Spider-Man - No Way Home

Home From Home

Spider-Man - No Way Home
USA  2021 Directed by Jon Watts
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Here be big spoilers right from the start... because there’s not much to talk about in this movie other than the central premise/gimmick.

Okay, so first my congratulations to Marvel for getting a film out which has appealed to enough people that it’s literally made billions of dollars in cinema box office in the middle of a pandemic (which still isn’t anywhere over yet... as I’m sure we’ll all find out fairly soon). As for me... well Spider-Man - No Way Home wasn’t a great Marvel movie and it wasn’t a terrible one. It’s about on a par with the last one in the series, Spider-Man - Far From Home (reviewed here) but, at least in this one we see the Spider-Man costume more prominently. In fact we see a number of different costume variants from different versions of, not just the most recent films in which Tom Holland’s Spider-Man has appeared in but also, yeah, spoilers people, we see the versions from the previous two iterations of Columbia’s Spider-Man movies.

So Holland is back alongside Zendaya as MJ (who’s not actually named Mary Jane as everyone had assumed), Jacob Batalon as Ned, Jon Favreau as Happy, Marisa Tomei as Aunt May, Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange and Benedict Wong as Wong... among a whole host of other regulars from the series. It ties in some of the post-credits scenes in previous movies such as Far From Home and Venom - Let There Be Carnage (reviewed here) and allows them to make more sense because this one is definitely playing around with the idea of multiverses... I guess the studio heads were staggered by the box office of Spider-Man - Into The Spiderverse (reviewed here) and wanted to sort out something similar in a live action version. So J K Simmons returning as J Jonah Jameson at the end of Far From Home makes sense now because this iteration of the character is not the same as the one in the Sam Raimi films... he just happens to look like his multiversal counterpart.

Okay, so what that means, thanks to a screwed up spell when Peter Parker asks Doctor Strange to remedy the problems that Jameson has made for him, is we have various villains... and heroes... from the previous two Spider-Man franchises continuing their story points in the part of the ‘multiverse’ we are familiar with from the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) films. So, yeah, we have Willem Dafoe as The Green Goblin, Alfred Molina as Doctor Octopus, Jamie Foxx as Electro, Thomas Haden Church as The Sandman and Rhys Ifans as The Lizard. Plus, of course, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield portraying the previous versions of Peter Parker (aka Spider-Man), who are on hand to lend the Tom Holland incarnation some assistance when he loses someone close to him and finds himself in his darkest hour.

And, I will probably get a lot more out of it the second time around but, although I don’t feel all that impressed by this one... which makes absolutely no sense in the way it leaves the characters at the end (I’m hoping they clear up their ‘lack of common sense’ mess in the up and coming Doctor Strange movie)... the film has it’s fair share of up and down moments... more up I am happy to say.

My biggest down moment was Jamie Foxx. I’m sure he’s a great actor and it’s really not his fault that the way his Electro character is written sucks, in both this and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (reviewed here). I used to love that character in the original comics but, yeah, this just isn’t him. However, there were a couple of nice ‘blink and you’ll miss them’ electricity strikes around his head during at least two points which were deliberately reminiscent of the head piece of his costume in the proper 1960s comics at least. I was also somewhat disappointed that Tyne Daley didn’t show up as part of the Damage Control team this time around, as she did in Spider-Man Homecoming (reviewed here) ... which is a shame. Did they drop her from the line-up?

All the other characters were mostly handled well, especially Alfred Molina, injecting the Doctor Octopus role with as much sympathy as he did the first time around in Spider-man 2. Willem Dafoe is also absolutely awesome here and, thankfully, mostly unencumbered by that terrible helmet he wore in Spider-Man (although it does turn up briefly). Thomas Haden Church as Sandman is equally multi-dimensional in terms of his character’s dynamic and reversal in this, like a reflection of what happens with Molina’s character here. The Lizard from The Amazing Spider-Man (reviewed here)  is, perhaps, a little different to how I remembered him, however, especially in the design of the character.

There are also some nice moments with Maguire and Garfield as the two other Spider-Men. One moment which is really emotional is when, when it comes to the MJ character in the film, is when the Garfield version manages to save her from the death he accidentally inflicted on his girlfriend Gwen Stacey in similar circumstances in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Also, there’s a fan pleasing moment when the writers address the issue of whether the mutant Tobey Maguire version of the character shoots webbing from his penis or not... which is something audiences have been asking since his first go in the role in Spider-Man, of course. Yeah, they get a lot of mileage out of his mutant DNA in this one, actually, in terms of the humour of the film.

