Take Two Tuesday: Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) ... or, look out, here comes (another) Spider-Man

I haven’t done a lot of “Take Two Tuesdays,” but when I started back in May 2014, I set my sights on The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and found that I liked it better than I thought. How appropriate, then, that I’m revisiting the “Take Two” premise with another Spider-Man film.

I’ve seen Spider-Man: No Way Home twice now on home video. With a 93% score on Rotten Tomatoes, nearly $2 billion in worldwide box office, and legions of fans declaring that it’s the best Marvel movie ever, Spider-Man: No Way Home isn’t actually very good. It’s entertaining enough, with flashes of brilliance, but it’s over-reliant on nostalgia with a story that doesn’t hang together. And were it not for the pure unadulterated charisma of its leading performers, No Way Home would be an unabashed flop. 

You’re going to need to have seen the film for me to talk about why it doesn’t work, so spoilers follow for No Way Home (and, really, every Spider-Man film that came before it). I compared No Way Home to Avengers: Endgame, in that “No Way Home finds itself as the unlikely apogee of the eight Spider-Man films that preceded it.” And I’ve thought about this idea a lot over the last five months, mulling the difference between Endgame (which was built as a climax) and No Way Home (which is merely masquerading as one). I think No Way Home tries very hard to be the next Endgame, especially if you’ve seen every Spider-Man movie in the last twenty years.

Take Two Tuesday: Tomorrowland (2015) ...or, Put a Pin in It

2015 does not sound like that long ago, but three years feels like an eternity. I have distinct memories of seeing Tomorrowland in the theaters, and objectively it feels like only yesterday, even though the calendar tells me it was more than 1,200 days. Time flies, it seems, whether you’re having fun or whether you’re hurtling toward dystopia. The world seems like a grimmer place than it did three years ago, which is really saying something because I think we all recognize that the sky has been falling for some time now.

I’ve had a lot going on in my life of late, spending a lot of unpleasant time in my own head, and it feels like I hit a crisis point a few weeks ago. It was perhaps, then, appropriate that I came back to Tomorrowland at exactly the moment I needed it. When I reviewed it in 2015, you’ll recall that I was of two minds about it. “Tomorrowland is an important film,” I wrote, “playing to some of my political/aesthetic predispositions, but it’s not as good as it ought to be.” I was cynical about the film’s attempt to kickstart an imaginative revolution, frustrated that the film hadn’t delivered on its utopian promise. I wanted to goto Tomorrowland, and I expected the film to take me there.

Reader, I missed the point. Put another way, I had spent far too long asking, “Wasn’t the future wonderful?” without realizing that I should have been asking, “Won’t the future be wonderful?” (Light spoilers follow.)

In a way, Tomorrowland has never really left me. As a lifelong visitor to Walt Disney World, it’s around every corner of my memory, a direct right turn off Main Street in the Magic Kingdom. I’ve listened to the Michael Giacchino score more times than I can count; iTunes tells me I’ve listened to one track, “Pin-Ultimate Experience,” a whopping 113 times (which makes it #59 on my Top 100 Most Played list), and it’s almost certainly my favorite Giacchino score. A few months back, I finally read the tie-in prequel novel, largely because it includes a comic book, and I’ve continued to study Brad Bird’s career with great interest, most recently with Incredibles 2. And I bought the Blu-Ray about six months ago, knowing that I’d never fully dislodged the film, and noodled around the special features until finally plunking down a few hours last week to rewatch the film.

There is a great big beautiful tomorrow animated short on the Blu-Ray, “The Origins of Plus Ultra,” that was originally intended to be the film’s opener. I understand it was cut for reasons of pacing and because it reveals some of the film’s mythology a little too early (Clooney covers some of it at the top of the third act, in Paris). But it does queue up the film such that I find it difficult to imagine the film without it, because the short prepares the audience for the central question of the film – “What happened to human endeavor? Aren’t we better than this?”

Tomorrowland is an intervention film, no doubt about it, but I think critics mistook Bird’s frustration for mere crankiness, and I share his frustration. Our world seems paradoxically broken, with one crowd shouting that the world’s problems don’t exist, and the other insisting that the problems aren’t fixable. Then there’s Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) in the middle, amazed that no one has thought to ask how to save the future. There’s something endearing about Casey’s deadpan naiveté, about her complete disbelief that no one has considered pursuing a solution. Bird has stacked the deck, no question; you get to do that when you’re writing an allegory. But there is something so inspiring when Casey’s relentless optimism forestalls the apocalypse, if only for a few seconds – a jarring moment of hope for fallen cynic Frank Walker (George Clooney). The way the film stops on this beat is downright chilling, and it’s a credit to Bird that the film doesn’t need to overexplain what’s just happened; a pause on a ticking clock is enough for a thinking audience to understand that Casey is, quite literally, our last hope. And yes, I am a sucker for films that talk about how to save humanity from its fallen state (cf. Batman v Superman).

The film remains a little bit clunky, with an occasional exposition dump like the ones co-writer Damon Lindelof employed on Lost, but there is here a simultaneous charm to them. “Now I finally answer your question, you’re gonna interrupt me?” Walker interjects, at which time I realized that the mythology of the film was all just window dressing for Bird’s real message – that there is no time to waste, that the future is now, and that someone has to step up and build it. It’s as if Brad Bird is shaking the collective audience by the shoulders and imploring us, “Get off your ass and build Tomorrowland!”

There’s a wonderful line in another Bird film – Ratatouille, one of my all-time favorites – in which a critic discards his pessimism upon realizing, “Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.” It’s this message that infects the film’s final moments, in which the next generation of prime movers is recruited. Many of them come from humble beginnings, yes, but if Casey believes in them, we’re in good hands. I realized only now that the film’s framing device, narrated by Walker and Casey, isn’t a screenwriting cheat. It’s a fully integrated part of the story because the entire film is the advertisement on the pin. When Casey touches the pin in what is undoubtedly the film’s best, most breathtaking sequence, she sees the promise of Tomorrowland; the next set of pins, then, will essentially show the film Tomorrowland and take its beholders to that promised land. In this way, the film teaches us how to read it; we are, all of us, the next Casey Newtons.

It’s a scary position, but it’s a promising one. It’s a hopeful one, and heavens, do we need it. I no longer think the film is a failure – I think its success will be measured by what we do with it. As a piece of fiction, the film is a bit unwieldy, as the ambition of its ideas perhaps surpasses what you can reasonably accomplish in a two-hour Disney movie, but I’ll always take a movie of ideas over a movie of mere spectacle. Bird has denied that his work is influenced by Ayn Rand (the director doth protest too much, methinks), but both are creators whose stories are life-support machines for philosophies; Bird is more optimistic than Rand, but he shares her notion that the creators of the world cannot be shackled by conventional wisdom, that they must be allowed to save the world. “I was designed to find dreamers,” the animatronic Athena (an underrated Raffey Cassidy) declares, and I think Bird senses a kinship with her. Athena oddly becomes the heart of the film – oddly, because she has no heart – but then that’s the way of most science fiction. She’s the one who dispenses the pins, and she points the way for the dreamers, but she can’t take us to Tomorrowland without our help.

On second watch, I think I’m ready to go so far as to say that Tomorrowland is a Personal Canon film. Remember that the idea of the Personal Canon was always that these were movies that helped explain me to the world, and I think so much of what I believe about politics and art is in Tomorrowland. It’s the reason why I sought out an orange T pin (the Chevrolet giveaway, not the unreasonable facsimile) even after having a lukewarm reaction to the film; it’s the reason I can’t stop listening to the Giacchino score. I wanted to possess the film’s ideas in some tangible remnant. Maybe I couldn’t have exactly the film I expected, but I could distill that ideal into a few symbols – a circular enamel promise of tomorrow and a majestic swooping score that flies as lofty as our aspirations. 

Tomorrowland is a film that looks at me and asks me to get out of my rut and help save the world by doing the things I am uniquely qualified to do. It’s a film that makes me laugh and makes me cry; it’s a film that has high philosophical debates and spectacular explosions. It’s got nods to Star Wars and Disney World and the promise of a bright future. It’s a movie that needs to be seen because it’s an idea that needs to be heard. I’m so glad to have given the film another chance, because Tomorrowland asks me to give myself a second chance, too.

Take Two Tuesday: Justice League (2017) or... Looking at the League through Snyder-Colored Glasses, Everything is Whedon Now

Last year, I spent more than four months going through Batman v Superman in exhaustive detail, and so it may not come as a surprise to readers of this blog that I do occasionally find it difficult to remain objective about this sort of thing. Though I maintain that there is objective gold in BvS, occluded by its occasional thematic indigestibility, I freely admit that much of what I like about Justice League is born out of my desire to like the movie.

I can see why the average filmgoer would not have liked this film, and I can certainly sympathize with the disciples of Zack Snyder (largely being one myself). As before, I do not want to relitigate the “Snyder v Whedon: Dawn of Reshoots” guessing game; indeed, I’d wager that within five years, if Snyder’s recent social media presence is any barometer, we’ll know more concretely about one or both sides of the question. What I think is key, though, is not to think of this as a Snyder film – it isn’t. It is closer to a Joss Whedon film, particularly his Avengers duology, but like the Justice League comic itself it more closely resembles a “greatest hits” collection of all the things that work so far about the DC universe. We have the strong casting of Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, and Henry Cavill; we have the striking visual design of Gotham, Metropolis, and Themyscira; and we get new pieces bolted on to those aspects, including – most striking on this rewatch – a terrifically engaging Ezra Miller as The Flash, whose boisterous Spider-Man charm is a brilliant audience substitute for a guy who’s really just excited to be in the company of gods and heroes.

Sitting a few feet from the screen on home video rather than dozens of feet in the theater, the film looks different. Some of the CGI on Henry Cavill’s Gumby mouth looks dodgier, though Steppenwolf acquits himself better, and there are at least two surprising moments when a green screen is solidly visible (once on Aquaman’s cheek, once on Flash’s boot). Where Batman v Superman worked very hard to bring superheroes into our world and give us a stylized vision of the struggles of their souls, Justice League follows instead the giddiness of The Flash and runs with an aesthetic that reminds one of the original X-Men film, in which the prevailing mood was, “Look, the comics are walking around!” While a lot of folks took Whedon to task for apparently altering the color grading of the film, I think it helps distance the film from the “Snyder Cut” we may never see, instead taking the movie into a surrealistic cartoon corner that feels more like a comic book come to life, rather than a comic book coming into my life.

On rewatch, consciously trying to watch Justice League as the next superhero film in a long tradition and looking for points of connection rather than disconnect, it does feel very much like an episode of the 2001-2004 Justice League cartoon as informed by The Avengers. We have the same emphasis on team dynamics, informed by the unhealthy mistrust that, for better or for worse, holds the Avengers together. Whedon (or Snyder – at this point, who cares?) cribs a few notes from his playbook with a scene that echoes the “we’re a timebomb” argument from The Avengers; in the film’s climax, which I previously described as “airlifted from Sokovia,” reprises the family-as-microcosm we saw menaced by Ultron, which in turn syncs up with Batman’s direction to The Flash: “Save one.” Save one, then a truck, then the world. These heroes ought to be about hope, about the belief that one human being can become something greater and can save the world, and in Justice League I believe that Batman learns that lesson enough to teach it to the next generation. I buy that Wonder Woman is the gifted and capable leader of the team. I buy that Flash and Cyborg rise to the challenge. And I completely accept that the very idea of Superman is enough to make them all believe in the promise of tomorrow, not least because I believe that too.

Back in November, I found myself enjoying Justice League. Five months later, I still liked Justice League, but I liked it from a different angle, a sideways enjoyment of the film for what it was and not in spite of what it could have been. I don’t know that I will go to the mat for Justice League in the way that I will, every time, for Batman v Superman, and I will always believe that there is a universe out there somewhere in which Zack Snyder was given the time and the resources to complete the vision he introduced with Man of Steel. I had hoped to change minds about Batman v Superman with my “10 @ a Time” series, but I accept that it’s not worth the effort to try with Justice League. You get out of this movie what you seek to find in it, and as it stands, this Justice League is fun enough to justify each matching set of hours I choose to spend with it.

Take Two Tuesday: The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) ...or, how I learned to stop worrying and love comic book movies that aren't Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Well, this is a first.  “Take Two Tuesdays” is a series that I hope I won’t have to use too much, because the goal of a “Take Two” review is to reevaluate a film I’ve already reviewed here – put another way, backpedal on a review.  I’m usually pretty consistent in terms of my opinions on movies, but every once in a while I’ve been egregiously wrong.  A few examples that come to mind are The Shining and Anchorman, both of which I appreciated much more the second time around; on the flip side, my recent excursion through the Star Wars prequel trilogy proved to be way less fun without my childhood lenses in place.  So in those rare moments when my current opinion contradicts a review I’ve already published, “Take Two Tuesdays” will be my chance to set the record straight.

In this installment, it’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2.  The headline here?  The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is better than I gave it credit.

In my earlier review of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, I bemoaned the overfull quality of the film, calling it “a more sprawling narrative that feels inflated by the demands of producers who want to lay groundwork for future films rather than let those films develop organically.”  The kindest word I had for the film was “serviceable,” but I lamented, “‘serviceable’ just isn’t good enough any more.”

I’ll be honest:  in the wake of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, my comic book movie radar needs some serious readjusting.  It’s probably my second favorite comic book movie of all time at this point (you know the first), but it’s making the others look bad.  I noticed this problem after seeing X-Men: Days of Future Past.  While I waited for the inevitable postcredits stinger, my first thought was, “Eh.”  Immediately, I checked my premises; aside from one or two very small bits, I hadn’t had an unkind thought during the film itself.  The only thought I could rally behind that lukewarm off-the-cuff reaction was, “It wasn’t Winter Soldier.”

And that’s no way to review a movie.  On its own merits, X-Men: Days of Future Past was a smash success for me, and that’s the review I wrote.  Reapproaching The Amazing Spider-Man 2 with a similar sensibility (and a clearer sense of how all the moving pieces fit together) yielded comparable results.  It is, perhaps, the sequel I was waiting for after The Amazing Spider-Man.

The positives I cited still stand – Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone have extraordinary chemistry together, Jamie Foxx’s Electro is a vastly original and highly entertaining nemesis.  And I have better things to say about Dane DeHaan’s Harry Osborn; I love that the film takes him down a different path than James Franco’s, and his character arc is much more compelling the second time around.

I remain, however, disgruntled about two pieces, though in revisiting the film they loom less large than I had perceived.  On the subject of DeHaan, I’m still miffed that the film doesn’t spend as much time developing his third-act twist, and I’m still sore about the “I’ll be back” cliffhanger.  I would have much rather spent more time with him than on my second grievance:  I still maintain that the subplot surrounding Peter’s parents is mishandled in the film.  These scenes don’t contribute anything to the narrative, don’t bear logically on the plot at hand, and ultimately don’t even resolve themselves.  Either the film needs to foreground this subplot – it is, after all, the opening scene of two films now – or drop it in favor of something more closely connected to the central story.  If it doesn’t pay off in The Inevitable Amazing Spider-Man 3, I think we all know when to get our popcorn refill.

In hindsight/retrospect (not sure which one), these are much smaller issues than I had initially felt.  I had a blast with The Amazing Spider-Man 2, especially the first hour (I know, because I got my refill at the moment when Peter digs out his father’s briefcase).  But the rest of it didn’t disappoint; I found myself laughing, caught up in the entertaining parts of the film and asking myself, “When exactly did I space out the last time?”  I couldn’t find that moment.

I feel the same way now about The Amazing Spider-Man 2 as I do about X-Men: Days of Future Past.  It doesn’t revolutionize the genre, and it isn’t The Winter Soldier.  But it doesn’t have to be.  I had forgotten that a film needs only to entertain and, time permitting, say something important.  The Amazing Spider-Man 2 more than succeeds at the former.  And the bits about hope at the very end tickle the Dark Knight Rises enthusiast in me just fine.

In short, I’ve upgraded this one to “buy on DVD.”  (That’s high praise coming from someone who still doesn’t own The Amazing Spider-Man.)