Marvel brings Spider-Man Home

Don’t worry, this’ll be spoiler free. If you haven’t seen it yet, and managed to avoid the major spoilers (as I was, thankfully), you’ll enjoy this ride a whole lot more.

No Way Home is the latest, and until (if?) a new deal is reached between Sony and Marvel Studios, final Spider-Man film in Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. If it is the last, at least they went out with a bang. Although seeing’s how it is raking in the dough, I can’t see how they would let this cash cow go.

Anyway, it picks up right where the last Spider-Man film ended. With his dying breath, Mysterio has just outed Peter Parker as Spider-Man to the world. If it was just the news helicopters outside Aunt May’s apartment and the constant looks at school, Peter could deal with it, but unfortunately the news is hurting his friends too, namely his best friend Ned and girlfriend MJ. Their lives are thrown in turmoil too, and even get denied to their college choices because of the controversy surrounding Peter, and what they knew or didn’t know beforehand. Peter can’t live with this, and he goes to Doctor Strange for help. Strange submits an idea: if the world forgets that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, then Peter’s friends will be OK. However, Peter interrupts the spell when he realizes that this would also mean that the friends themselves would forget. His meddling causes the spell to have some serious side effects.

If you’ve seen any trailer, none of this is new to you. And neither is the appearance of a couple villains from Spider-Man films of the past. The most-shown trailer focused on Otto Octavius, the bad guy in the second Tobey Maguire film. Others were hinted at, but I’m not spoiling anything here. All I will say is this movie shattered all my expectations. You can’t think big enough; whatever you think you can imagine, they up the ante from there. As such, it’s a fantastic point of entry for a lot of moviegoers. Saw the first trilogy of Spider-Man films from the early-mid 2000’s? Come on in! Missed those, but saw the “Amazing” duo of movies from the early 10’s? There’s something for you here too! Or even if you saw none of those, this movie stands on its own. Obviously if you’re a big nerd and seen them all, there’s Easter eggs a’plenty for you, but they aren’t necessary to enjoy this one.

And enjoy it I did. It hits on all cylinders: huge action, the extremes of all emotions (including plenty of laughs!), and lots of heart. If you regularly read my blog, you know I can geek out over these movies sometimes, but this one does not disappoint. I think you can go in completely blind, and while you won’t be in on all the inside jokes, you’ll still have a great time. Tomorrow night: Matrix 4. As far as sequels go, it has a high bar to meet. ★★★★★