Plot: With the universe trying to cope after the events of Avengers: Endgame, Peter Parker encounters a new threat while on a school trip around Europe.

It's been another historic year for Marvel and it's Cinematic Universe. Its previous film Avengers: Endgame now becoming the highest grossing film of all-time, and we have its 23rd installment being released.


Never an easy task to follow. Not only to maintain the quality of their films, but to still get positive reviews from its devoted audience. I was fairly excited for this one, as I feel with the right approach, this could be another entertaining blockbuster, despite not being nowhere near as a big of a story as Endgame.


It's up to Spider-Man to achieve this task and after giving us a very entertaining first outing in Homecoming a couple of years ago, I felt this was probably the right Avenger to concentrate on for its next chapter.


For what it was, it was another enjoyable and solid outing. Dealing with the aftermath of the events of Endgame was well handled and at the same time, it was setting us up nicely for the story that we were about to see take place.
After that, there was a really nice mix of high-school styl humor and vintage MCU action. In the middle of this, there were some impressive fantasy sequences that was helped by the villain of Mysterio, a villain that I've been waiting to see on the big screen for some time.
This particular villain was a favourite of mine during the 90's animated series. The design and powers that he has was certainly one that I enjoyed watching compared to others. The way they portrayed him was spot on.
There were several clever twists and turns that fully utilised the character of Mysterio and made quite the formidable foe for Spider-Man, and made it an even more satisfying watch knowing that the execution of character could not have been bettered.


Tom Holland remains a good Spider-Man. I like the social awkwardness he gives off and he perfectly fits the tone of the Spider-Man films. Samuel L. Jackson is as bad-*** as ever, Jake Gyllenhaal was a wonderful addition in his MCU debut and Jon Favreau had a number of scene-stealing moments as the comedic relief.
I still enjoy the relationship Holland has with Jacob Batalon's character and I enjoyed the sub-plot with Martin Starr and J.B. Smoove's characters.
I don't think Zendaya did as well as she did in Homecoming. Some of her scenes and vital moments during the film did not feel believable to me. I will expand on this later on when I speak about my main negatives of the film.


From a technical standpoint, it is as you were for a Marvel film. All of those imaginative fantasy sequences just enhanced the top visual effects as you expect with every Marvel film these days. Everything else from a production design was of course fairly strong as they always spare no expense on the look of their films.


No major negatives to speak of. However, I felt some aspects of the writing and acting within the development between Tom Holland and Zendaya's characters felt forced more than authetic. It was an aspect of the film that I never felt interested in and it's a portrayal of these two characters relationships that is just not working for me. It's more like "these two actors are popular at the moment, let's cast them as the two characters that are scheduled to have a relationship according to the source material". It reminded me of another character played by Zendaya in The Greatest Showman.


Also, the small scale and grounded nature of the story won't blow peoples minds compared to some of their best ones. It's perfectly fine. But it just can't compete with some other films in this franchise.


So it still gets a solid rating from me, as it was another enjoyable and satisfying viewing experience. The laughs are consistent for the most part, the visual effects were well utilised with the story and characters that they had and the pacing never had me feeling bored or a sense of a lull within the film.


As for any bonus scenes during the credits, there is one halfway through that pleased me and will to fans of the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films. There is also a post-credit scene that was fine, but not as well executed as I think it should have been.


Rating: 7/10