“Spider-Man: No Return Home” masterfully manages expectations

** Text without spoilers

Spider-Man: No Return Home you wouldn’t even need to be good to make history. Luckily he’s great – perhaps the best of the trilogy in Marvel’s cinematic universe (MCU).

The feature will be best remembered for everything that came before its release, complete with hundreds of theories and heated debates on the internet, incendiary reactions to the trailers and record sales for the premiere.

The movie experience doesn’t begin with the cinema’s lights-out, but with trailer releases, which suggested that the same villains from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy (beginning as far back as 2002) and the two Mark Webb films would be back. thanks to the multiverse operated by Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch).

After all, if the villains (and their respective actors) were back, does that mean fans could slack off the longing for Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s versions of Teioso?

The anticipation of the “does it…” is masterfully used by director Jon Watts to lead a frantic first act, with the premise that had already been presented in the trailers: after having the identity revealed by Mysterio, Peter Parker is chased by fame and appeals to Doctor Strange to try to make the world forget who he is.

The spell, however, fails and villains from different universes begin to appear.

Great powers

What follows is, finally, a coming-of-age journey for Tom Holland’s Peter Parker.

This is the most dramatic film of the trilogy – finally our best friend in the neighborhood feels the weight of knowing that with great powers come great responsibilities. To some extent, it’s like he’s become Spider-Man just now.

The dramatic charge might sound cliché were it not for the talent of the cast.

Tom Holland is at his peak and shows that, in fact, he is one of the most future actors in Hollywood.

However, MJ (Zendaya, who is also married to Holland in real life) manages to outsmart him and steal the show easily; Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon), Parker’s best friend and main comic relief, is funnier than ever.

As for other supporting casts, some like Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina) and Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe) are excellent, while others are completely on autopilot, despite the appeal and reverence of their characters.

At no point does greater dramatic charge translate into less humor – quite the opposite.

The comedy timing that Marvel has perfected in its more than ten years in the cinematic universe is well-placed for Spider-Man to remain the funniest hero of all, but without sounding artificial.

What is really artificial is the excess of CGs applied to green backgrounds, something standard in the Marvel universe and which, at this point in the championship, sounds like an old magic trick: we know how it works, but it’s fun (although without making the eyes sparkle). In no time the various action scenes tire.

The same cannot be said of the script: even with so many expectations being managed in the first act, the second act is tiring, mainly due to the laziness of the script, which, in a hurry to reach the finals, calls for meaningless and poorly developed solutions.

The real magic comes through in the third act, which combines action, drama and enough surprises to surprise any viewer, while still appealing to clichés like the hero’s loneliness.

Great responsibilities

At the end of the day, there is a lot of similarity between no return home e Avengers: Endgame, Marvel’s latest big phenomenon in theaters.

Both are proof of how Casa das Ideias is self-aware of its size and loves to refer to itself.

if in Completed, time travel was the excuse for Marvel to honor its decade of film success in Back home, the multiverse is the hook to appeal to nostalgia for nearly 20 years of Spider-Man movies.

no return home it would just be another reasonably good superhero movie if it weren’t for the nostalgia behind it.

Like a rich child who flaunts his toys, Marvel and Sony make a point of parading a flood of references (or fan services) for those who followed the Spider-Man movies.

It is in nostalgia carefully managed by the fan services that Back home it relies to be able to dodge script holes, cliché exits or any other flaw and turn a good-but-imperfect film into a phenomenon that will be discussed for years by fans of geek culture.

Once again, Marvel has managed – with strategy on and off screen – to guide viewers’ feelings wherever they want.