Spiderman No Way Home is finally out in cinemas, the latest entry in the series explores the multi
verse with the villains of the previous Spider-Man movies from the Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield
cinematic adventures making an appearance to do battle with Tom Holland in the modern MCU.
The hype for this movie has been off the chart, with the trailers getting huge viewing figures
on YouTube, the fans speculating who is going to be in the film has been non-stop,
Sony Pictures have had to keep security tight more so than usual to avoid anyone spoiling it, the
promotional material has been very smart in not revealing too much. Most film studios often get a
bit too desperate to show you too much to entice the fans to part with their cash, but with the
little of what they have shown, its already got people excited, showing less has worked out well.
The films opens directly on from ‘Far From Home’, Mysterio has framed Peter Parker for his murder
during the attack in Europe and outed him as Spider-Man to the public,
the false news has spread across the City thanks J. Johan Jameson.
Parker flees from an angry crowd with his girlfriend MJ and returns back to his apartment.
The media has followed him and his surrounded his home and he, his friends and his Aunt are
taken in by the Department of Damage Control and interrogated. Due to the recent controversy,
its screwed up Pete, MJ and Ned’s University applications resulting in them getting rejected.
Parker not knowing what to do as the bright idea of consulting with Doctor Strange,
asking him to cast a spell to make people forget he is Spider-Man. Despite Wong's warning of the
consequences that could incur, Strange casts the spell anyway. However, the spell is damaged when
Peter insists on changing the rules of the spell. Strange kicks Parker out for making
a mess of things, so Parker, takes things into his own hands in a sensible way and tries to
persuade the MIT administrator to accept their applications. Suddenly the bridge is smashed up
as Otto Octavius makes his big entrance, and The Green Goblin appears from the chaos and attacks!
Like most people I was very excited to see this movie, despite being a bit burnt out on
the recent films after End Game, Black Widow and The Eternals I had no desire to watch. But this
really got me intrigued down to it dealing with the Multi Verse, having these classic
villains return was a great idea. I don’t want to spoil anything for the fans and those who want to
watch it fresh and experience the surprises first hand, so all I can say is that it should deliver
on your expectations. I think you will walk out of this movie with a big smile on your face.
Dealing with fan service and how to execute it, is difficult and there is fine line of going too far
as it could come across as forced and on the nose, or just reliving on it to keep you entertained
to hide the fact the story isn’t really do its job. But the writers and director have found a
nice balance of executing the fan service, but not let weigh on the story, you don’t just sit there
waiting for some nostalgic moment to happen, you feel invested. But saying that, if you strip away
the fan service and what its attempting to do by throwing in these characters from other universes,
it does reveal itself to be a somewhat of a thin story, but there is so much going on
around the main narrative, it doesn’t become an issue. I was glued to my seat the entire time.
The Marvel films all have a good dose of humour, some leaned on it too much but Spider-Man across
all the films has a good amount of jokes, because Spidey is a cokey sort of character,
so the film delivery some good laugh out loud moments, Jamie Foxx in particular gets some
good lines, and I think he gets a better role in this ,or say his character comes
across as more interesting than his previous portrayal of Electro in Amazing Spider-Man 2.
There are some moments where comedy doesn’t quite hit, I think down to the editing and you get
a sense that some of the actors as well aren’t all there for their dialogue scenes on the day,
for example someone is missing and their reaction or reply is shot later on, making
some select scenes appear that they were created in the edit and they don’t feel they’re having a
natural conversation, its only a nit-pick but once you spot it, you begin to notice it more often.
One of the stand out performances is Willem Dafoe, he is back to his old self,
hamming it up and chewing his dialogue. Its such a wonderful comic book style performance.
He really is a nasty piece of work in the film, further enforcing that the Green Goblin is still
Spider-Man’s greatest villain. Of course it was wonderful seeing Alfred Molina return as Doc Ock,
one of the finest actors and brings so much to role,
you couldn’t imagine anyone else playing the part very much like J.K Simmons as Jameson.
The film does end up having a lot of characters to juggle,
in most cases it can end up feeling overstuffed, a bit like Spider-Man 3 which had a lot story
threads to tie up by the end but Far from Home, somehow manages to balance it and give another
time to each character so it doesn’t feel like the they disappear for huge lengths of time.
The movie doesn’t lose its focus and Spider-Man has to correct the mistakes he has made but has to
pay the price for what he has done which leads to its emotional impacts, which it handles with care.
Michael Giacchino’s score does a great job of underscoring the action and really nails it when
it comes to the emotional moments, probably his best Spider-man score to date. The score comes
into its own when Octavius arrives then goes full swing. There are musical nods to the Maguire and
Garfield films, making use of the Danny Elfman and James Horner’s themes which was a nice touch, but
it also made it clear that those themes are more memorable than Michael’s work for this new series.
The visual effects are to the usual high standard, I loved seeing the mirror world,
which Spider-Man is thrown into my Doctor Strange, we had seen it done before in
Strange’s first movie outing but it still makes for a great visual action sequence.
The action throughout is well executed, the finale which will impressive the fans,
did feel somewhat similar to the end battle in Spider-Man 3. I was getting a sense of déjà vu.
This definitely feels like a return to form for Marvel, it has the same
energy and excitement that came with the MCU flicks during the height of their success.
Since the end of the series with End Game, you got to sense they were just plodding along,
not really offering much new to further progress to the next stage because this long running
narrative had come to an end, but this felt a complete recharge and the prospect of where they
intend to go next is quite exciting. I’m looking forward to see next Doctor Strange film for
example, which is being directed by Sam Raimi, which I hope is going to be totally bonkers.
I pray Bruce Campbell gets a cameo, perhaps playing Dr Strange from another universe?
Now Way Home is going to be a huge success, Spider-Man has a massive fanbase and this
is like the ultimate compilation album, it’s a fine-tuned best of
which will please fans from the Sam Raimi trilogy to Spider-man’s latest adventures.
Highly recommended don’t miss it!