Having just watched all of the old Spider-Man films not too long after watching the first two Sony/MCU reboots with Tom Holland, I went into this with high hopes, great expectations and a bunch of other cliched phrases about optimism. I should have been wary... You know, you're looking forward to something and it's awful, as opposed to going in expecting the worst and being pleasantly surprised.
I don't think I've truly enjoyed a Marvel film since Avengers: Infinity War. The second Spider-Man film left me a little cold, Ant-Man and the Wasp ditto and this year's films - Black Widow, Shang-Chi and Eternals - all left me feeling like maybe it was time I stopped investing what time I have left on this planet with Marvel films. But Marvel is like a potent and addictive drug; the comics had the same affect on me for a lot longer than they should have and while I haven't been a comic book fan for 20 years now (that long?!?) the MCU has allowed me to return to the awe and wonder I felt in the 20th century.
The wife and I watched Iron Man and then Thor last week and while it was the third time of asking for both films I pretty much enjoyed them as much as the first and second times. They are cracking films with a real sense of something new and different, yet by the time I got to Avengers: Endgame (with its flaws, plot holes and overwrought battles) I was suffering from Marvel fatigue.
So, as I said, I went into this with a lot of optimism, especially as I'd heard so many positives about it and it has an IMDB rating of almost 9 and was the first post-COVID film to exceed $1billion at the box office. You know there's a 'but' coming, the thing is it's not quite as simple as that...
No Way Home starts like an express train; in fact it's one of the strangest starts to any Marvel film I've seen. It literally kicks off where the last one finished and for the first 40 minutes it flies past in a flurry of magic, teen angst, media frenzy and the kind of reaction you would expect if Spider-Man was real and his identity had just been given away. Then the wife paused it to go and sort something out and while it wasn't her fault, from that point onwards it seemed to go wrong with only fleeting scenes where I felt I was watching a good film...
Presumably Thomas Haden Church wasn't deemed good enough to be in the film as the humanised Sandman, with him depicted as a sand man rather than the one who appeared in Spider-Man 3. He makes a fleeting appearance towards the end, as does Rhys Ifans as the Lizard, but both are depicted as their counterparts throughout the film in what felt like a dehumanisation of two characters depicted as victims in their respective first appearances. Alfred Molina was great and without giving too much away he became the man he was when he saved Spider-Man and the city in Spider-Man 2; he really was the best thing in this film. Jamie Foxx as Electro wasn't the nerdy scientist he was in the Amazing Spider-Man, instead he seemed bigger, stronger, more confident and actually a little bit nasty and corrupted by the power he had and the Green Goblin, ably played again by Willem Dafoe, ditched the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers look-a-like villain and actually became a truly evil piece of shit; arguably far worse than the megalomaniac depicted in the first Spider-Man film. I felt a little let down by this Sinister Five (should have been Six) because it all felt a little too contrived.
I never knew MJ was Michele Jones-Watson. That realisation felt like a real blow to the stomach, but, you see, in my day Ned Leeds wasn't a American Chinese kid, he was a reporter for the Bugle and had his best stories in Daredevil. Betty Brant as a TV reporter with blonde hair? Oh and Flash Thompson was a moron, not a cretin...
The inclusion of Doctor Strange should have made this an inspirational film; Cumberbatch isn't bad as Stephen Strange yet he was almost reduced to a comedy foil in this, especially as scenes shown in trailers were not in this film - a red herring often used by Marvel in their previews; they've done it before but never so obviously than in this one. In fact all the film seemed a bit rushed considering its almost 2½ hour run time.
The reintroduction of Maguire and Garfield in their Spidey personas was good, but that's where the continuity errors start to show themselves. Maguire is now in his 40s and looked it; Garfield was far more emo in this than he was in his two outings and ultimately their involvement in the film ended up feeling like they were forced into a film they almost didn't belong in. It's also a remarkably sad film with deaths and (mini) endings that all felt part of the plot rather than the story. Don't get me wrong, it was good to see them, but it also didn't feel right. A device to shoehorn the multiverse fully into our newer understanding of this post Endgame MCU.
I'm actually quite torn about this film; it's fresh in my mind and yet I almost feel like I need to watch it again to perhaps fully understand what happened, the thing is I don't know if I could watch it again, at least not for a couple of years, because it felt over long, drawn out and that's after the opening 40 minutes which in itself felt like it was becoming the best of this new Spider-Man franchise.
For those that care and don't know, Parker returns to New York with the news that Mysterio has revealed his identity to the world's press and after interrogations by the FBI, an appearance from Charlie Cox as Matt 'Daredevil' Murdock and being moved to Happy Hogan's super-apartment replete with Stark technology, Peter decides to ask Dr Strange to make the world forget he's Spider-Man so that his life can return to some normality; the problem is everyone needs to forget he's Spidey, but Peter wants MJ and Ned and May and Happy to know his identity because he doesn't want to go through the problems he had the first time they discovered he was a superhero. Naturally this spell ends up going badly wrong; everyone still knows he's Spider-Man and as a result Strange has ripped a hole in the fabric of the multiverse allowing anyone who knew Parker was the webslinger into the MCU all with a consuming passion to kill him. So far so okay. It's from this point it stops making sense.
Peter wants to cure these people of their powers so when they return to their respective universes they won't die as a result of fighting alternate versions of himself - this in itself makes little or no sense, presumably because these villains have been plucked from their universes before their deaths, which like Endgame would mean that divergences in the time continuum were being created. I come to this conclusion because of an exchange between Doc Ock and Tobey Maguire when Otto remarks that Peter is all grown up. It does all the right things for seemingly all the wrong reasons and begs the question if these dead villains can come back to life in the MCU how come MJ and Gwen don't appear as well (naturally because Dunst and Stone are serious actors now who probably didn't want to be or weren't needed in this film)?
The film feels slightly disconnected from the point all these old characters and the other Parkers appear; the narrative feels sewn together rather than a flowing story and in conclusion I have to say that it's essentially a poor film stitched together with emotion-wrenching scenes almost designed to deflect from all the film's faults. I don't think I liked it very much, but then again (like Batman) I can take or leave Spider-Man, so that isn't much of a surprise.
Oh and what was the point of Venom? Relegated to the mid credit scene, while leaving a little present that has me slightly puzzled considering the character is 'owned' by Sony. Oh and the end credits scene was the biggest cop out of the lot - a rehashed version of the Dr Strange and the Multiverse of Madness preview...
This leaves me feeling nothing but dread about May's second Doctor Strange film, mainly because it's directed by Sam Raimi, who, apart from two Evil Dead films, isn't actually that good at making films (and they weren't that good). I think Marvel's shot its bolt and now struggles to produce anything anywhere near as good as their first few years. The best thing they've done in the last four years was the Hawkeye TV series and even that copped out at the end. If you haven't seen this film then it's probably because you're not a Marvel fan; therefore if you want to see it I'd wait a couple of years before it appears on TV, because if you're competent enough to see the massive plot holes, hammy acting and poor writing in this film you really won't enjoy it.
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