Director: Daniel Espinosa
Cast: Jared Leto, Matt Smith, Adria Arjona, Jared Harris
Have I Seen it Before: Starring Jared Leto? A Spider-Man spinoff? Well, clearly I was there opening weekend.
Did I Like It: A movie review should probably not be a wellspring of snark. It’s easy, and doesn’t really engage with the film.
But I really can’t help myself.
We seem to be past the part of human history where Jared Leto is a leading man movie star, thank you very much, the one-two punch of Tron: Ares (2025) and Masters of the Universe (2026). That’s good. We can—as a species—begin to heal. I might have preferred it happened more because we all came to our senses and less because he is something of a sex pest, but sometimes we can’t choose where our progress comes from.
But, and I ask this not to crack a grin out of you, how did he become a huge star in the first place? I’m told people went head over heals for that My So-Called Life show, but didn’t that thing air for about a month? How did we confuse the cute boy on the show no body cared about with the rightful heir to Jack Nicholson?
Because, honestly, the biggest problem in this movie is not its completely average screenplay about a character even the frothiest of fanboys couldn’t care that much about. It’s the fact tha Leto is an absolute negative vortex of charisma. While he could fake his way through a Suicide Squad (2016), or a Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and any number of supporting roles, once he has to share almost every scene with an actually interesting actor like Matt Smith (whose only crime here is getting confused when Karen Gillan told him doing a Marvel movie was a career-boosting lark), the whole illusion falls apart.