Wednesday, December 15, 2021

Spin A Little Web Of Dreams


Did you hear the one about the spider and the man? One bit the other and wham bam web, ma'am. What about the other one about the man and the spider? Or the other? Well I hope your head's full of man spider stuffs because nine movies in (ten including that animated one that everybody loved and which gets a sly little shout-out here) we're arriving at Spider-Man: No Way Home, Tom Holland's third standalone as the character -- which doesn't count all the Avengers movies he's popped up in, of course -- and if you ask me, his best. No Way Home is a superhero smash.

And anyway you did ask me, because you're here reading this, which I take as my permission to continue. But I will be kind, generous, in return for your trust, and I will keep my mouth yapped shut on spoilers. Don't fear! I don't really give a shit when it comes to talking plot any of the time anyway -- other sites I write for demand I get into that stuff but I prefer to write about the vagaries of cinematic sensation over  mechanics whenever I can, and this spoiler-aversion gives me the opportunity to indulge myself. So let's! If you've seen the trailer you know plenty enough. Try not to know anything else and the surprises this one's got in store for you are fairly endless.

What's so great about No Way Home is it truly feels like spider-id unleashed -- like somebody decided for once they were truly gonna go all out on the comic book writer sensation that there's only you and a piece of paper and a pencil in front of you and you can make these characters do absolutely fucking anything you can think of, and this movie's gonna do it dagnabit, and it did. I'm not slighting any of the previous Spider-movies -- I rate Raimi's Spider-Man 2 with an even higher grade than I do this one still -- but Spider-Man: No Way Home lives in the place where the last couple of Avengers movies did where endless buckets of money met truly limitless CGI; it's not just the sky that's the limit, it's the furthest reaches of space, time, and all infinite dimensions.

Basically No Way Home is peak pop culture of our moment. Sure I have quibbles here and there about plot mechanics or character choices if I felt like indulging my inner-quibbler, but the deluge of because-we-can fuck-yeahs on displays in this picture are too dazzling and delightful to deny. This is Marvel & Co giving the exhausted and weary people out here the full superhero nonsense of their dreams, undiluted and gone-for-broke, and this thing deserves every damned penny it will make. It's our moment's version of Busby Berkeley put-on-a-show for the weary folks, razzle dazzle 'em, and I whizzed outta this spider-sucker feeling both razzled and dazzled deep down in my happy places. All I can say is a big thanks. I needed this.



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