There’s a large dose of tragedy in the film too. Not just with the death of a major character in the series (yeah, I’m not giving that away too) but with the totally nonsensical ‘how can Peter Parker even get money out of a bank to pay the rent now’ way the ending leaves the central three characters of the MCU Peter Parker, MJ and Ned Leeds in at the film’s conclusion. Now, when I first rumbled they were going to go all multiversal at the end of No Way Home, I was pretty sure they would set this up to eject Spider-Man from the future MCU films... or at least Tom Holland’s iteration of it (there’s a couched reference to Miles Morales in the movie so, it’s obviously on their mind). The ending of the movie definitely sets up a future for the series where Tom Holland’s Spider-Man either does, or perhaps doesn’t, return in future movies. I suspect the answer to that one won’t come soon (and I think it will be a bit of an elephant in the room in the upcoming Doctor Strange And The Multiverse Of Madness too, since it’s pretty much a direct sequel to this one in terms of the set up, at least judging from the trailer used as the second of the post-credits scenes here)... Holland has expressed an interest in not returning so I suspect some hasty salary negotiations are being looked at (or not... Marvel have a track record now for replacing characters with different actors, I believe... Roadie, for example, or Howard Stark and Bruce Banner come to mind).

Ultimately, Spider-Man No Way Home is an entertaining movie for what it is... a big attempt at a multiversal crossover cash grab that, apparently, has certainly succeeded in that. I didn’t hate it and I suspect I’ll grow to like it more over time (if they manage to make sense of their ending in future MCU movies). There are some good bits, there are some clunky bits (“You are AMAZING!"... geddit) but, overall, it’s nice seeing the winning team of Spider-Man and Doctor Strange together again (although Strange is not in it as much as you might think). So, yeah, if you liked the other MCU Spider-Man films, not to mention the previous franchises, you’ll probably have a relatively good time with this one, I would say. I still think Homecoming is the best one in this trilogy, though.

Maverick (1994)

 

Place Your Brets

Maverick
USA 1994 Directed by Richard Donner
Warner Brothers Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: This review contains a big
spoiler about a character from the outset.

Maverick was a big budget reboot, by director Richard Donner and actor Mel Gibson (the director/actor team of Lethal Weapon fame) of the classic James Garner small screen character of Bret Maverick, who had been in many iterations of the show (you can read my reviews of the various variants of Maverick here). And it’s kind of open to interpretation to just who Gibson is playing in this one as he’s called Bret Maverick and, just like Garner used to, provides a voice over narrative as he goes along on his adventure... although I could have honestly done without the added swearing here because it didn’t seem quite right sitting in the Maverick universe but, hey ho, I guess the writers maybe imagined it was edgy or something.

The thing is, though, James Garner also plays a major role in the movie, as a Marshall called Zane Cooper, which I’m assuming is an homage to the two Western writers Zane Grey and James Fenimore Cooper. However, at the end of the film he is revealed to also be a Maverick, running an elaborate con with his son, Bret. Now, you can either take that as he’s playing Pappy (as he did once in the original show where he played both father and son in one episode) and Gibson is the original Bret or, like me, despite the lack of timing continuity between pretty much every iteration of the show in various forms, you can interpret it as he’s still playing Bret Maverick and also called his son the same name. Either way, this is a fairly affectionate nod to the original show (asides from the swearing) and is a nice addition to the original stories.

It has a stellar cast such as Jodie Foster as the main romantic lead (another con woman and this is not unusual for what would have been an episode of Maverick), Alfred Molina as a villain and James Coburn in another prominent role in the last third of the movie. There are also a lot of old time cowboy show (and Maverick show) cameo appearances by various actors such as Leo Gordon (Big Mike in the original show and also one of the original series' writers) and Doug McLure, not to mention lots of uncredited cameos too, including Garner’s brother turning up once again, plus some country and western singers too, for some reason.

One cameo moment is wonderful when Danny Glover, Gibson’s co-star from the Lethal Weapon movies, comes face to face with Gibson while robbing a bank... and the music suddenly goes into a dead-on parody of Michael Kamen and Eric Clapton’s score for the Lethal Weapon films. That’s very nicely done.

