***WELL, FOR SURE SPOILERS FOR FAR FROM HOME AND A FEW FOR INFINITY WAR AND ENDGAME. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.***
It's finally here, the Marvel event we've most been waiting for this chaotic calendar year. Tom Holland back in the Spidey-suit after Far From Home upended him into the same not-so-secret nature of identity as pretty much every other Marvel Cinematic Universe version of our classic heroes. Thanks, Mysterio. And thanks, J. Jonah Jameson, played once again by J.K. Simmons - and, in this latest movie, graduating from being a mere Alex-Jones-type nuisance to running his own Fox-News-type operation of big bullshit. Naturally, it's bad enough for Peter Parker trying to live with too much polarizing infamy for his own good when he's just trying to get into college, but as the lives of his friends and family become impacted, who better to turn to than our favorite Strange sorcerer (not Supreme, though; Wong having taken that post "on a technicality" due to Strange having been one of the victims of Thanos' snap, which I still refuse to call the bloody "Blip" to this day) in his nice little townhouse of a Sanctum Sanctorum?
But.
As OP as Strange so often is these days, he's no match for the Peter Parker Prattle, ruining the spell to wipe literally everyone's memories of Peter due to Peter fretting about the implications of losing his place in the memories of his loved ones.
Lost in the multiverse, and lost in mind, we shall soon be.
With No Way Home.
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| Where's Ned and MJ when you need them for a snuggle puddle? |
I shall spoil nothing of the movie in this review, but that means it'll have to be kept short by design - not unlike, say, my review of
Endgame a couple years back.
I mean, by now, almost everyone knows that the movie is loaded for bear with surprise guest stars from elsewhere in the multiverse - from the villains on down, with exactly one villain from each Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield movie showing up. And by now there are plenty of leaks about other major returns, to which I'll say, just watch and find out.
But as for this movie, it borrows not only the villains from the Maguire and Garfield eras, but also puts Holland's Spidey and his loved ones through their greatest emotional wringers yet. The Amazing Spider-Man movies in particular wrecked my poor little fanboy heart like no movie before or since ever has, until now. Much of that is due to this movie taking a lot of creative risks with story directions that you'll see coming at the exact worst moment, because then it's an agonizing full minute or three before exactly that twist you wish they would never pull, they bloodydamn pull it. Such as this one particularly explosive scene almost in the very dead center of the movie. And the ending, which is the absolute epitome of bittersweet, especially because it would require so much work to set things right in future installments again.
For all its two and a half hours, this movie doesn't feel like it runs that long at all. It's so relentlessly fast-paced in its action scenes, the visuals take a hike up into the ionosphere thanks to Doctor Strange's presence, and all our returning faves mesh very well with the MCU Spidey mainstays and their quick wits. The villains are also amazingly well-developed even more than ever - Norman Osborn is much more torn between his human and his Goblin sides, Doc Ock is endlessly an asshat (and flummoxed by how quickly Peter is able to subdue him by the power of nanites and Bluetooth, as it were - one of many examples where it becomes clear that the villains are still on the technology of the 2000s or 2010s rather than the MCU 2020s), and Electro is no longer the dweebish Max Dillon, but Jamie Foxx with all the swagger he brings to the table. Sandman comes off more like Sadman, though, with his surprisingly mopey personality in this one - fitting, though, since he hails from the same movie as Emo Peter Parker and whiny-ass Eddie Brock. As for the Lizard, he almost feels useless among all the villains, more there for brute strength than anything else - and for completing the pattern of one villain from each Maguire and Garfield movie, when he could just as easily have been replaced by one of the Harry Osborn New Goblins (most likely Dane DeHaan since James Franco is pretty much persona non grata nowadays) and it would've made the whole villain dynamic much more interesting.
But on the side of heroes, we're pared down a lot to a much simpler cast of characters. Iron Man's absence in death remains strongly felt, but Happy Hogan soldiers on as the current longest-lasting MCU character, and Marisa Tomei's May finally outgrows a lot of the rather adolescent jokes about her relative youth for the character. Speaking of adolescents, most of Peter's classmates are all but nonexistent here, and that can only be a good thing when most of them exist as flat comic-relief teenage stereotypes, whose often cringey personalities have contributed to me losing rewatch value in Homecoming and Far From Home both - though Flash Thompson still makes a token appearance or two, and for God's sake, Tony Revolori needs to fire his stylist, because what the hell was that hair?
And then there's MJ and Ned.
Peter's girlfriend and best bud.
Just as Gwen Stacy and Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker were two halves of one hero, so too are Peter, MJ, and Ned three thirds of one hero.
Without them (and their increasingly dynamic performances; Zendaya's MJ may have finally come out of her shell but still has to keep the spikes in place, while Ned - who's noticeably slimmed down, Jacob Batalon having lost about 100 pounds for this production - stays loyal as ever to Peter, putting so much feeling into each repetition of the guys' secret handshake), MCU Spidey wouldn't be as consistently A+ awesome as he's been.
Till next time, Pinecones...
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| #FeedTheRightWolf |
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Remember: Denis Leary is always watching. Always.
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