Kiddo and I managed to risk visiting the cinema (I hate going to the cinema, but sometimes you just gotta). We'd been late to the party of going to see Spider-Man: No Way Home and had somehow managed to miss most of the key spoilers (considering I regularly visit IO9, I just don't know how we managed it since they've managed to blow most of the plot and 'surprises'). So for the sake of...
SPOILER WARNINGS
I'm just putting that there in big bold header capitals to say that I'm gonna talk about some of those below so if you don't want to see the results, look away now.
OK forearmed and forewarned? Let's dig in.
So this is the third solo movie outing for Tom Holland's Spider-Man (amongst his many appearances in other MMU flicks) and at the point the movie opens, Peter Parker has been exposed as being Spider-Man by the nefarious Mysterio. Rather than public adulation, and largely thanks to J. Jonah Jameson's anti-spidey webcasts, everyone hates Spider-Man and Peter and all he stands for (which is a bit of a weird turn of events, I mean how many times has Spidey taken a hand in saving the world?)
Life goes on but even after being proved innocent (and talk about a hell of a cameo from Peter's lawyer, bloody lovely to see Charlie Cox back as Daredevil even without his costume!) of the murder of Quentin Beck, PP and his besties still struggle to shake off the impact of having a web-slinging alter-ego dragging the rest of their lives down. And that's where Dr Steven Strange comes in. Pete goes to visit his exquisitely coiffed buddy for advice and perhaps even a magical solution to his problems. I mean what could go wrong if Doc Strange weaves up a nice little spell to make everyone forget who Peter Parker is?
But like being offered three wishes by a benevolent genie, Pete hasn't really thought this through at all. So if everyone forgets he's spidey he'd have no 'man in the chair' (Ned), and his Aunt May and MJ would have to go back to square one putting up with Pete's various shenanigans while wearing the web-emblazoned lycra, leading to him intervening just at the wrong moment and messing up the spell entirely.
As the movie begins to gather pace, Doc Strange realises that the aftershocks of the spell have caused a rift between the various universes, leading to other realities - and worse - others who know exactly who Peter Parker is leeching in from those alternative multiverses, seeking out their version of Peter Parker and Spider-Man and instead finding the one we've been familiar with over the last few years. Awkward!
Spin forward and before long rather than Spidey facing the "Sinister Six" from the comics, he instead ends up facing up to enemies stretching back as far as Spidey-1's main villains (Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus plus bonus Sandman), and Spidey-2's antagonists (The Lizard and Electro) finally giving us what we saw flickering glimpses of in the main spoiler trailers before the movie launched.
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| Alfred Molina as Doctor Otto Octavius, better known as Doctor Octopus |
As soon as the villains show up, there's just one more question everyone wants answering. If we get the bad guys, do we also get the good guys? As I said, SPOILER ALERT again because despite a lot of denials, and some sneaky edits to the trailers by now pretty much everyone will know that both Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield - "Old Spidey" and "Hot Spidey" (as my daughter dubbed him) both show up from the multiversal rift as well, stacking together a formidable triple team-up.
All the movie's best moments come from the interplay between Maguire, Garfield and Holland - and whether it's the truth or not, you really felt like you were watching three guys having the time of their lives with lots of on-screen camaraderie as each Spidey contributes their A-Game to wrapping up the 5 villains and helping Dr Strange close the multiversal rift, with tragic consequences for Holland's Spider-Man matching the pain that both Spiders 1 and 2 went through in their own movies (and we're not just talking about Maguire's street 'cool' in Spider-Man 3).
One thing the movie made me realise is how much of a disservice I'd done to Garfield's spider-man and it made me go back and watch his two movies with fresh eyes. He was good. Damned good, and deserved better than just fetching up in a couple of reboots. Sony are pretty merciless if things don't go their way, sales wise, but AG (for me at least) was definitely the star of this movie, he sold the hell out of being a misplaced Spider-Man digging in with gritted teeth despite his own losses. Huge respect for AG for not throwing a tantrum and saying "Look, screw you guys, I ain't coming back!" (like he maintained rather cleverly before the movie was released).
As the film drew to a close it also made me realise that whatever happens next, I'd still watch the heck out of more Holland as Spider-Man and I'm sure after how this movie performed - even in the middle of a pandemic - Sony are not going to dump him any time soon unless he just doesn't want to carry on. But why wouldn't he?
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| A little longer to wait until "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" but it looks fantastic already. |
The movie's end credit sequences (two of 'em, yes people still don't 'get' that there are going to be ECSs and were still walking out and getting in the damned way as the credits were rolling) were interesting with one alluding to Venom sticking his long red tongue into Spidey's universe perhaps? And the final end credit sequence basically being the sizzle reel / spoiler trailer we've already seen for the upcoming Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness movie (which looks awesome already and has Wanda in it so yes please!)
All in all we both left the movie theatre thinking "This is what movies should make you feel like. They should make you happy, elated" and if there's one thing that both Sony and Marvel fully understand, it's that nostalgia and playing to their geek audience is an absolute gold-minted moneyspinner because that's largely what you get here. A nice big chunk of comfortable nostalgia, like the best cup of hot chocolate you've ever drunk with the squishiest marshmallows and tastiest vanilla frosting.
We loved it and cannot wait for "Across the Multiverse"
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