The MCU Spider-Man movies are probably the best overall series within the whole massive thing, though there may be better individual movies. But this is the weakest – and longest (and most self-important) – of the three and, in many ways, reverts back to the usual Marvel crap. There is a difference here, of course, and I guess that difference is the reason this movie is currently ranked 116th all time on IMDB. That different thing, if you don’t know, is a massive spoiler. So

SPOILERS

I had not actually seen every one of the three sets of Spider-Man movies. I’ve only seen two of the Tobey Maguire movies and I’ve seen none of the Andrew Garfield movies. And the spoiler is that I should have seen the Andrew Garfield movies, because they actually come into play here. That is the main difference between this movie and every other MCU film – it acknowledges the existence of pre-MCU films. As far as I know, it was created due to the fan demand, hence the high IMDB rating, I guess. (Though I guess that Spiderverse film is the root cause.) It’s handled reasonably well initially but it gets pretty hokey once Maguire and Garfield join the film.

The other films for this version of Spider-Man were small (er) films featuring a teenager trying to stop (relatively) minor villains. This was especially true of the first film. But it’s not true of this one. This one is a pretty typical MCU in terms of length and stakes. It’s nearly 2 and a half hours long and Spider-Man doesn’t necessarily have to save the entire universe but he does have to do something that will at least prevent the universe from getting infinity worse.

And so we have yet another MCU movie where some characters have to prevent a near End of the World scenario. At least this film doesn’t have the death toll of other MCU films.

I find this thing a whole lot less fun than the previous two and many of the things that worked in the first two films don’t work as well due to the length of this one. But it’s still better than a number of the MCU films.

6/10