Another great uncredited cameo, larger but still short, is the inclusion of a character played by Margot Kidder. Of course, Kidder also played James Garner’s regular love interest in his post-Maverick TV show Nichols (which I reviewed here) and it’s nice to see the two sharing the screen together again (come to think of it, she also worked for this particular director in her most famous role as Lois Lane in Superman The Movie and its sequels).

And, getting back to the musical cameos... Randy Newman’s score for the film incorporates a heroic melody line for Gibson’s Bret character that is almost, but not quite, an instrumental version of the shows original theme and song. It’s like he’s been asked to do it straight but delete one note and change two others and I can’t quite understand why because, well, Warners would surely have owned the rights to the music from the original show. Maybe, going with the idea that this was actually the original Bret Maverick’s son, the composer decided to make it a variant, possibly intending to bring the full version of Garner’s theme back later for... the big reveal. That doesn’t happen but, it’s quite close and fans of the old show will certainly hear the old theme in it when Gibson does anything heroic here.

And it’s a nice film with some interesting scenes, nice action and a real suspenseful finish to the big poker game near the end of the movie. It’s also very humorous, in exactly the way the original show was although, certainly Gibson’s young Bret is more willing to pull his guns out, it seems, than the original character was. There’s a big problem with the film though... and I’m not just talking about the waterwheel on the ferry changing speeds between long shot and close up in one scene either...

I’m sure the various plot twists... Jodie Foster actually after Maverick’s money whenever she can thieve it, the James Garner reveal, the Indian who turns out to be an old pal of Bret... would have seemed fresh or at least unpredictable to the younger segment of the audience who were unfamiliar with any of the various versions of the show over the years. Old hands at Bret’s game though, through Garner’s always pitch perfect and immensely entertaining portrayal, will see a lot of the reveals coming way before they happen because they’ve become almost cliché by this point in the franchise. So, yeah, I think this movie appeals to two different audiences but, luckily, it holds it own quite well and at least meets the expectations of an older and more familiar crowd.

Maverick, the movie version, is a real hoot, to be sure and definitely one to watch. It doesn’t come close, it has to be said, to many of the earlier versions of the character but, that’s okay, Gibson does well in the part, as does Foster and they’re both helped out tremendously, in my opinion, by the presence of James Garner returning, effectively, to his roots here. A lovely, romantic Western flavoured with just a favourable dash of its powerful legacy of ingredients. One to watch.

The Amazing Spider-Man

Pale Spider


The Amazing Spider-Man 
2012 USA 
Directed by Marc Webb
Playing at UK cinemas now

Warning: Okay... so there will be some slight spoilers in this one but, be warned, they may well be spoilers from what happens in the sequels to this film. If you’re worried about that, then come back and read this in a few years time.

I guess, since I’ve never reviewed a Spider-Man movie on this blog before, I should probably give you a brief history of my reactions to the character in various forms over the years. That may give you some idea of where I’m coming from with this review.

Also, I will say now, right up front,  that this actually isn’t going to be a bad review of the movie. I kinda liked it, to be fair. I will almost certainly, however, be a little negative in my outlook because... oh, wait. I’m getting ahead of myself here...

I always loved Spider-Man as a kid and began reading his adventures when I was five years old when the "UK printed" Spiderman Comics Weekly first came out in this country in 1973. I remember these were black and white reprints of the original US 1962 Spider-Man comic book with, I think, a The Mighty Thor back up strip (?). What really made these special and “glam” as a kid, however, was that the first 6 pages or so, which featured the main Spider-Man strip of the week, predated the colouring style of Frank MIller’s Sin City years later in that there was also a third colour, a traditional Spider-Man red, run as a special hue in the print set up. This really made the look of the comic stand out (any of my readers remember this?). I remember the first issue had a free paper mask in it which I used to wear while pretending I could climb walls.

Pretty soon, UK television began running episodes of the good old original Spider-Man cartoon show. I used to get a bit miffed, even at the age of six, that the animators couldn’t be bothered to draw all his webbing on except for the mask but the neat voices, action and, mostly, the distinctive jazzy scoring (the music masters now lost to time due to studio stupidity, is my understanding) was a seductive combination and I was an avid watcher whenever I knew it was on. Many cartoon adaptations followed over the years but none of them were ever as cool as this one.

