Screenplays don’t come up much when we discuss superhero movies, but Spider-Man: No Way Home reminds us that they’re as crucial as casting and special effects. After their smart, high school-centric scripts for Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Far From Home, both starring Tom Holland as Peter Parker, Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers are faced with a daunting task: maintain the small-scale, adolescent intimacy they’ve established while also serving up a metaversal, multi-character narrative that draws from the pre-Holland feature films from the 2000s and 2010s. (Spoilers ahead.) The result is a laboriously convoluted narrative (Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange plays a significant role) that only grows exponentially as the story unfolds, to diminishing returns. For fans of this character, as I am, there’s a thrill in seeing Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire wearing the red and blue again. (Maguire was my Spider-Man, and his few scenes here are a reminder of how much I loved his soft, earnest take on the character.) But the lines and scenarios that are concocted for the returning actors are fairly lame; they often feel like the first jokes that must have come to mind. What’s more, adding three Spider-Men to an action climax already overstuffed with five returning villains (Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock, Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin, Jamie Foxx’s Electro, Thomas Haden Church’s Sandman, and Rhys Ifans’ The Lizard) makes for more chaos than director Jon Watts and his effects team can coherently handle. Ironically, the previous Spider-Man movie referenced the least is the one that handled this multiverse concept far better: the animated, deliriously inventive Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. And that film’s success started with its script.
(1/8/2021)
