Set four years after the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home, which saw Spider-Man, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) forced to cast Dr. Strange's spell that robbed the whole of the world of the knowledge that he was Spider-man, including love of his life MJ (Zendaya) and bestest friend in the world, Ned (Jacob Batalon). This Spider-Man has been fully accepted as NY's masked avenger and rightly feted by its populace, there's no J.J. Jameson to sully his name, so he can concentrate on dealing with a seemingly never-ending wave of street level villains from Scorpion, to name but one, as I don't want to spoil anything for you here. That said, there's one wonderful homage to a comic that had me squeaking in sheer delight, and on the Amazing-o-meter it rated a solid 15! He's got a friend in the NYPD, detective Jean DeWolff (Liza Colón-Zayas), acting as his Commission Gordon, and a love/hate relationship going on with Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) aka The Punisher. Parker lives an almost monastic life from his attic, alone and mourning his lost relationships. Then, one day an audacious attack on Damage Control HQ by a little old lady in an armoured tank, brings Spider-Man face-to-face with a mysterious villain who can leap into the minds of people and take control, but who are they and what does it have to do with Damage Control?
There is a lot of plot, characters and incident to shoehorn into this film, no wonder it's so long, at its core the loneliness of Peter Parker - still grieving for the loss of Aunt May and MJ, but there's also the sense of hope, of a 'brand new day' as Parker goes about trying to build new relationships, like the unlikely one between Parker and Castle, or Detective DeWolff, as well his feeble attempts to somehow reconnect with Ned and MJ.
The action aspect often takes a sidestep, which isn't necessarily a bad thing although it certainly spoiled a lot of the younger kids in the audience's enjoyment, this is a 12A film, it's quite sophisticated in its language, plus it's not a live-action animated film, there's a lot of talking and I think younger kids are going to be bored by this, one such tyke in the audience last night started playing with his pinging tablet last night and his mother couldn't seem to care less, till several people around her told her to shut it off.
ANYWAY, the film itself. It was surprising to see so much of Spider-Man in full costume talking and interacting with people, it felt strange, but in a good way and soon became quite believable, he's a very likeable character perhaps the most relatable of all the superheroes. The action is jawdropping, the Hulk, revealed in the trailer so there's no spoiling to mention him here, is great, brief but great, and when he finally goes full Hulk it's fantastic! Likewise the relationship between Parker and The Punisher is funny and rewarding too, but the Punisher struggles to work in a 12 A universe, ultimately his superpower is just shooting guns, but there's a connection between the two that reminds me of Superman Vs Batman, but done better. In fact all of the relationships at play in this film are deeply rewarding, perhaps none more so than the final one between Ned and Parker which really choked me up.
The phrase Super Hero Fatigue gets thrown around a lot these days, but I can tell you there's no such think as Spider-Man Fatigue, judging from the crowd I saw this with. I think the fatigue comes from a hideous glut of truly mediocre superhero fare with generic off the peg stories, and threats too big to comprehend. Not so this, the story at it's core is the important sauce. Give the audience a strong story with a proper emotional core and some stakes they can relate to will win the day.
This isn't a perfect Spider-Man film, for me that would be Spider-Man Homecoming (2017), Spider-Man (2002) and Spider-Man 2 (2004). This is a tad too long, and the effects are a little soft and murky at times, the direction by Destin Daniel Cretton is very perfunctory and pedestrian and lacks the visual flair of Sam Raimi, he's just a safe pair of hands. Plus the villain, as surprising as they start out to be is, if I'm being honest, a tad disappointing by the end. The soundtrack, which seems to be mostly pop songs doesn't really register and this feels like a TV movie rather than a spectacle and doesn't quite have that gloss of a big Hollywood blockbuster, which at a price tag of $225 million it should have.
Anyway, exceedingly fun and entertaining and filled with some simply excellent Spider-Man moments, with plenty of action and emotional resonance, but sadly not quite firing on all cylinders. It flew but just didn't quite soar.
So this gets an Amazing Fantasy rating of Tim Boo Ba, or 9/10 if you don't know your comics.
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