Summary Jean Grey shows up for no reason and decides to act like a villain. Spider-Man pines over his girlfriend.
Let’s get one thing right off the bat as our article from a few days ago said putting Jean Grey into the MCU sans X-Men is dumb as hell. Jean does not behave like herself here, and her backstory around her missing sister etc would have fit very well into a gritty X-Men film but without the light hearted world of a Spider-Man film it really sticks out. If you removed her entirely from the plot and just had it be Spidey working with and then going up against the leader of Damage Control it would have been much better.
The arc they give Peter is probably the best of the MCU, he is broken as Peter but on top of the world as Spider-Man he has lost everyone and needs to learn to trust and let people in again. This is a serious and grown up Spider-Man, we wouldn’t be surprised if kids like this one a bit less as it’s far less about dances and curfews and far more about loneliness, sadness and trauma. Seeing Spider-Man at a low ebb is kind of what the character is all about though.
You’d argue that the supporting cast does a lot of the heavy lifting here, John Bernthal is wonderful as the Punisher and you really see how much he cares about Peter. Yelana is funny and steals the scenes she isn’t in. However, the star of the side cast is arguably Zendaya. Now a number of the contributors to this magazine do not have a high opinion of Zendaya however, here she is the emotional core of the film. The fact that she can’t remember anything about Peter and that they don’t get back together in the end is incredibly mature and grown up.
There is a real sense of transition with this film not the least due to the changes happening to Peter with his Spider DNA but because it shifts from being a children’s film to something much more serious and grown up.
3.5/5
Pros.
Peter and MJ
Frank
The action and the go pro scenes
The humour
Cons.
The stuff with Jean Grey
The end credits tease isn’t good
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