SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME
Across The Multiverse
★★★★
RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 148 minutes
Director Jon Watts
Cast Tom Holland, Zendaya,
Jacob Batalon, Marisa Tomei
Across the two previous films, the Marvel/sony partnership produced fun, energetic and (mostly) small-scale Spider-man movies starring Tom Holland’s likeable Peter Parker. So the question was: would raising the stakes help or hinder that run? The answer: both.
Fortunately, director Jon Watts and writers Chris Mckenna and Erik Sommers don’t forget to slow down at times and keep the focus on Peter, Ned (Jacob Batalon) and MJ (Zendaya) despite everything happening around them. “Everything” in this case being the arrival of villains from other Spider-universes, including Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin and Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock from the Sam Raimi movies, and Jamie Foxx’s Electro from Marc Webb’s. They cross into the current Spiderverse thanks to a wayward worldwide forgetfulness spell from Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) that Peter keeps trying to alter after his identity was revealed to the world at the end of Far From Home.
There are some refreshingly unexpected turns here – this is certainly more than the simple Peter-vs-different-baddies narrative pushed by the promos. And yet, more than either of its predecessors, it falls victim to an overloaded final act that tries to squeeze so much plot and so many clashes into its set-pieces that it can become numbing. One moment late on is particularly galling for anyone who hoped this franchise would keep sidestepping major tropes. Yet thanks to a commitment to sticking with its story-altering ramifications, by the time the credits roll it manages to clamber out from beneath the combined weight of expectation, exposition and providing a satisfying third outing.
The MIT guy’s car has the number plate 63ASM-3. Doc Ock first appeared in 1963’s Amazing Spider-man #3. Clever, eh?