I'm not a super-big fan of Spider-Man. My favorite of the various movies is "Amazing Spider-man", the first Andrew Garfield film. I found both iterations to have a definite point of diminishing returns, so I was pretty sure this one was not going to be great, as I felt the same downward trend from his appearances in Captain America: Civil War, through Homecoming, buoyed up by the Avengers in Endgame, but being more of a supporting character to Iron Man in the two Avengers films, and Far From Home being a kind of meh entry into the MCU. It was light action-comedy, that seemed to be trying to compensate for a lack of substance with spectacle. I felt as if there was not much of a story in Peter feeling inadequate in the absence of his role model/hero and turning to a substitute Tony, who was a literal illusion. And they tried to go over the top with the giant monsters and big flashy fights, while still devoting way too much attention to the kids on the field trip whose spunky antics undermined the stakes. Even when they were ostensibly targeted by Mysterio at the end, you never really believed they were in danger. For one thing, given the current trends in genre entertainment, you never for a moment doubted that MJ would be able to handle any problem in her vicinity or that Ned would 'unexpectedly' demonstrate the necessary skills or courage to do the right thing at a critical moment. So if you want us to be awed by Spider-man fighting a swarm of drones in the city, stop cutting away in an effort to convince us that something bad could happen to his classmates, aside from comically unpleasant to Flash.

To a degree, for me, this movie fixes all seven previous Spider-Man films. In retrospect, it makes Homecoming and Far From Home into Act 1 & 2 of a three act story of growing up and coming of age. From things people have said about the original story and what I have seen comparing Original Spider-man and Amazing, MCU is a bit off. They keep his personality, powers and skillset, but appear to have elided his backstory and placed him in a remarkably different situation to that in which we usually find Peter.

He has the support of a team from the outset, and a benevolent mentor who is an obstacle in the sense of trying to guide and protect him without understanding how important something is to him. And then later, a boss who isn't nearly as competent as might be assumed, and a new mentor who is exploiting him. And he's a kid, whose aunt learns the truth and is supportive of his superhero career, so he doesn't have a lot of pressure in his life. I think he's supposed to be the hero because he makes choices that cost him personally, even if it's the right thing to do. But we never really see that. He loses his love interest at the end of Homecoming, but it's not because of his choices or anything, it's completely external. He loses Iron Man, but again, had no agency in that. He ends up with a better situation than he started out with in Far From Home. Iron Man recruits, invites, bequeaths or otherwise validates him in each story featuring this version so far. From gearing him up to help arrest the Confederate Avengers in Civil War, to inviting him to join the team in Homecoming, to mock-dubbing him an Avenger in Infinity War/Endgame, to sort-of anointing him a successor in Far From Home.

Because Spider-Man is a kid on the scale of the MCU characters. He isn't really independent or an adult making responsible choices for himself, either in his career or his personal life. Even his villains share an origin that would make them better affiliated with Tony Stark than Peter, and their conflicts climax with a battle over Tony's stuff. But aside from the presence of Happy Hogan as comic relief, Tony is pretty much excised from this corner of the franchise.

Joining his career in media res, we kind of assume that Peter's choice to be a hero, and Uncle Ben, was in the past, along with the spider bite. But that's not it at all. This version's equivalent of Uncle Ben's death is his better-intentioned efforts to protect his friends from the blowback of being outed at the end of Far From Home. It's better, because it's not him being a dick and inadvertently getting his uncle killed, but he screws up his attempted fix with a childish mindset, and comes face to face with the consequences in the form of a disturbance in the "multiverse" which brings the major villains of the Sony films (less James Franco and Topher Grace) into this one.

And in that conflict, Peter has to make a choice to be better, instead of simply doing damage control and following orders of the authority figure/mentor, and in doing so, makes a sacrifice that really does make him grow up into his own man and hero, and gets back to what I think are the roots of character.

Both Tom Holland and Zendaya, and at the end, Happy, give their best performances in the MCU so far and their characters show the most emotional depth and development of the trilogy. Ned is pretty much still just comic relief, but used in a way that works. Ned & MJ's contribution is closer to plausibility and they come across as more normal kids than inflated crowd pleasers, or kids in other genre films where there just so happens to be an opportunity for them to make a big contribution.

