angourie Rice’s Betty Brant that does actually get a nice nod to her comic book counterpart in her brief cameo. Jon Favreau has a cameo but is less involved than in “Far from Home”. Zendaya, Jacob Batalon and Marisa Tomei however all play major parts in the story.
Joining the regulars is Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange who plays a pivotal role (as seen in the trailer, Peter wants him to make people forget his secret identity), but actually isn’t in that much of the movie. First thing to bring up here is that he is not as irresponsible about the whole thing as he appeared in the trailer. Which is good because the Sorcerer Supreme shouldn’t be a reckless fool. If he is indeed the Sorcerer Supreme, which is something that seems to be up for debate. At the end of this movie they show a trailer for Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness and I have to say I wasn’t sold on that. However he is treated fairly respectfully here and his interactions with Peter are actually really cool.
Ghetto Thang.
His interaction with Michelle Jones is not so good thanks to that annoying “Please” line from the trailer. But as I usually find with with these movies Zendaya was far better in the movie itself than the trailer. For some reason they always seem to pick her smuggest, snarkiest lines in the trailers instead of any of her human moments which is something that doesn’t help to sell the character to people (and given the whole “MJ” bit, they do need to sell her). On a side note here, they did awkwardly force into dialogue randomly that her full name is Michelle Jones-Watson… yeah they totally didn’t need to do that and it had no bearing on anything (so I don’t regard it a spoiler) but I guess someone, somewhere is celebrating. She is actually fine though.
Ned Leeds is a trickier one to judge since he is part of an annoying plot contrivance. But to be fair that contrivance allowed him to do something other than just comic relief (Which lets face it is totally redundant in an MCU Spider-Man film. However they even turn that into comic relief so it’s not great and they missed a chance to give Ned a not to his comic book counterpart. He’s not terrible though so it’s fine.
Me Myself and I.
So the most important thing here is Peter Parker. As I mentioned above there is a very clear course correction going on in this film. It’s not perfect, but you couldn’t do this correction perfectly in Peter’s sixth MCU appearance. He’s got too much history. But I feel like they did this as well as they possibly could and I don’t say that lightly. It feels like the writers and director and maybe Marvel/Sony producers took on board the criticism and tried to adjust for this and I have to say I am impressed by Marvel actually listening to fans for a change.
The way the course adjustment is done is entirely through the story and Peter’s character development in the story. Sam Raimi once said his approach to the Spider-Man films was “What can Peter learn in this movie” and this really felt like it was the approach to this. By the end of the film Peter has changed from being “Iron Boy Junior” to genuinely feeling like Spider-Man and I could not be happier about that. Of course they can still mess this up later but we will see.
Okay, minor character spoilers ahead for the villains (these are all in the trailer, so no surprises).
Potholes in My Lawn.
All the villains you see in the trailer are the actual villains from their respective Spider-Man universes. This is important because they all manage to retain consistent characterisations from those movies. They really feel like direct continuations of the same characters. Even more impressively most of them actually get character development! So perhaps unsurprisingly Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock and Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin/Norman Osborn are the stand outs and as perhaps the two favourite villains from past movies they do justice to their previous appearances and characters and add to those movies instead of detract from them which was always the danger.
Jamie Foxx’s electro gets some redemption here too. Sadly Amazing Spider-Man 2 will probably go down in history as the worst Spider-Man movie, but here he is improved and he gets almost as much focus as the other two. Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) too gets some redemption though his part in Spider-Man 3 was generally considered the best bit anyway. Sadly though while he starts off consistent to his personality from that movie they seem to forget about that a bit in the middle. He and Lizard were always going to be the minor players in this but he did okay. Lizard on the other hand gets very little screen time and doesn’t add that much to the movie. He doesn’t detract from it either so there is that at least
So before we hit the reveal there is one other major cameo I’m not going to reveal because it is just one scene early in the film and you can probably guess it anyway. Suffice to say it was satisfying. I will tell you one cameo you will almost certainly miss though: Nicholas Hammond, the original live action Spider-Man from the 70’s TV series is in this movie. I’m not going to tell you where though!
CHARACTER SPOILER TIME!!!!!!!
The magic number.
The music for the films end credits is itself a spoiler for those characters. It is “The Magic Number” by De La Soul (At least I think it was the De La Soul track, it may have been another version of it or the original material used for the samples). Yep, the rumours were true Tobey and Andrew are both in this movie.
So I’m not going to talk too much about how they are involved but I will say they are key parts of the entire third act and all get both character and action moments. Each one is consistent to their past characters, but developed past the end of their final movies. Andrew-Spidey was of course deeply impacted by the death of Gwen Stacy and went somewhat to a dark place after that. He’s still got the wisecracking though that made many people call him the best Spider-Man (though they usually pair that with “Worst Peter Parker”).
Tobey-Spidey however seems to have found a good element of balance and happiness to his life and though he doesn’t talk about it (so it’s not a spoiler) they really seem to hint that he may well be happily married to Mary Jane much like he was in the comics before the dreaded “One More Day” storyline messed that up. Tobey as the older Spider-Man is getting a little worn physically but he can still get the job done.
Buddy!
One of the best things here is the interaction between the three Peter’s. It’s respectful of each, though also acknowledges basically all the fan criticism. That in one place felt a bit like they were dumping on the AMS films but they restrained the mocking to things most people mocked and remained respectful of Andrew’s Spider-Man. They also talked about Tobey not needing web shooters, which turned into a fun moment. As far as Tom-Spidey goes they were careful not to diminish him too much by throwing in the other two (Especially with Tobey being such a fan favourite). They acknowledged Tom’s strengths and how his experience working with the Avengers makes him unique (Who have only worked solo, or briefly with one other)..
Perhaps the best bit though is that Tobey and Andrew both get on screen character development too and in ways that reference their own past and things that would have weighed on their consciences. This is the strength of this movie in general. All the main characters (The three Peters and three main villains) all get character arcs that really work for them. I also have to give Andrew dues for putting in a really good performance, giving him a lot of vindication for having to suffer through the bad writing on his solo outings.
3 Feet High and Rising.
Okay so while this movie is strong for character development, it actually isn’t especially outstanding on the action front. It’s not bad as such, but there isn’t really anything outstanding or ground breaking here, just lots of what you’ve seen before and in actual fact less impressive action than a lot of previous films. There are some great spectacles that no doubt make great screen shots (such as the one above), but it definitely suffers from the messy style of a lot of modern action where things are fast and hard to follow. To me though this didn’t really impact the film, this is a character movie with action and that is fine. What I will say is when you have all three Spider-Men involved in the action it can get a little confusing at times as to which is which.
Rating this movie is a tricky one. I don’t want to get too drawn in to nostalgia here, but as of right now I feel this is a solid 7.5. If you are a Spider-Man fan of ANY of the previous instalments, you will likely enjoy this movie. One final thought though: As I mentioned this movie has a lot of course corrections for the character, but I would just like to point out that if they hadn’t chosen to skip Peter’s origin story and the character development he has from that origin they wouldn’t have needed to spend three solo movies and three team movies to get Peter to a position he would have been in his first movie, had they shown that origin. So in future, maybe don’t be so fast to applaud skipping superhero origins. Remember it’s not important what made someone powerful, but it is important what made them a hero.
You must be logged in to post a comment.