Director: Jon Watts
Cast: Tom Holland, Zendaya, and (wait for it… spoilers, but its way too late because the human eye has already looked at the end of the line) Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield
Have I Seen it Before: Feels both apt an strangely inappropriate to make a joke about Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), so I’ll just leave it at that.
Did I Like It: This movie is already working at a disadvantage. A bunch of Spider-men in one movie has been done, and in an astonishingly brilliant way in the aforementioned Into the Spider-Verse. Tom Holland’s work in the role may have tragically peaked with his first, semi-solo outing, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), which is a nearly-perfect teen comedy, and features Michael Keaton in a central role*. Chasing after what came before is a curse of any trilogy capper, but the question remains does this film persevere against that limitation.
Yes, mostly. It’s not a film that’s going to have a lot of success standing on its own, if for no other reason than someone would need at least two (and as many as eight) prior movies for every moment to land. That’s more of a design flaw in the Marvel movies as a whole, the further the ongoing story of the MCU goes.
The multiverse storyline isn’t as manically unhinged as its animated predecessor. They could have offered brief moments with Nicholas Hammond, or even Shinji Todō. They could have gone a little further and explored live-action Spider-Man that never came to pass. I’m talking James Cameron-directed Leonardo DiCaprio and another check in with Donald Glover. Hell, Keaton could have shown up and made sure we all know he’s still Batman… But all of that would have made the film so over-stuffed as to be inaccessible to anyone but me. And DC will have me covered on that other thing. That being said, even after all of the hype and denials, it was still a nice little moment to get our old Spider-men back, if even for a bit. The movie even manages to accomplish that great thing of later/legacy sequels: improving the entries which previously left a bad taste. I’m looking in your direction, Spider-Man 3 (2007) and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014). If nothing else, Andrew Garfield is vindicated… even if he’s spent the last several months pointedly lying to all of us.
Now that I think about it, I can only point to one verifiable, undeniable missed call in the film. In the film’s nearly-final scene, Peter’s landlord couldn’t have been played by Elya Baskin (or, Mr. Ditkovitch from the Tobey Maguire films)? The MCU-series put J.K. Simmons in the role of J. Jonah Jameson again. There’s no reason they couldn’t have gone for two.
*If you didn’t think that one would rank as my favorite, then you’re new here.