Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

 

Let me explain how good a movie Spider-Man: No Way Home is: as soon as it was done, I wanted to watch it again. As I sit here typing this, I am wondering how soon I can see it again. It is, to put it simply, quite possibly the best Spider-Man film ever. 

Strangely enough, it shouldn't be. It shouldn't even work. As a rule, comic book movies with multiple villains almost never work. And even when they do more or less work (The Dark Knight), they still don't work quite as well as the ones that concentrate on a single villain.

Sidebar: For those who take exception to what I just said in relation to The Dark Knight, while it is a very good Batman movie, there are about four or five points in the movie where you think it's over and it's not. And Two Face does seem kinda shoehorned in. The movie would have worked much better with just The Joker as the villain and Two Face getting his own movie.

The Spider-Man series is especially notorious for movies with multiple villains not working. Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 both make the same mistakes even: Peter spending an awful lot of the movie crying and having 3 villains each, with at least one of the villains being completely unnecessary. In the case of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, I'll even argue that two of the villains are completely unnecessary. That entry did not need either The Green Goblin or The Rhino.

So yes, a movie with no less than 5 villains in it should really not work. It should be a dissatisfying mess and a candidate for worst movie of all time. However, this is an MCU movie and one thing that Marvel has taught us over the last 13 years is that they know how to tell a story. As a result, not only is this movie completely satisfying, it's a candidate for being one of the very best comic book movies ever. We're talking Avengers: Endgame or Superman: The Movie levels of greatness. We're talking about two and half hours of pure movie magic. 

The film picks up where Spider-Man: Far From Home left off. Mysterio has revealed to the world that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, an act that turns the hapless teenager's life upside down. Half the world hates him, the paparazzi won't go away, and he and his friends Ned and MJ can't get into college. So Peter goes to Dr. Strange and asks for a spell that will make the world forget he's Spider-Man. The spell goes sideways, which opens a portal to the multiverse and lets in the primary villains from the first five Spider-Man movies: The Green Goblin (the real one IMO), Doctor Octopus, Sandman, The Lizard and Electro. Spidey has to contain them, but when he finds out they're all going to die upon returning to their worlds, he decides to try to help them instead. That's the type of hero Spider-Man is.

If you've stayed away from spoilers as I always try to, you're in for quite a ride. Even if you know or think you know some of what's going to happen, I promise you there's things in this movie you'll never see coming. It's a complete delight, alternately funny and heartbreaking.

The cast is fantastic. I've liked Tom Holland's Spidey since his first appearance in Captain America: Civil War. He really is the comic book Spidey come to life. Marissa Tomei remains the best Aunt May ever. Zendaya and Jacob Batalon give their usual strong performances as MJ and Ned. Ditto Benedict Cumberbatch as Dr. Strange. As far as the villains go, it's a delight to see Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin and Alfred Molina's Doc Ock again. Those two prove again that they are among the best screen villains in history. Not only that, but Jamie Foxx, Rhys Ifans, and Thomas Haden Church get another shot to get their villains right.

Sidebar: The biggest problem with Spider-Man 3 is Venom, who is completely superfluous. Haden Church did a fine job as Sandman and the film should have just been about him. Similarly, Foxx was cheated out of making Electro into a really great villain with the introduction of The (fake) Green Goblin in Amazing Spider-Man 2. In fact, it can be argued that Haden Church, Foxx, and Ifans were all done a disservice by the scripts. For that matter, so was Andrew Garfield, who was a perfectly good Spider-Man stuck with lackluster scripts. I'd argue that he's the Pierce Brosnan or Peter Capaldi (for you Doctor Who fans) of the Spider-Man films.

I've been a Spider-Man film since I was a little kid. Hell, I wanted to be Spider-Man when I was a little kid (I almost kinda still do). This is the Spider-Man movie I've waited for since I was about six years old. A complete geek-out fest of a film and one I personally can't wait to revisit.

