Wednesday, January 12, 2022

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021, PG-13)

*Premise spoilers only, nothing that wouldn’t have been revealed in the trailer. The premise of this movie does spoil the end of Far from Home, though.*

At long last! I lucked out—during a midweek day off work, it was super cold (with wind chill, it felt like -26°,) and I think that contributed to a slower afternoon at the theater. I found a showing with only 5 people in it, grabbed a ticket, and slapped on a KN95. So glad I was finally able to see this movie, and I’m glad I managed to keep dodging the spoilers those first three weeks. The morning after I saw it, I opened up one of my favorite pop-culture blogs to catch up on the MCU-related articles I hadn’t read in the weeks since the movie came out, and they had a new piece up with a huge spoiler right in the title of the article. I get that the movie’s been out for a while, but there’s also a pandemic very much still going on, and I know that there are lots of people who probably want to see the movie who haven’t felt safe to do so yet. So this review will stay away from the spoilers. I’ll get into it more in future Marvelous Wednesday posts, but they’ll be appropriately labeled and I won’t include any spoilery pictures for the sake of anyone who’s still trying to avoid that.

After having his identity outed to the world at the end of the last movie, Peter’s life is completely blown up. He’s being investigated for the death of Mysterio, reporters are clamoring outside his apartment and school, and prospective colleges are unsure they want to deal with the notoriety of having Spider-Man on their campuses. Said blowing-up applies to those closest to him as well, and Peter turns to a certain sorcerer for help. When Doctor Strange agrees to cast a spell making people forget that Peter is Spider-Man, the spell goes spectacularly awry. Suddenly, villains from elsewhere in the emerging multiverse are slipping through the cracks between worlds, and Peter is forced to face up to the consequences of the spell, rounding up Dr. Octopus, the Green Goblin, and more before they can do his world as much damage as they caused to their own.

Ever since Spider-Man 3, people have been wary of putting too many villains in a superhero movie, particularly a Spider-Man movie. So even as the prospect of villains from both the Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield eras coming to the MCU was cool and exciting, it was also precarious from a storytelling perspective. Would the movie turn into an overstuffed mess? Luckily, that’s not the case. The film juggles the many characters and multiple universes quite well. It reminds me a little of Civil War in that some characters definitely have more screentime than others – a lot less Sandman, for example, than Doc Ock – but I don’t come away feeling like anyone really got shortchanged. Their screentime follows the needs of the story, and even amid the large cast, Peter himself never gets lost in the shuffle. Everyone, for the most part, feels like they’re used well, and the narrative doesn’t collapse under the weight of everything it’s trying to include.

Some excellent action. I really like Peter’s first fight with Doc Ock on a bridge, which includes a classic “Spider-Man tries to protect civilians while fighting a bad guy at the same time” scenario, and there’s a great confrontation in the Mirror Dimension. The climactic battle is also really well done, more focused on characters than a CGI extravaganza. Well, I’m sure a lot of it is CGI, but it still feels grounded in these specific characters rather than, “Now do battle with this faceless CGI horde!” (Speaking of CGI, I’m not sure what the ratio is between digital de-aging and just really good hair and makeup, but both Willem Dafoe and Alfred Molina look great. They do look older than they did in the Maguire films, but not drastically so, and neither have that odd digital de-aging sheen.)

Pretty much every member of the large cast delivers well. First and foremost, this is Tom Holland’s movie, and he continues to anchor this franchise really well. His Peter is brave and caring, but he’s also impulsive and irresponsible, and he really makes you feel what a teenage superhero would be like. His usual crew – which includes Zendaya’s MJ, Jacob Batalan’s Ned, and Marisa Tomei’s Aunt May – all turn in good work, and each gets at least a few moments to shine. This might be the most I’ve liked Doctor Strange so far, and Benedict Cumberbatch plays well off of Holland. I’m firmly excited for Multiverse of Madness now, which wasn’t really the case earlier. And the folks from the Maguire and Garfield eras fit in nicely. It’s no surprise that Dafoe and Molina are the standouts, but they all do a good job, and in the cases of Thomas Hayden Church’s Sandman and Jamie Foxx’s Electro, I’d say they have better material to work with than in their original franchises.

That’s all for today. I’ll get more into spoilers next week!

Warnings

Comic-book violence, language, and thematic elements.

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