Skip to main content

Movie Review: Spider-Man: No Way Home *Very Minor Spoilers (maybe?)*

Spider-Man: No Way Home One Sheet

It's hard to imagine, that with all the trailers and leaks for Spider-Man: No Way Home that there were any surprises left to see in theatres. Fortunately the movie still manages to deliver even more than I was expecting. As a result, I had a great time and didn't leave the theatre feeling like I'd seen it all already in the trailers. This is, arguably, one of the best live action Spider-Man films (potentially even comic book superhero films) you'll ever see.

That said, there's still much to question and discuss, about the plot, with things that kind of, but probably don't make sense upon further reflection, but there's so much good here, you'll cut the writers some slack (probably).

The film picks up almost exactly where Spider-Man, Far From Home, left off, with Spider-Man's identity as Peter Parker being outed. This becomes a major issue for Peter, who seeks out Doctor Strange to see what he can do to reverse time to a point before his identity became known.

As you see in the trailers, Doctor Strange casts a spell that is slightly tweaked a few times by Peter on the fly with some unexpected outcomes. Cue villains from the multiverse of past Spider-Man movies.

Kudos goes to Sony's Producers, Writers, and director, Jon Watts, for coming up with a story that not only is one of the best in the MCU but also making their entire back catalogue of Spider-Man live action films culturally relevant again. Not that they weren't relevant but who isn't going to watch or rewatch Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man films again now they're basically MCU cannon. Even the Venom movies are essentially MCU cannon.

Also Kudos again to director Jon Watts who somehow managed to give all the major players just the right amount of screen time. At no point did I feel anyone was getting too much screen time, needed more screen time, or were overshadowing Tom Holland as the star of the movie.

As mentioned the story is far from perfect. There are a number of scenes that I felt just flat out wouldn't happen or were 'movie logic' - for example things along the lines of how magic works. Generally things that have very little basis in reality but, if you try to apply logical rationale to them, they're head scratchers at best.

For example, during the spell that starts it all, Peter keeps asking Doctor Strange to make exceptions about who remembers his identity... I mean, I guess you can edit spells on the fly as you cast them? Which is a very minor example. The bigger question is the overall solution that resolves the movie... would that work and could they have just done that at any point? Plenty of room for discussion about something that has no basis in reality.

To properly tell you how fun this film is I would have to talk about some serious spoilers, so I won't. However I can say, non of the returning villains have minor cameo roles along the lines of one or two scenes and they're done. They all get a decent amount of screen time, dialogue, and even humorous moments. It's worth going to see just to watch how they deal with suddenly finding themselves in a whole new universe where each has some familiarity with particular villains from their own universes.

It's so good. Go see it in a theatre if you can. It's, without a doubt, the most 'Spider-Manny' of live action Spider-Man films to date, that ends in an interesting place, with plenty of potential moving forward to future films.

Comments

Buy Gifts and Apparel featuring art by TET.

Popular posts from this blog

Movie Review: Memory (2023)

S omething a little different for me in terms of movies I usually review,  Memory  is a film I was invited along to see by my partner, and both of us didn't know much about the movie going in, other than it was a film where one of the leads has dementia. The basic premise follows adult, special needs social worker, Sylvia (Jessica Chastain), who leads a simple and structured life. When Saul (Peter Sarsgaard) follows her home from their high school reunion the surprise encounter profoundly impacts both of their lives. The film starts out very awkward and disjointed to some degree, which I feel is intentional, to reflect that Sylvia, who is also a struggling single mother, is fairly resilient, she is, in many ways, just barely holding everything together because she doesn't have any other option. When Saul sees Sylvia at their high school reunion it seems like some unpleasant memories from her past are fast tracked into the forefront of her life, and things move forward fro...

TV Series Review: Velma (2023-2024) *No Spoilers*

A s a kid, Scooby Doo cartoons were something I used to watch fairly regularly. I wasn't a diehard fan but it was one of the better, of the many, cartoons I used to watch. I had heard about the new animated series, Velma , around the time of its release but it wasn't coming out on any streaming service I was subscribed to so it went off my radar pretty quickly. Quite by chance I signed up to a streaming service so I could watch DC Entertainment's, The Penguin, and noticed Velma was on that platform. I figured I may as well get my money's worth out of the subscription. I did know that Velma, herself, had been race swapped for the show, which made no real difference to me, though I do prefer classic Velma if pushed to choose. However the first episode of season one was a real shock to my expectations! No where had I heard this series was skewing very much into adult humor and themes. I was expecting something more along the lines of the original Scooby Doo show. Instead I...