Then, in 1977 (although I seem to remember it as being much earlier to be honest) there came The Amazing Spider-Man live action TV series with Nicholas Hammond in the title role. This was pretty bad and came to us first over here as one of three motion pictures which hit our cinemas comprising “sewn together” episodes called The Amazing Spider-Man, Spider-Man Strikes Back and Spider-Man and the Dragon’s Challenge (which was the best of the three in that it at least had some decent fights in it). They were often quickly re-released as parts of double bills with the likes of such movies as Sinbad And The Eye Of The Tiger. This practice of giving the UK “movies” made of stitched together US TV shows is something which happened relatively quite often over here... with the likes of The Man From U.N.C.L.E, Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers also following the same basic release practice. I didn’t feel so bad about it just recently when I realised we were doing the same with some of our TV shows in cinema releases in other countries (such as The Avengers).

To be honest, the live action TV show was pretty dire and made in a time when DC comics scored big as films and Marvel comics were the kiss of death in big and small screen adaptations... something Marvel have really turned around in the last ten years or so. But it was an attempt and that was good enough for me.

What wasn’t good enough for me was the disappointment I experienced when Sam Raimi directed the first of his recent Spider-Man trilogy. They took enormous liberties with the original 1962 source material and even went so far as to make Spider-Man an X-Men-like mutant in that he could spin his own webs from his body. A logical extension of the character, perhaps, but not what Spider-Man was all about. At least not to this, less than avid, viewer.

And Betty Brant didn’t feature! She was kinda in them but she’s supposed to be Peter Parker’s love interest long before Gwen Stacey or Mary Jane were on the scene and a few cameo appearances really didn’t make up for this... especially since, if memory serves, the whole Doctor Octopuss storyline in the original comics initially started with the involvement of her character.

But as the series of movies progressed, I found each successive Spider-Man movie a lot easier to stomach and thought they got progressively better. Alfred Molina’s turn as Doctor Octopus in Spider-Man 2 was pretty standout and by the time Spider-Man 3 came around I was actually rooting for James Franco’s Green Goblin character by the end, just like I was supposed too (even though I’d hated him in the first two movies... I now, strangely enough, respect him much more as a fine actor than I did when I first saw him).

Which, if you’ve not forgotten the point of this post, leads me to the new reboot.

Now I have to admit to some excitement because they were titling it after the original comic that Spider-Man made his second appearance in, The Amazing Spider Man (the title being a nod to the original Amazing Fantasy Issue 15 comic in which Spider-Man made his debut appearance). And I’d heard they were ditching the mutation and going back to the science-based web shooters from the comics. This was sounding good... except. Well I have to say that, now I’ve seen it, it takes even more liberties with the original source material than the last trilogy did.

The Peter Parker’s parents storyline is slotted in there and I can’t say how accurate that part of the movie is since it didn’t appear in the comics until... ooh... at least three decades into its run I think. But I do know it shouldn’t be slap bang rubbing shoulders with the “origin story”. Secondly... no Liz Allen, no Betty Brant and no J. Jonah Jameson (although JJJ is at least mentioned I think). Well... I say no Liz Allen but the version of Gwen Stacey they’ve got in this one does seem to be playing a mongrel/cross breed version of both Liz Allen and Gwen Stacey... go figure.

There are a lot of negatives about the quality of the adaptation part of the writing and I could go on for hours, I’m sure, if I didn’t mind writing pages and pages here. What I will say though is that the Curt Connors character when he takes his Lizard form, looks much more like the old Spider-Man character The Scorpion than he does The Lizard. They’ve lost the snout (not very visible, adsmittedly, on the cover of his first appearance pictured above) and you rarely see him keep his white lab coat on (again, purple on the cover for some reason) as The Lizard because they’ve also got him growing in size and splitting his clothes Hulk-style. So there’s that.

And there’s also the fact that Spider-Man doesn’t kill Gwen Stacey... at least not yet. While he was blamed for the death of her father Captain Stacey in the original comics, she lets him off the hook here and doesn’t go down that route with him in this movie, although her father does meet his death in this one (though not in the same way as he did in the comics). But the fact that Gwendy doesn’t die in this one was somewhat disappointing to me. I’m thinking that maybe they’ll save that one for the sequel? In the original comics, the Green Goblin throws Gwen Stacey off a bridge, just as he does with Mary Jane in the first Sam Raimi film which was transplanted wholesale from that issue of the comic book, until they wimped out on killing off Mary Jane at this point in the movie in the same way Gwen dies in the comic.

