Direction: Jon Watts
Country: USA
With an ingenious plot by the regular team of writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, Spider-Man: No Way Home stretches the bridges between different generations of viewers, being the most genuinely surprising new release within the Marvel genre I've seen in a long time. It is a considerable improvement over its predecessors - Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) and Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019) - both also directed by Jon Watts, who does his best job with the superhero here.
In this sequel, we have a teen Peter Parker (Tom Holland) disclosing his identity as Spider-Man, becoming the most famous person in the world, and fighting a bunch of invaders (among them are Willem Dafoe as Green Goblin, Jamie Foxx as Electro and Alfred Molina as Doctor Octopus) that come after him in a sequence of an imperfect magic spell. Some of them are treacherous and dangerous opponents whose super-powers need a lot of acrobatics and stamina to be dominated. The novelty is that two other Spider-Mans (Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield) arrive from parallel universes. There’s also the precious help of the mystic Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and, on an earthly plan, Parker’s girlfriend, MJ (Zendaya), and his best friend, Ned (Jacob Batalon).
What makes this Spider-Man so satisfying comes in large measure from the lucidity of the narrative, the quality of the villains, and an enjoyable balance of action, humor and emotion. Unlike other Marvel undertakings, this one never feels too crowded and - clocking in at 150 minutes - it never bores. The film is stripped to the essence of what a comic book movie should be, without renouncing to ineffably dynamic fighting sequences and stunning special effects.