I'm Confused About Why People Prefer to Say Discombobulated?

D iscombobulated. Is a word that I think someone rediscovered about three or four years ago (maybe more because the pandemic years have thrown out my sense of time) and now I hear it a lot. It's not a new word by any means, but when I started hearing multiple celebrities using it in everyday sentences, I actively had to look up what it meant. Define it with as many synonyms as you like but essentially it's just another word meaning 'confused'. Seinfeld Quotes: Quotes.net The words are pretty much interchangeable. He was discombobulated by too many choices. He was confused by too many choices.  My confusion is the length of the word. It's unnecessarily long with too many syllables. There are many other words that mean confused, and therefore also mean discombobulated. Most of them are shorter and easier to say. So why not just say 'confused'? Perhaps discombobulated sounds more intelligent, maybe?  Hawaii Five-0 Quotes: Quotes.net I've noticed it gets us...

TV Series Review: The Office - Australia (Prime Video) (2024) *No Spoilers*

W hile I'm a late comer fan of The Office, only watching after the original and USA versions were both available on streaming services, I did watch them in the order of release i.e. I watched the U.K. version first. Now, with the release of the Australian version of The Office on Prime Video, I think it's best to approach watching this new version understanding that it is not those shows. More importantly, remembering the US version was not well received or as popular as it has become since streaming became a thing. I personally remember people often saying the original version was better, back in the day. Of course, the Australian version has analogues for all the same characters you're familiar with from the previous versions, with their characteristics, so you can easily see who is the Aussie version of each character. While there are actually 13 different adaptations of the series worldwide, I was surprised to learn this is the first time the boss has been female. No...

Social Media: It's All Fake News - Even That News You Shared, That Proves the Thing, Because It's Backed Up By a Credible Expert, is Fake.

Social Media profiles need a peer based rating system that locks you out for 30 days if your feed is one long stream of depressing boredom that bums everyone out. I  don't watch or read the news anymore (mainstream or otherwise). From time to time, if something filters through that piques my interest, I'll take a bit of a dive to find out more. The recent US election is a good example. I even wrote a few opinion pieces in this blog. The Daily Show Is Not News Note that I don't count The Daily Show as news, because I did watch quite a lot of that during the US election. While they lean quite a bit toward the left overall, it's not a show you look to for context, since much of their humor is based on reframing context to get a laugh. The one thing The Daily Show does well is highlight how both Liberal and Right wing media latch onto one or two bullet point messages each day and run them through the mouths of every on screen commentator like they're all wind up parro...

Trump's 2024 Election Win Will Change Everything - At Least I Sure Hope It Does!

Trump by Leonardo.ai & TET A s an outsider looking in on the US 2024 election, right up until election day, it is beyond my belief that the election continued to be a 'close race'. It is even further beyond my belief that Trump won, without question.  Even if the Democrats wanted to claim the election was rigged somehow (which I'm sure Trump was gearing up to do had the outcome been different) it would be hard to make the case, beyond a recount. There's no slim margin here. Trump clearly won. While I would've preferred a Blue win, I at least got one outcome I was hoping for. A clear winner on election day. If I could give the Democrats some free, unsolicited advice for the next election. Stop targeting the opposition as if they're somehow selfish, evil villains. That's not how political parties work. At the end of the day the all represent the public. The people. The everyday citizen who you're trying to convince that you have what it takes to meet t...

Movie Opinion: GhostBusters: Frozen Empire (2024) *Some Spoilers*

T here's one thing that can be said for 2016's, all female Ghostbusters reboot , and that is, it's not anywhere near as bad as  Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire . Although you don't realize it almost all the key moments of the actual plot are spoiled in the movie poster shown here.  It's a wildly over thought, and overly convoluted story, with much exposition, that boils down to a big end level boss, a beam of light shooting into the sky, all the captured ghosts escaping, and all the Ghostbusters teaming up to clumsily restore order again by the end of the film. Side note: That mayor everyone thinks is a dick is the kind of mayor you want. He really knows how to get things done in record time. I've never seen a building get condemned and the legal tenants get evicted so fast, ever!  There's not much here that this franchise hasn't done before, in every film, only this time everything freezes too because... I don't know, I drifted off during that expositio...