I saw this at 5:30 on opening day and in the largest screen at my cinema and it was a sellout. Even the rows at the front which I call the neck aching seats were sold out. This is the second film with Tom Holland and Zendaya that I have seen in the space of 10 days with The Odyssey being the other film and I have to say on every level that film is better.
The film follows on from Brand New Day where everyone has forgotten that Peter Parker is Spiderman. He is doing his vigilante thing and seemingly being encouraged by DeWolff.
Tom Holland gives another solid performance as Spider-Man. He has grown into the role over the years and it's nice to see him away from Iron Man and this was the strongest performance that Holland has given. I dont think its as good as The Odyssey but its still the sort of performance a leading man should give. Zendaya is good as MJ although I think its a rather average role, Zendaya manages to make something of it and make it quite interesting. Jacob Batalon is fine as Ned and only really works when he is with Zendaya and Holland as the three have some good chemistry. There was a nice cameo from Florence Pugh’s Yelena. Although it looked like all her scenes were filmed in a day because she never moves out of that swimming pool set.
It was good to see Hulk back and nIce that Banner seems to have moved on from The Avengers. I think the last time I saw Mark Ruffalo was in Mickey 17 where he was doing his Donald Trump impression. I think I read somewhere that they made Hulk smaller during the Thanos stuff to make Thanos look more of a threat. There is only so much that you can do with Hulk and its used well in this film. Jon Bernthal was the thing in the movie. I feel like its an obvious thing to say and you could argue that he plays the same shouty type character in almost all his films but it very much works in this film. He had several good moments and some of his lines got chuckles from the packed audience.
Sadie Sink debuts a Jean Gray which was kind of spoilt because some people wanted to spoil it and I thought she was fine. Jean was after V-Max and I had a funny feeling that this wasn’t going to be an important thing and it turned out to not be because it’s revealed that it is the name of the brand of the a/c unit in the room her sister was in. Which might annoy some with how unimportant it is but it’s typical Marvel. Despite this Sink did the best with what she was given and it a shame her debut came as late in the film as it did.
The main issue that I have with this is that the film is 145 minutes long and it is about 40 minutes too long. 40 minutes of Peter Parker moping around and it’s at that point the plot actually kicks in. Some might like that but I just think we are well into this franchise that we can just jump into it with minimal set up. You could have spent 15 minutes setting things up and then start with the Jean Grey stuff.
There is one shot where Hulk and Spiderman are fighting and the camera is spinning around and I didn’t know what I was supposed to be watching. Now this isn’t a knock on the director as I like Destin Daniel Cretton's previous films Shang Chi and Just Mercy with the latter being really good. I think he did a good job. The film wasn’t as flashy as previous Spider-Man films but there was a bit more character stuff going on even if it took way too long to get there.
Ultimately the film despite having some good moments is somewhat disappointing. I didn’t know what I was expecting but I think I wanted a bit more and I think the experience of sitting it a completely sold out helped.
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