Captain America: Civil War

2016 may go down in cinematic history as the year superheroes stopped punching bad guys and started punching each other. Captain America: Civil War is the second and better of these movies, if only because it's the more personal.

After an attempt to stop Brock Rumlow in Nigeria ends with collateral damage the United Nations wants to put The Avengers under their rule. Tony Stark aka Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr) is all for it but Steve Rogers aka Captain America (Chris Evans) wants to stay independent. Battle lines are drawn and sides are chosen over the proposed Sokovia Accords. Things get worse when Steve's friend turned brainwashed assassin Bucky Barnes is accused of bombing the signing of the Accords, killing the King of Wakanda. The King's son, T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman), under the guise of Black Panther, wants revenge. Stark wants to put Bucky down. Steve wants to help his friend clear his name. This set up drives the rest of the film.

Yes, there's a lot more of the Avengers in the movie. In fact, this is basically Avengers 3 more than Captain America 3. On Team Iron Man is Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Vision (Paul Bettany), War Machine (Don't Cheadle), Black Panther, and--making his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut--Spider-Man (Tom Holland). Team Captain America has Falcon (Anthony Mackie), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), Bucky, and Ant-Man (Paul Rudd).

One would think that with that many characters and a 2 1/2 hour running time, the movie would be too much and too bloated. Surprisingly, it's not. It's multitude of characters and storylines doesn't overwhelm it or feel forced. It's not like some of the more unfortunate DC attempts of "oh, look...it's (insert Batman villain)! Oh, look! It's (insert Justice League hero #1)! Oh, look, it's grainy video of (insert Justice League hero #2)." It's not even like the Marvel Netflix shows that attempt to convince you they're part of the same MCU as the movies by vaguely name-dropping a character without actually mentioning them by name. It remains a slick, taut thriller that manages to pull its various storylines together cohesively in the end. It all clicks and clicks wonderfully, especially under the direction of Joe and Anthony Russo, the directors of Winter Soldier.

About that ending. No spoilers but this movie duplicates the feat of last year's Ant-Man. There's no apocalyptic situation, no extinction level event going on. The fate of the entire world and life as we know it isn't hanging in the balance. There's no wanton destruction with possibly thousands of unseen lives lost. What there is a simple but brutal fight between former friends. To say that it's as tense if not more so than the finales of almost all the previous Marvel movies is to undersell it. Oh, sure, there's a big superhero on superhero brawl earlier in the film where all the heroes fight each other. But that's not the finale. That's the scene we expected when we came in. The finale is much more personal. You don't root for a winner in these fights. We like all these characters and just don't want to see anything bad happen to any of them.

That may be the secret power of this movie. We have been invested in these characters since the MCU started with Iron Man in 2008. The result is that we like all of these characters. Civil War not only recognizes that fact, it exploits it. The movie never demonizes any of its heroes. We can get behind any one of them at any given time. Most iconic brawl movies clearly delineate who we should ultimately root for in the movie. When you have Ant-Man on one team and Spider-Man on the other, how in the world do you choose who to root for?

On the topic of Spider-Man, Tom Holland has the promise to be the best screen webhead yet. The youngest actor to play Peter Parker and his alter-ego, Holland actually looks like a nerdy high school teenager. He also brings Spidey's banter to life in a hilarious way that neither Tobey Maguire nor Andrew Garfield pulled off. It actually makes one excited to see Spidey's next movie. As for this movie's other major introduction, I never was that interested in the character of Black Panther until this. But like Holland's Spider-Man, Boseman's Black Panther is a fascinating character. Since this movie is almost an origin story, I really want to see where the character goes next.

Some may say this isn't quite as good as The Winter Soldier. If that's true, it's through no fault of the movie's own. It's just that Winter Soldier was just that great. But it's almost like arguing whether The Godfather or The Godfather Part II is a better movie. It's still an amazing movie that has much to say about loyalty, friendship, sacrifice, and the cost of revenge.