Directed by Jon Watts

Written by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers

A lot of credit must be given to Spider-Man for reviving the superhero genre of films and in my opinion, paving the way for Marvel to become the behemoth it is today. I think a lot of the inspiration for this film comes way of the 2018 smash animated hit Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse. Yet the way the writer’s handle bringing back so many film villains and tying them all together is brilliant. The inclusion of multiple film flashbacks and characters is handled perfectly and therefore I cannot find a place where the film felt lacking from a story perspective. This is why this film gets a Writing a Movie RIGHT review.

Here comes the spoilers.

With the events of the previous film, Spider-Man: Far From Home 2019, Mysterio reveals to the world the identity of Spider-Man as Peter Parker. The world is divided on the opinion of Spider-man being a hero or a killer. Peter’s attorney, Matt Murdock aka Daredevil, gets the charges dropped but public opinion and cancel culture weighs on Peter and ends up affecting his friends as their MIT applications get denied due to public image issues. Peter goes to Doctor Strange asking for his help to get the world to forget he is Spider-Man. Strange starts to cast the spell, but Peter keeps interrupting him with adding to the list of people he wants to remember who he is. The spell starts to grow unstable, and Strange is barely able to contain it.  Unbeknownst to them both the spell has rippled across the Multiverse and this crack has allowed villains from other universes to come into Peter’s world. He first crosses paths with Dr Otto Octavius then Norman Osborn as the Green Goblin. Peter blacks out and awakes in Dr Strange’s place where he is instructed to track down these villains who have entered through the cracks so Strange can send them back but destroying the spell.  Peter asks his friends MJ and Ned to help him track them all down and during the process finds out that these villains all died in their timelines due to fights with those timelines Spider-Man’s.  Peter feels there must be another way to help these villains. He takes the spell cube from Strange and takes the villains to his place where he works to help each one. Yet during this effort he senses something is wrong to find out too late that Norman Osborn has been manipulating them the entire time. Two others attack along with the Green Goblin and in perhaps the biggest tearjerker of a scene Aunt May dies in his arms right after giving the classic line, “With great power comes great responsibility.”. 

Ned and MJ try to find Peter but in the process they find the two other Peter Parker’s from the other two film franchises. Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield reprise their roles and what a perfect way to bring everything together with having them and their stories continue in this film. Especially for Garfield’s Spider-Man who lost Gwen in his films.  Here the second big emotional moment was when he gets to save MJ. Great writing on display here. In fact every villain and character gets to shine and have enough development that I was amazed not only at the strong writing at work, but expert editing.  Just to key on the editing…the first 20 minutes of the film lays out the entire setup and you are in the story and invested. That is masterful. This film is perfect or at least as close to perfect as a film can be written given how much ground they had to cover with incorporating this many franchises and villains in one single film. 

Marvel seems to be back with emotionally charged story lines and well developed characters that are allowed to have their moments and shine when needed. Outstanding!

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