In that comic, as Gwen Stacey falls to her certain death, Spider-Man catches her by webbing her foot, only to find that the act of stopping her in this manner snaps her neck and she dies. It was a death which ended her 8 year run in the comic (1965 - 1973) but which was so shocking at the time that it echoed throughout the storylines right through until the present day, with various Gwen Stacy clones turning up over the years (and I do mean actual clones and not just stand-in characters people!).

Now that doesn’t happen in this latest movie either... and as I said earlier, I can only hope they’re saving it to be the dramatic impetus of the inevitable sequel to this one (something I’m hoping they’ll call Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man after one of the many other Spider-Man comic titles over the years). If not, I’m probably going to be a bit more upset about the way they’re treating the characters, I suspect.

Right then, so after all that griping, what did I think of the new The Amazing Spider-Man movie.

Well I kinda really liked it actually. It was a shock seeing former Doctor Who alumni Andrew Garfield in the role of Peter Parker since he looked nothing like the character as he did when I used to read him in either the 60s or 70s artwork in the comics. I do seem to remember though that he did look a lot like the way he looks in this movie in the 90s or later, so I think I can let the people behind this one get away with that. Especially since, adaptation problems aside, the dialogue and storyline is actually pretty good and the performances of Garfield, Emily Stone (as Gwen) and all the rest of the supporting cast are all pretty... well... amazing.

It’s quite frenetically edited but not frenetically paced... so I think some of the audience for this one are going to get a little restless as they wait for Spider-Man to actually suit up for the first time. Gone are the days, alas, when a contemporary cinema audience didn’t need an origin story before they could emotionally invest in a super-hero character... at least that’s the verdict the film studios seem to have decided. And I think some of the people going to see this will find it a little slow compared to what they are used to... at least in terms of “getting on with it”. I know this is how the people I went to see it with perceived it and, to be fair to them, it does seem to take at least half of the fairly lengthy running time to get to a point that took only the first few pages in the original Amazing Fantasy comic issue.

But this kind of slow burn really doesn’t worry me and it certainly gives some time for the drama to play out and develop at its own pace. It also builds up a certain amount of anticipation to the first time you see Spider-Man in his proper costume and doing some characteristic web slinging... a point which is killed completely for me by the scoring, as it happens.

Now I’m not going to bash James Horner too much here because I used to like him a lot in the early stages of his career and, also, I do think he’s given this movie a really wonderful musical score... except for that one moment. I’m sure you all know the reactions to Horner’s... um... well loved ability to repeat himself (and others) in his work, constantly... and I state this is only as my opinion (a popular one though, it seems to me). There’s a big moment in this film where you see the full costume as Spider-Man lands on a window and the music suddenly goes into Prokofiev-mode, filtered through Star Trek 2: The Wrath Of Khan (and filtered and filtered through many other Horner scores) and, for me, this really popped me out of the moment of the movie when I really didn’t need it (they might have just as well played the theme from Star Wars or the stab music from Psycho here and it would have had the same result). This movie wasn’t directed by Godard, so I’m assuming that wasn’t the intention here.

Saying that, however, it’s not always the composer’s fault when these kinds of things happen. If they’ve been asked, say, to stick to the original rough-cut temp track, for instance, then a composer’s gotta do what a composer’s gotta do. Don’t shoot the musical messenger. And as I said, I really liked this score, I think it’s one of Horner’s best efforts of the current millennium and I shall be giving it quite a few spins on the CD player before the rest of the month is out. Power to him.

My only other real criticism of the movie is that the action sequences are extremely fast... you can just about follow them though. Just don’t accidentally blink during them or you’ll be lost. Especially during the Stan Lee cameo appearance which, to be honest, is one of his best appearances in a Marvel movie. It works really well.

And that’s all I’m going to say on this subject for today I think. The Amazing Spider-Man movie... if you’re a big fan of the original 60s and 70s comics then you run the risk of maybe hating it... or at least being quite a bit irritated with it. Similarly, if you’re someone who likes to get to the point early on with a movie, then you’re probably not going to dig this either. However, if you’ve got no real stakes in either of those camps then you might just find that this is one of the better summer studio tent peg movies of recent years. You might get a kick out of it. I know I did.