It’s time for the new Spiderman film that’s been getting a lot of hype around the world. I can definitely see why as it delivers on a lot of great character moments and fight scenes. The film is also fairly long so it got to have a number of climaxes before actually ending. The Spider-Man films are fairly stacked by this point but this one has to make it into the top half.

The film starts off with Spider-Man beating up a bunch of enemies as he recovers his reputation from the last film. The city loves Spider-Man now and while he should feel like this is the height of his career, his days as Peter Parker have never been worse. After Dr. Strange did the spell to wipe everyone’s memory of him, Parker is basically by himself. He still keeps up with MJ and Ned but doesn’t allow himself to talk to them. Now there is a mysterious body hopper who is going on a rampage and Spider-Man’s powers are on the fritz. He’ll have to take control of the situation quickly or it’s all over.

One thing the film gets right about Spider-Man immediately is how nobody is ever there to help him. Spider-Man’s out there busting his back to save everybody and the instant he’s down, nobody wants to help him. With his powers out of control he ends up injuring someone and the police contact he had been working with immediately starts throwing threats around. When Spider-Man goes to the Avengers for help, he’s dismissed out of hand in an almost mocking kind of way. These guys would be the first ones to run to him for help but don’t want to stick their necks out.

It’s pretty tragic just how alone Spider-Man is. He’s strong enough to be able to take it, but that doesn’t mean that he wants to. I’ll also say that the Avengers look really bad as a result since there is a whole lot of destruction going on in the city. You’d think that they would be taking some kind of an interest in the situation but I guess that wasn’t in the cards this time.

On the Peter side, it’s a bit harder to feel bad for him. He made his choice of not reconnecting with MJ and Ned so I think he just has to live with that. That means completely breaking contact instead of being half hearted about the whole thing. He shouldn’t be keeping up with their social media accounts or anything like that because it’s just going to make him feel worse. It’s like getting over an ex or an old friend, the best thing you can do is achieve a fresh start completely. If you do that correctly then you’ll really be all set.

A big theme in the film is about how you can’t do everything on your own and it makes sense. As smart as Peter is, he does make a mistake with one of his gadgets and needed a fresh pair of eyes to see it. He also can’t be everywhere at once and isn’t even in the best mental state because of the constant headaches. The film would have been a lot easier for him without the power issues. For example his spider sense appears to be off for just about the whole movie as a result. While it may not be confirmed that it was happening at the very start, it’s the only way he would get hit by the Punisher or the other random folks in the movie so it tracks for me.

Peter may make his share of mistakes but still looks good throughout the movie. The Punisher also makes for a fun ally here. He’s completely out of his depth the whole time but has a good amount of banter with Peter and is fun to have around. He probably just needed a bit more conviction though. If you’re willing to take one shot then you should be willing to take two. I think the ending would work better with Peter completely stopping Punisher and that causes a bit of a rift between them. It’s a bit harder to see them getting along with such drastically different senses of justice.

As for the main antagonist, it was interesting to see the film set her up as such an evil character. This could become another Scarlet Witch situation if the writers aren’t careful. She really crossed a lot of lines here and while it was ultimately to help someone out, it doesn’t take away from the actions themselves. As far as I’m concerned she is functionally a villain here and this could be a really creative way to set up the in-universe discourse on characters relating to her. I could see a few freedom fighter type groups being inspired by the devastation to put a stop to this. So we’ll see how it all plays out but it puts a whole lot of pressure on some characters going forward. Humanity isn’t going to just sit back after all this went down.

Scorpion is more of a B villain here but it was fun how the film gave him so much hype. The music changes whenever he shows up and he’s treated like an actual threat. It’s all so sincere that I nearly thought it was parody. I suppose he is strong but usually the guy is absolute fodder. We also get the Hand to show up and while I feel like they should all get leveled immediately against someone like Spider-Man, we can’t have the film end too soon.

Hulk looks good in his brief appearance but honestly Banner should have put on the limiter immediately. He already knows that things will not be going well otherwise. I get that the limiter as a concept feels rather shady but these were desperate times. On the supporting cast, I’ve never been the biggest fan of Ned and MJ but they’re okay. They just don’t really need to be around by this point. The fact that they’re both geniuses like Peter at least gives them a little relevance but it still makes the world feel a bit too small. They’re not in high school anymore and in a city like New York, you never really need to bump into anyone more than once.

The guy who loses out the most here is MJ’s new boyfriend because the guy barely gets to appear and then is portrayed as not being a great guy. The film did a good job of avoiding any rebound romance though because it’s not like this MJ even knows Peter. It would have been extremely rushed. For that reason Peter should have suspected something during the roof scene. The whole scene just feels crazy because you usually remember someone by seeing them, not by doing anything weird. Peter was a bit off with all the crazy stuff going on though so I guess he gets a small pass for not noticing that something was amiss.

Now it’s been a while so lets rank the Spider-Man films. I’m not counting the animated ones since we’re really looking at live action here. Number 1 will always be Spider-Man 3 as the definitive Spider-Man title out there. I’d say that second is No Way Home with the cool crossover action. Third would be The Amazing Spider-Man 2 which still has the coolest visuals out of all of them. Then I’d put this one in 4th, 5th would be Far From Home, 6th would be The Amazing Spiderman, 7th would be Spider-Man, 8th would be Spider-Man Homecoming, and finally 9th would be Spider-Man 2. The films tend to be pretty close though and with rewatches I could see the list shuffling a bit. Perhaps this one is so high with recency bias. You never know until time passes I suppose.

Overall, I definitely recommend checking this one out. There is a whole lot going on here and I appreciated that the film made the most out of being in an expanded universe. We had a number of guest star characters which was good to see and I always prefer when a film acknowledges what the others are doing instead of just ignoring it. While those answers may not be satisfactory, at least they’re there. We also got to really see Peter being able to act as the friendly neighborhood Spiderman even when his life was coming to pieces. I really appreciated how he would still force himself to joke and be light as the hero. It showed just how hard he was continuing to try being the best hero he can be. Now we begin the wait for Doomsday!

Overall 8/10