Why Spider-Man deserved to top the 2021 box office

This Marvel hit is full of surprises, including the death of a main character.

Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) looks on at Spider-Man

Spider-Man: No Way Home (M)
In cinemas
★★★★

Spider-Man: No Way Home is the superhero of the 2021 global box office. Released on December 17, it took more than $1bn in its first 10 days, making it the top earning movie of the year, far outdoing other near-Christmas releases such as The Matrix Resurrections and West Side Story.

This sequel to Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) has the same director (Jon Watts), scriptwriters (Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers) and leading man (Tom Holland). The cinematographer is Mauro Fiore, who won an Oscar in 2010 for Avatar.

All of them do a terrific job. This is the 27th movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and one of the best.

At 148 minutes it’s a little too long but that is one of the few unsurprising things in a movie full of surprises, including the death of a main character.

The film opens where the previous one left off: the public revelation that Spider-Man (Holland) is a 17-year-old high school student named Peter Parker.

This opening sequence is a timely take on the dominance of the digital world. Everyone finds out Spider-Man’s true identity within seconds, via their mobile phones, which they then use to take selfies with Peter.

Media helicopters hover over the New York apartment Peter shares with his aunt Mary Parker (Oscar winner Marisa Tomei), who is in a relationship with “Happy” Hogan (Jon Favreau), the new head of Stark Industries.

“Get off your phones for five minutes,’’ the outed Peter tells them in a neat reversal of the norm. “I just want to talk to you.”

The tabloid TV man J. Jonah Jameson (Oscar winner JK Simmons) continues his anti-Spider-Man campaign, declaring him “webbed war criminal”.

Peter’s girlfriend MJ (the brilliant Zendaya) and best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon), who like his aunt know he is Spider-Man, find their lives turned upside down. As all of this happens, the background song is I Zimbra by Talking Heads, a perfect choice.

Yet as smart and humorous as all of this is, it is only the introduction to the movie proper. The real thrills start after Peter visits his friend Dr Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and asks him to cast a spell that will make everyone forget he is Spider-Man.

Dr Strange agrees but, mid-spell, Peter asks for some changes, such as letting MJ remember, and this opens the boom gate to what the doctor’s offsider Wong (Benedict Wong) describes as the “dark borders of the known and unknown”.

In short, the multiverse is cracked open and people-creatures from different universes enter the present one. Coming in via this portal is a group of stars who lift this already good film even higher: Oscar winner Jamie Foxx as Electro, Willem Dafoe as Green Goblin, Alfred Molina as Dr Octopus, Rhys Ifans as Lizard and Thomas Haden Church as Sandman.

And then there is more. Two Spider-Men also pop in from their separate (and pre-MCU) universes: Tobey Maguire, who starred in Sam Raimi’s trilogy (2002-07) and Andrew Garfield, who took over the role in Marc Webb’s reboot (2012-2014).

The scenes with the three Spider-Men talking, philosophically (about moral codes), emotionally (about lost loved ones), competitively (“What’s the weirdest being you’ve ever fought?”) and, being boys, boastfully (only one has been in The Avengers) are the highlight of this movie. Though the best line goes to Electro, as he takes in the WASPish web-spinners: “There’s gotta be a black Spider-Man out there somewhere.”

The moral question is whether to blast Dr Octopus and go back to their own universes, where their fates are known (and not good) or to attempt to un-creature them first, return them to being the good humans they once were and give them a second chance. Most of them have no desire to return so the fight is on. The action scenes are spectacular.

In a sense this moral question returns us to the opening. Peter enters a multiverse of his own when his superhero identity is revealed. He’s a “friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man” to some, public enemy No.1 to others, and underneath that a teenager who has had to keep his other side hidden. The subtitle, No Way Home, is well chosen.

The other unsurprising bit of this movie is that there’s a scene after the end credits. It involves Tom Hardy (Venom in the MCU) and is worth waiting for.

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Ghostbusters: Afterlife (PG)
In cinemas
★★½

Ghostbusters: Afterlife is a movie that is not sure what it wants to be, or perhaps one that tries to be too much.

It’s a mix of Ghostbusters revisited, sci-fi, Stephen King (there’s a decent joke about Cujo) and teen coming-of-age story.

The setting is the present day, somewhere in the middle of Oklahoma, where Callie Spengler (Carrie Coon), daughter of the just-deceased original Ghostbuster Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis, who died in 2014, but lingers on) has moved after inheriting his run-down farm house.

She is accompanied by her two children, 15-year-old Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and 12-year-old science whiz Phoebe (Mckenna Grace), who do not know who their grandfather was or what he did.

Callie hates her father for abandoning her so he could bust ghosts. There’s no husband on the scene so when handsome if gauchely named science teacher Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd) appears there is the chance of romance.

Love may also be in the air for Trevor, via local girl Lucky (Celeste O’Connor). Phoebe makes friends with a boy who calls himself Podcast (Logan Kim) because he makes them.

It soon becomes apparent that something is a bit odd in Oklahoma. There are daily mini-earthquakes, despite there being no subterranean volcanoes, tectonic plate fault lines or, as Grooberson notes, “loud music”.

I don’t think we need a spoiler alert to report that the ghosts are back.

And so, almost 40 years after Spengler, Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) and Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson) zapped them out of New York, it’s up to the younger generation to don the proton packs.

There are a couple of decent jump scares, a few thrilling ghost pursuits and occasional flashes of humour, such as when Aykroyd talks on the phone about “some actor” (aka Robert De Niro) who has “bought out most of Tribeca”.

That phone call makes us think of the “Who ya gonna call” line. It comes but could have been used better.

Coon and Rudd are good actors but they don’t have a lot to work with. Oscar winner JK Simmons turns up as a corpse, which made me laugh when I don’t think it was supposed to.

This sequel to Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989) is co-written and directed by Jason Reitman, son of Ivan Reitman, director of the first two films. Fans will appreciate the return of some of the well-known ghosts such as the Muncher and the gadgets used to capture them, including the ECTO-1 Cadillac.

Non-fans might find this 124-minute movie a bit predictable, silly and, towards the end, mawkish.

Murray, Aykroyd and Hudson have small roles, as does Ramis (via clips from the old films and the use of body doubles).

This trio, one of whom is dead, are the real ghosts in this movie, along with the still-living original director. Paul Feig’s all-female Ghostbusters reboot of 2016 isn’t even a ghost. It’s been exorcised.

Reitman has made some fine films, including the Oscar-winning Juno (2007) and Up in the Air (2009). He was seven when his father made the first Ghostbusters.

In interviews he has revealed that his dad, “the world’s foremost Ghostbusters expert”, sat beside him as he made the new one. “Our director’s chairs were right next to each other.”

That’s sweet but it’s also an insight into what we see on the screen. His love and respect for his father, and the fan love of the original stars, is understandable but it skirts too close to sentimentality here.

Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) in the Ecto-1 jumpseat in Ghostbusters: Afterlife