Starring: Tom Holland, Benedict Cumberbatch, Zendaya, Jacob Batalon, Jon Favreau, Jamie Foxx, Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina, Rhys Ifans, Thomas Haden Church, Benedict Wong, Tony Revolori, Marisa Tomei, Angourie Rice, Andrew Garfield, Toby Maguire
Distributor: Sony Pictures
Runtime: 148 mins. Reviewed in Dec 2021
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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With Spider-Man’s identity now revealed, Peter asks Doctor Strange for help. When a spell goes wrong, dangerous foes from other worlds start to appear, forcing Peter to discover what it truly means to be Spider-Man.
Sitting in the cinema, waiting for Spiderman to begin, it was intriguing that there on the screen was a request to not reveal spoilers. As the film went on, this reviewer was glad that he had not heard any spoilers, was able to be amazed, continually, at the unexpected plot developments. So, a reinforcement of the exhortation not to reveal the plot. Which, of course, makes it difficult to write a review.
And what is it about? As Dr Strange says: it is the grand calculus of the multiverse. Just what we would have thought.
Where does Spiderman stand in the Marvel Universe? In fact, he has been popular. There have been television movies in earlier decades, but, for the past 20 years, eight feature films and the animated story of the Spiderverse, with multiple Spiderman in parallel dimensions. Three films with Toby Maguire. Two films with Andrew Garfield. This is the third film with the present Spiderman/Peter Parker played by Tom Holland (and directed with great energy by Jon Watts). And then the news came, on its release in the US and around the world, that it had the third biggest opening of any film. How could a more modest Spiderman film achieve this? It would be a spoiler to say more.
But, we can say that this is not just a Spiderman superhero adventure. It is a Dr Strange story, following on his own film, with Benedict Cumberbatch in the central role and Benedict Wong as his assistant. No Way Home follows immediately on from Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019), where the villain Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) has revealed Peter Parker’s identity on television. Shock jock television journalist J Jonah Jameson (JK Simmons) is revelling in the information and has denounced Peter Parker as public enemy number one.
This has affected Parker’s close friends, MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon), as well as Aunt May (Tomei) and her boyfriend, Happy (Favreau).
What can be revealed and is not a spoiler is that Parker is desperate that people not know he is Spiderman, making a plea with Dr Strange that he cast a spell so that people will forget who Peter really is. That would been simple but during the spell Peter starts thinking of all those that he would like to keep remembering him – his friends, Aunt May… Which rather spoils the effect of the spell.
The screenwriters must have enjoyed themselves thoroughly in working out what could be some of the consequences of this spell gone wrong. And we enjoy ourselves as we continue to discover what the screenwriters have cooked up.
It does mean that there are a lot of adventures, fights, special effects galore (plus gore), which makes for continually exciting and unpredictable adventure. (And, as usual, in the Marvel Movies, a variety of end credit sequences, such as Venom turning up for no obvious purpose but as a joke, and a final extensive preview of the next Dr Strange adventure.) One always has to stay until the end of the Marvel Movie’s credits.
The film has a strong supporting cast, some of the veterans perhaps surprised by getting a call back. But, it all works well – and the word-of-mouth (one hopes without spoiler alerts) must have been instantly strong for this Spiderman film to be so successful. And it is.
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