I had my doubts about dragging in a bunch of villains, many of whose actors are now substantially older than they were before, and Tam al'Thor's flashback appearances in the latest WoT episode had me suspicious of anything utilizing CGI de-aging as this probably did. But they were pretty good. Jamie Foxx's electrical villain is made less silly and cartoony, still weird and off-beat, but more threatening and competent. Thomas Haden Church is Flint Marko, the sand thing, who doesn't really do much nor does Rhys Ifans Curt Conners/Lizard. The big draws are, of course, Alfred Molina and Willem Dafoe as Otto Octavius and Norman Osbourne. And I liked them in this much more than I remembered in the Sam Raimi movies. We get to see both their good sides and evil versions, and they are pretty good as adversaries when fighting Peter. The reasons for fighting a Peter they don't know when suddenly finding themselves in his universe end up being plausible, even if "a wizard did it" is a literal thing on more than one occasion here. Fortunately, they decided to stick with the villains, instead of also bringing in Peter's supporting cast, so no Mary Jane, no Gwen Stacy (Howard or Stone) and no Rosemarie Harris or Sally Field. JK Simmons is, of course, reprising his role from the Raimi films as Jameson, albeit in a different and more relevant context, starting out as a crank vlogger whose expose of Peter as Spider-Man catapults him to a bigger platform and apparently broader audience, and giving him more plausible influence with his anti-Spider-man philippics.

For complaints, the one that stuck out most for me is that it feels like two different movies after a mid-stream switch in tone and characterization, but that might also work, as it initially feels like a generic MCU entry and later turns into something else, a thing of its own. An issue with the plotting is that there is a certain Tony-Stark-esque tendency to gloss over certain seemingly impossible difficulties by having Peter & various helpers able to science up a solution in a matter of hours. From a plot & character perspective, there's not a lot of difference between the scientists and the sorcerer in how they move events along. Finally, the juxtaposition of Norman, Otto, Max and Curt sort of highlights a certain lack of originality in the villains chosen for the Sony films just as Mysterio and the Vulture have a similar congruity in the MCU. Scientists doing ground-breaking research that ends up affecting them and turning them into monsters. Like, before technicians got greedy for the crumbs from Tony's table, did Spider-man ever fight bad people who do bad things for their own agenda, instead of well-meaning geniuses with brain damage?

Finally, most personally disappointing to me, was Venom. The post-credit scene of "Let There be Carnage" actually motivated me to see this beyond 'it's the thing in the theaters this week' (I like going to movies, not just watching films; I was always going to go, this actually made me care about it), by showing Venom getting pulled into the MCU as I knew Octavius and Osbourne would be. And his presence is confined to just another post-credit scene. It's fair enough I guess, since that version had nothing to do with Spider-Man, but it could have made a nice contrast to all the others, not to mention seeing them interact with Venom or his reaction to all the WTF aspects of a cinematic universe, as opposed to his own, where there are just a couple of weird things, with himself at the center of it all. We get some of that with the Sony characters' reaction to the idea of an actual wizard or the concept of the Avengers (actual line by Sony character: "So you're in a band?" ). Heck, Venom arguing with Marko that he's not the bad guy Marko remembers because he eats bad guys would at least have given Church a little more to do.

Also, in comparing Sony & Marvel, I can't help but notice how Sony had a blonde change her hair to red to play Mary Jane, a redhead go blonde to play Gwen, and a blonde go brunette to play Betty. Whereas the MCU has a completely different MJ who is a brunette, and Betty is a blonde. There's no Gwen in this, BTW, although in the trailer, you see MJ falling in a way reminiscent of her death in Amazing Spider-man 2, that in the film's context is absolutely not an accident, given the outcome of Peters' effort to save her.

All in all, the film works, building on the characters from the prior films, in a way that suggests they are not just here for the spectacle and then disposed of, and even the "return to status quo" trope is used very well in the end of this film. Peter's interactions with "his" other villains even services and improves on those relationships from the original movies they were in.

It might just be the movie halo effect, but I really think they did a good job on this one. Barring a come-down in hindsight or rewatches, I really think this is my favorite Spider-man film (with the caveat that that's a low bar to clear for me). After the Venom franchise.