Yes, Kymm Zuckert thinks Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021, dir by Jon Watts, USA) is terrific

Well, we’re done with the Christmas Carol films, we are done with Halloween films. It’s like a vacation! 

The very first film I saw in this new year of 2022, was the new Spider-Man film, Spider-Man: No Way Home. The trailer was fantastic, and I decided that I should watch all seven previous Spider-Man films in order to prep. There were clearly connections to the Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield Spider-Man universes, and I had actually never seen the first two Tom Holland films! 

However, I did leave it till the last minute and basically just re-watched the very first Spider-Man movie from 2002, which was worth it, as they repeated one small moment between Peter and MJ, funny and sweet in the first film, heartbreaking in this one. 

Anyway, I realized it would be hard to watch six films in one and a half days, and finally decided to let it go. I figured they wouldn’t make it too opaque, that they would want the audience to be able to catch up quickly, which they did. Not seeing Spider-Man: Far From Home was fine, since they started with what happened at the very end, when Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) reveals the fact that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, and everything in his life goes down the tubes. 

This is very different from the “I am Ironman” moment at the end of the film that kicked off the whole Marvel miracle, since Tony Stark was both a grownup and a billionaire, not a kid living in an apartment in Queens, trying to go to high school and live a normal life, not be branded a murderer and have people throw bricks through his window. 

So he decides to ask Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to cast a spell and make it so that people forget he is Spider-Man, which all goes pear-shaped, and the different villains that the different Spider-Men fought all come bleeding into this universe. 

Seven paragraphs in, and I have yet to mention that this film is TERRIFIC! I was bouncing up and down in my seat, waving my arms in the air, I was weeping like a child, I was rocking back and forth, unblinking, sometimes I was doing all of these things at the same time. 

This very complicated story, bringing in plot arcs from twenty years ago, stays clear as a bell, the performances are all rock solid and completely believable, Zendaya as MJ, Marisa Tomei as Aunt May, J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson (here a terrible, mean Fox News-type personality decrying Spider-Man and Peter Parker as Public Enemy Number One instead of a terrible, mean newspaper editor) are all splendid, but Tom Holland really needs to carry the whole film on his realistic emotions, which he does in spades. 

Wait, and it’s funny! It’s really, really funny, which is what keeps the Marvel films head and shoulders above the generally dour, dark, and dismal DC universe. 

A great start to movie-going in 2022, and what am I going to do next? Why, watch/rewatch those six other Spider-Man movies, then see this one again, of course, what do you think?

Kymm Zuckert is an actor/writer/native Angelino. When Kymm was a child, her parents would take her to see anything, which means that sometimes she will see a film today and say, “I saw that when I was eight, I don’t remember any of that inappropriate sex stuff!” Check out her entire 365 day blog @ https://365filmsin365days.movie.blog