Huh. We got another Spider-Man movie with Tom Holland. Cool, I usually like those. However, Marvel and Sony were very cagey about who the bad guy was in this one. Sure, pre-release news and rumors suggested that as many as five different supervillains associated with Spider-Man, plus Jon Bernthal’s Punisher and Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk, were set to appear in the movie, but most of those supervillains had, like, maybe two minutes of screen time. As such, I will refrain from saying who the main antagonist here as part of my general “if it isn’t in the trailers, it could be a spoiler” policy.
I will add this is, like, two weeks since the last movie I saw in theater that also featured Bernthal, Tom Holland, and Zendaya.
It’s been four years since Peter Parker (Holland) erased the memory of him from pretty much everybody except himself. In that time, he’s been a full-time superhero, saving lives and stopping crimes throughout New York, where he is universally beloved. However, he’s a bit lonely, watching online videos posted by his former best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) that often feature the love of his life, MJ (Zendaya). Neither of them remember him either. But things take an interesting turn when Ned and MJ return to New York. Between that and trying to keep his frenemy Frank (Bernthal) from interfering the only way the Punisher knows how, life is keeping Spider-Man busy.
Two things really make a mess of Spidey’s life: a mysterious, unknown person is hopping bodies and trying to find something inside the Department of Damage Control, and Peter’s body, after a run-in with MJ and Ned, is mutating into something that seems more spider and less man. That’s a lot to juggle for anyone, and there really aren’t that many people Peter can turn to for help. So, as Peter tries to protect Damage Control, he’s trying to find a treatment for himself, something, all while trying to keep MJ and Ned safe from his life as Spider-Man. When all that is at stake, something has gotta give.
I saw this with my girlfriend and her brother (he a massive Marvel fan), and I gotta say, the consensus seemed to be this may be a contender for the best Spider-Man movie Holland has made. It’s a wee bit long at nearly two and a half hours, and the post-credit scene leaves a lot to be desired, but it did something that none of the other solo Spider-Man movies have done and kept the adventure on a more personal level for the first time since Holland’s first. There’s no threat to the multiverse or a threat that all of S.H.I.E.L.D. needs help dealing with. As one supporting characters puts it, this is “small potatoes,” and appropriate for Spider-Man.
Honestly, I think I just had a lot of fun with this one, and for me, Spider-Man always works best when he’s fun. It’s the main gripe I had for the Andrew Garfield movie I saw (I have yet to see the second): it was far more serious than fun, and I thought Garfield made a good Spider-Man. But here, the humor largely works, the fights scenes from new Spidey director Destin Daniel Cretton seemed better, the guest stars didn’t overrun the movie despite there being more than usual, and the day is ultimately saved because Peter Parker is just a good person. Now, if the MCU can give us a Spider-Man movie without a guest star from another movie, I might be really happy, though I did dig the relationship between Frank and Peter, so maybe Bernthal can come back for another. He actually seems to fit in Spidey’s world.
Grade: A-
As one
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