Director: Destin Daniel Cretton
Cast: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Sadie Sink, Jon Bernthal
Have I Seen It Before: No. I’m a little surprised I did make it out during opening weekend, as including this film, I’ve seen precisely three films at a multiplex this year*. Those opening weekend numbers are no joke if they got me into a recliner.
Did I Like It: My standards have definitely shifted with the Marvel movies. Iron Man (2008) came out of nowhere and asserted itself with a surprising injection of movie-star coolness. The movies became appointment viewing for the better part of ten years…
…and then they weren’t. Most of the entries in the MCU I’ve seen since Avengers: Endgame (2019) I managed to see mostly because I had my car in the shop and I could walk to the theater from there. You might have varying opinions about the movies, but would you really disagree that the last movie in the series that inspired that feeling of Fear of Missing Out was, incidentally, Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). In case you weren’t yet bedraggled by the temporal M.C. Escher painting that was this decade, that was five years ago. Even Deadpool and Wolverine (2024) was amusing, but hardly the thing I absolutely had to see.
It’s gotten to the point where I’ve idly wondered what might happen to the Superhero Movie Industrial Complex if the forthcoming Avengers: Doomsday only managed to log in half a billion internationally.
I guess—and anybody doing more than guessing probably doesn’t know what they’re talking about—that’s not going to happen now**.
I’ve talked enough about the state of the movie (and perhaps invented the term Superhero Movie Industrial Complex), so what did I actually think of the movie? It’s not particularly interested in setting up anything that might be coming down the pike, which is usually the recipe for any of the stronger superhero films of the last 20 years. Holland still demonstrates why he was the right one to fill the role 10 years ago***, and his chemistry with Zendaya is one of the few examples of on-screen couples actually translating to the screen. The performance I was most delighted by was Bernthal as Frank Castle/The Punisher. I’ve never cared for the character, and haven’t watched the series, but he strangely channels all of the watchable qualities of Sylvester Stallone and makes the best foil for Spidey in this iteration of the series****. The movie is about people coming to grips with their problems, and that helps. A winning formula, and a decent story. Who knew that’s what all these movies needed to make a billion dollars over the course of a weekend?
*And yet, I spend most of my time at a movie theater. Ask me how!
**Oh, it absolutely still could.
***Excuse me, I need another dose of ibuprofen.
****You might be thinking you’re going to get a heaping helping of Mark Ruffalo here, but he’s just slightly more than a cameo in reality.