Monday, 18 April 2022

VOD: Spider-Man - No Way Home (dir: Jon Watts, 2021)

"You're not Peter Parker!"
"I am so confused right now."

Following straight on from Far From Home, this final part of Tom Holland's original Spider-Man trilogy is a supremely confident film from the outset.  With Peter battling college applications and the small matter of the whole world now knowing his superhero identity, he enlists the help of Doctor Strange to fix his problem by magic with catastrophic results.  We are not even half-an-hour into the film when the multiverse shenanigans start with a spectacular face-off with an old enemy from the Raimi films, making the viewer wonder how the rest of the film can match up, which it then goes on to do admirably, including a spectacular SFX-laden trip to the Mirror Dimension and more visitors - good and bad - from the other cinematic multiverses.  As well as being a tightly-written and lively film, Tom Holland simply does not put a foot wrong, driven by his (real-life) chemistry with Zendaya and the delightful verbal sparring with Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange.  No Way Home has become one of the first true blockbusters post-pandemic, but it is not simply a matter of release timing - the Marvel formula works so well, new visual and story elements create interest as well as the significant nostalgia factor of the nods to the past, and Sony hit gold when they cast a young actor as talented as Holland to lead what has become one of the most enjoyable series within the MCU.

 

No comments: