Welcome to Spider-Man: End Game. This movie is amazing. I know it is a lot of fan service, but as a fan, I was served. And yet Tom Holland's Spider-Man never felt more like Peter Parker than this movie. It was perfection. I went to see the movie the day after the premier. Even though I bought the tickets a week in advance, I could barely find good seats. Even with the gazillion screenings per day. This movie is going to make box office history for the pandemic. So far I have been pretty worried about cinema during the pandemic, but for this movie, I just didn't care. This is a movie for the big screen with a full crowd. I mean people clapped and cheered out loud in this movie. It slightly reminded me of watching Avengers: Endgame where the crowd was super interactive with the movie. It is just an amazing experience.
It is tricky to talk about this movie without spoilering it. So here is what I am going to do, I am simply going to refer to everything that we've seen in the trailers. If it is in the trailers, I am not going to treat it as a spoiler. If it wasn't, I won't write about it. Although the people who didn't even watch the trailers and don't know anything going in will probably enjoy it the most.
This movie picks up right where Spider-Man: Far from Home stopped. Basically, this movie starts at full speed. There is no lulling slowly into it. The opening sequence of this movie is amazing. It gets you straight into the right mode. The cinematography, the choices that were made on screen, it all looks fantastic. Just to give you a quick reminder the last movie ended and this movie starts with J. Jonah Jameson (played by the brilliant J.K. Simmons) revealing to the entire world through a fake video that Mysterio left that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. The result is not pretty. It looks like Spider-Man, through Stark Tech caused a lot of death including that of Mysterio. Some people still thinks that Mysterio is a hero. This gets not only Peter Parker into trouble, but also all of his friends and aunt May (Marisa Tomei). This movie gets pretty dark occasionally, but there is always the MCU humor to lighten up the mode.
Then, as you saw in the trailers, Peter goes to Dr. Strange and asks for his help. He wants everyone to forget that he is Spider-Man. As Dr. Strange works his spell, Peter keeps changing his mind, damaging the spell. The result is a multiverse amazing mess. As you've seen in the trailers, this causes Dr. Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina), a.k.a. Doc Ock to show up and try and kill Spider-Man. We also get the return of Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe) and Electro Electro (Jamie Foxx). Yes, you actually won't enjoy this movie fully if you haven't seen the Sam Raimi trilogy and Marc Webb two films. There is a lot of nostalgia in this movie and I am not sure how younger audiences will feel about this. I was super happy. I didn't know how they were going to make the villains work, but they totally did.
The plot of this movie is pretty great. The beginning and ending of this movie are perfection. There are some aspects of this movie that are basically giant plot holes. Characters act out of character in order to move the plot in the right direction, or just do really stupid things, or convenient plot fixes although it is sooo worth it. Plus, they worked on the CGI of this movie until the last second. Like a week before the release of this movie, it still wasn't done and sometimes it showed. But I am super glad that they didn't push back the movie because of it. It didn't bother me that much. The end of this movie is so perfect that you'll mostly forget about all of the bad stuff and just remember how amazing this movie is.
There is so much great stuff in this movie that I don't want to ruin for anyone, so I want to talk about the emotional aspect of this movie. It doesn't matter what goes on in the background, this movie is about Spider-Man and his struggles. His struggles never felt more real in the MCU. Now Spider-Man truly feels like Spider-Man. Dr. Strange doesn't make this movie feel more like an MCU. Sure it doesn't make a lot of sense for the plot, but it makes sense for Spider-Man. This is Spider-Man messing up big time and getting himself into so much trouble that you can hardly see a way out for him. Even though the Avengers are somewhere out there and he has MJ (Zendaya), Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon) and aunt May and they really try to help him it feels like he is alone. Like the old school Spider-Man who has to struggle with everything all by himself. He really struggles between being Spider-Man and Peter Parker and that’s what was missing so far for the character.
There is also a major ethical struggle here which I am not sure I that I like. Sure, superheroes always want to do the right thing and Spider-Man has always been kind hearted, but this might be a step too far. Plus, what does it mean for the rest of our heroes. I am not sure and I am not sure I like it, but I accept it.
The acting in this movie was great, but there are always the standouts. In this case Tom Holland and Willem Dafoe are the major standouts. Tom Holland never really struck me as an actor with a lot of range until now. When he hurts, I could feel his pain. I could read the emotions off his face it was brilliant in a subtle way. But Willem Dafoe has a lot more to play with. It's like it hasn't been twenty years since he last played Green Goblin. In fact, I think that he is even better in this movie then he was in the original Spider-Man movie. He played more of crazy villain and a lot less Gollum. You know what I mean. Alfred Molina also acted like no time has passed, he felt so much like his old character. As you can imagine, Jamie Foxx got a major upgrade and character correction, he was done right here. Zendaya and Marisa Tomei have a lot more to do in this movie and they bring it, they are brilliant. Some characters felt a little off, but everyone else made up for it. The end result is awesome.
There are not enough great things out there for me to say about this movie. It was perfection on the big screen. It was a joyride. It was a once in a lifetime cinematic experience. I think it goes without saying that this movie was meant to be seen on the big screen and as soon as possible. Don't let the internet spoil the movie for you because there are just a tone of fun surprises in this movie. I had plenty of the surprises ruined for me and I still had a blast watching this movie. I'll probably see it again on the big screen. Have fun.
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