Spider-man’s finally back on the big screen, and this is the film that I chose to be the one I went to see in the theater again. It’s been a couple years since my list visit to the theaters and this trip was everything I feared it would be. With a theater that was only 1/3 full for the 7pm Dolby Digital showing, I was one of maybe 5 people in a mask, the other 100 or so people decided to not do what they were asked to and were just sitting there stuffing their mouths, chewing loudly, and mouth breathing all over their massive diet cokes that they were loudly slurping down. Half way through the film, I had to use the restroom, so missed about 7 minutes of that due to having to visit one of the most disgusting places in my city: the AMC restrooms. I hated nearly everything about the movie experience itself and I’m really not sure I want to do it again, watching movies at home has absolutely spoiled me, there’s only my wife to interrupt, I can pause the film to talk about things when we need to talk about them, I can pause for bathroom breaks, and I cannot stress this enough, there is no one in my living room that’s going to be playing video games on their phone in an absolutely dark room or taking phone calls just 10 feet from me. Wrap all that up in some slight covid anxiety and I really do no known if I want to continue the A-List program that I signed up for, which is 3 movies a week for $25 a month. It’s a great deal if you’re going to the movies more than once a month, but I’m not sure I even have the motivational energy for all this non-sense.
That was the theater experience. How about the movie? There’s a few reasons that it’s already made over a Billion dollars in just the week or so that it’s been released:
1 – there’s a ton of pent up demand for a quality movie at the theaters
2 – there’s a ton of pent up demand for Tom Holland’s Spider-man as his previous flicks have all delivered exceptional stories
3 – the last Holland spider-man film ended on a cliffhanger to end all cliffhangers
4 – the MCU has been not so quietly building out the Multiverse concept in the background, most notably with the WandaVision and Loki shows on D+
5 – there’s only going to be a few franchises that would pull crowds back to the movie theater again, general MCU movies weren’t enough (black widow, Shang-Chi, and Eternals were all ‘no thank you’ from me personally) and the vague hint that there were going to be multiple spider-men in the film was enough for me to say, sure ok.
Spider-man: No Way Home delivers on all of it’s vague promises, somehow managing to meet or exceed all of my expectations. and was worth the trip out to the sticky floor plague factory. I’ve read that Tom Holland is “done” with the franchise after this, and there’s no concrete plans to bring Spidey back, but I’m relatively sure these are the things that actors say all the time when they’re willing to give up a role to work on other new and exciting projects, much like what Robert Downey Jr was saying before Captain America: Civil War. I’d be extremely shocked if Holland stayed away from the MCU for very long, if at all.
