Too often, thanks primarily to the hype machine, lofty expectations for a film will squash much of the enjoyment you experience if it doesn’t quite hit that magical mark.
Well, no such worry with ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’. This gem doesn’t just hit the mark, it obliterates it! One of the wildest, most creative and satisfying offerings yet from the ridiculously dependable Marvel Cinematic Universe, you can believe the hype this time around. This sequel is awesome.
I know many will…or already HAVE said….how can every second or third feature that Marvel spits out be branded “maybe the best one yet”? Hey, I know it defines logic, but the product doesn’t lie. In perhaps Hollywood’s most fascinating example of never resting on your laurels, it’s almost as if the minds behind this superhero fare is trying to one up THEMSELVES. And ‘No Way Home’ is proof of the self-inflicted pleasure to succeed; it would’ve been a blast to be a fly on the wall in the brainstorming sessions for this movie, as I’m gonna beat “what else can we do?” had to have been blurted out a hundred times. And every time it was, no one was obviously crunching numbers on a budget.
For the few who didn’t catch it over the holidays, ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ picks up after the events of ‘Far From Home’, in which Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) let the insect out of the bag in revealing Spider-Man’s identity as Peter Parker (Tom Holland) to the entire world. Trying….and failing…to deal with the fall out, Peter visits his old Avengers pal, Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to see if he could pull one of his magic tricks to ‘fix’ the mess. But a sea of second guessing by Spidey slightly botches the spell, and – in a nod to ‘Into The Spider-Verse’, unleashes some veteran villains from other Spider-Man series, including Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus and Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin.
And if you think that’s the height of the fireworks, here…….”what else can we do?”.
I’m not going to spoil the surprises, and hopefully your friends have extended the same grace….but suffice to say, the twists this story takes add glorious layers to an already fantastic yarn, one of a gawky teen trying to juggle great power and great responsibility.
