**Small spoilers are inevitable with a movie this new.**
Even if you haven’t seen the previous Tom Holland Spider-Man movie (Spider-Man: No Way Home), you will be aware of what happened to him at the end of that film, as it’s pretty much shown three times in this film. And that’s not a bad thing, because it’s at the core of what happens to him, mentally and psychologically, in this one. To recap: in S-M:NWH, Peter asks Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to cook up a spell to fix a problem. In the middle of the spell-casting, he asks for changes to the spell—Dr. Strange warns that messing with this kind of spell while it’s being cast can have grave consequences, but he does it anyway. As a result, a warp forms that can tear apart the multiverse; to fix it, the only cure is for Dr. Strange to cast another spell that makes everyone in this universe forget Peter Parker entirely. Which he does, and it works.
Peter, with the death of his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) and the “forget me” spell, lives alone. This movie takes place long enough after that event for his friends MJ and Ned to graduate from MIT. Peter has no friends and barely has acquaintances. He has thrown himself into his work, and has captured so many criminals that the city of New York now views Spider-Man as a hero (J. Jonah Jameson is noticeably absent from this film); he’s even been given the key to the city. At the beginning of this chapter of his life, after he visited the donut shop where the woman he loves, MJ (Zendaya), works, he wrote a one-page note that he planned to read to her when she had forgotten him, but seeing her and his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) all excited about getting into MIT together, he couldn’t do it. He ordered a coffee, and later stuffed the letter into the empty cup. He reads it sometimes when he’s thinking about MJ. It begins “Hi. My name is Peter Parker. We used to know each other. We used to be together, but something bad was going to happen, and the only way to stop it was to make everyone forget me.”
But between times of loneliness and longing, you can tell that Peter parker absolutely revels in being spider-Man—he dives straight down from tall buildings, only shooting his web at the last possible moment to avoid splattering himself all over the street. But there’s a problem. He’s beginning to lose control of himself; his arachnid DNA is coming to the fore (Figure 2). It’s causing problems, including interfering with his web shooters and mood shifts, and he doesn’t know what to do. In desperation, he contacts Professor Bruce Banner, AKA The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) for information about counteracting “the monster within.”
There’s another problem: one villain he had put away—in a newish facility called Damage Control, where they supposedly rehabilitate powered individuals to become powered superheroes—has escaped: the Scorpion (Michael Mando). While interacting with said Scorpion, the villain says something odd: “You think I’m the Scorpion.” Another problem is that several attacks seem aimed at Damage control itself; he has to contend with Frank Castle, the Punisher (Jon Bernthal), who wants to put these attackers away in his own fashion—i.e., by shooting them.
While bringing the Scorpion back to Damage Control, Peter meets the man in charge, Bill Metzger (Tramell Tillman), who tells him that Damage Control is capable of not only reforming these criminals, has already done so with a number of them—pointing out the ninjas known as The Hand, who now work for him (The Hand, of course, is from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).
Peter figures out that the Scorpion and others, like The Hand (Figure 3), are being controlled by having someone invade their minds—and they’re trying to break into Damage Control. Peter also goes to the Black Widow (Florence Pugh) for help. (This is the “sister” of Natasha Romanoff, who died getting an Infinity Stone to help stop Thanos.) She tells him his problems are “small potatoes”—that she deals with “big potato” problems.
I won’t tell you who the main villain is; I’ll leave that as a surprise. I know I was both surprised and confused, as it doesn’t seem to fit the timeline. I’m sure someone will clear that up for me—but it may be that this is even a different Earth from the one I’ve been thinking of. When the MCU is spread through the multiverse, everything can be very confusing. What I will say about this movie is that I think it’s the best live-action Spider-Man movie to date. The action is fast, and the plot and characters are nuanced, something the main actors—Tom Holland, Zendaya, Jacob Batalon, and Jon Bernthal especially—pull off surprisingly well. I hope this is not the last Tom Holland Spider-Man movie, because he has fit into the Parker character, and become Peter Parker, in a way that neither Andrew Garfield or Toby Maguire quite managed. (I hope Jacob Batalon doesn’t keep growing, or he’ll soon be in shape to play the Kingpin!)
I think Marvel has outdone itself with this movie. Go see it; I’m going to do so again.
NOTE: This column is in no way written, edited, proofed or composed by AI, though some of my photo editing software uses it in some capacity. This is a human column and will remain so.
Please let me know what you think about this column. Check me on Facebook, or by email (stevefah at hotmail dot com). Good or bad, let me know. My opinion is, as always, my own, and doesn’t necessarily reflect the views of Amazing Stories or its owner, editor, publisher or other columnists. See you next time!
Steve has been an active fan since the 1970s, when he founded the Palouse Empire Science Fiction Association (PESFA) and the more-or-less late MosCon in Pullman, WA and Moscow, ID, though he started reading SF/F in the early-to-mid 1950s, when he was just a sprat. He moved to Canada in 1985 and quickly became involved with chairing or helping run Canadian cons, including ConText (’89 and ’81) and VCON. As a fan, he’s published a Hugo-nominated (one nomination) fanzine, New Venture, and he’s founded two writing groups (Writers’ Bloc and Writers of the Lost, Ink). He’s emceed and auctioned art at many West Coast and Northwest conventions including one Westercon. As a writer, he’s published a couple of books and a number of short stories (including one in Compostella [Tesseracts 20], and has collaborated with his two-time Aurora-winning wife Lynne Taylor Fahnestalk on a number of art projects. As of this writing he’s the proofreader for R. Graeme Cameron’s Polar Borealis and Rhea Rose’s Polar Starlight publications. He’s been writing for Amazing Stories off and on since the early 1980s. His column can be found on Amazing Stories most Fridays.
