Breaking Down Spider-Man: No Way Home

Our latest look at Marvel and Sony’s Spider-Man: No Way Home is here, and Peter Parker’s got new mentors, new foes, and a whole new multiverse of mess to deal with in his latest superhero movie. Let’s break down the new trailer and see what secrets we can speculate about for our latest trip into the Spider-Verse. The trailer opens with a rain-soaked, bloodied Peter Parker (Tom Holland, although we hear other Peters Parker are available). “Ever since I got bit by that spider,” Peter says, as we cut back to the fallout of the climax of Far From Home J. Jonah Jameson (the returning J.K. Simmons) exposes Peter’s identity publicly “I’ve only had one week where my life was normal.” “That was when you found out,” Peter continues, as we see that this conversation is part of a phone call with MJ (Zendaya) previously seen in the first trailer, where she asked him if it was better the world knew he was Spider-Man.

But, Pete, man: that week you had to fight your replacement father figure and stop London being blown up by killer drones with guns? How was that normal? Anyway, a few more shots of Peter and MJ’s swing around NYC later, we fade back into new material of Peter visiting the Sanctum Sanctorum. But this time we get to see the fallout of the meeting with Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) we saw in the last trailer. For a man that was very excited to do some dangerous memory-altering magic, he’s very quick to blame a teenager for a magical whoopsie. “When you botched that spell where you wanted everyone to forget that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, we started getting some visitors,” Strange chides, as we once again see the fallout of the spell seen in the first trailer. What kind of visitors? Well, bad ones, mostly the kind who don’t bring a housewarming gift when they step into a new reality unless it’s an incendiary device. Case in point: another extended glimpse of a shot from the last trailer, of one of the Green Goblin’s (another returning face, Willem Dafoe, but as we’ll see later... there could be more) pumpkin bombs rolling along the highway we previously saw Peter fighting another old foe on. “From every universe,” Strange emphasizes. As long as that universe is contractually obligated by deals between Sony Pictures and Marvel studios, that is. We cut to a nighttime battle, as Peter flips away from a bolt of lightning churning up the earth. This is, of course, returning villain Electro (played by The Amazing Spider-Man 2's Jamie Foxx), but it should also be noted that Peter (presumably) is in a new suit as well. Primarily black with gold webbing, previous merchandise for the movie named this suit simply as the “Black and Gold” suit and as we’ll see a bit later in the trailer, it appears to have been in part a gift from Doctor Strange.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage Review

It was everything I wanted to be and more. Carnage was the perfect villain for Eddie, and the movie had the perfect amount of action and comedy. there was not a single moment where I was not either laughing or on the edge of my seat. For those of you reading this, stay after the credits something incredible happens! In the sequel, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Tom Hardy’s wildest instincts have triumphed mostly. Any effort at high-minded seriousness about the role of the antihero in a world of caped crusaders is out the window. So is any care for traditional storytelling notions such as coherence or believable characters. The entire film might as well take place inside that lobster tank. Venom may not have realized it was a so-bad-it’s-good cult classic, but Let There Be Carnage is striving to maintain that status from minute one. Unfortunately, it still has to tell a routine narrative in which its protagonist saves the day, something the director Andy Serkis seems to have little interest in. Best known as the actor who played Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, Serkis was a natural choice to direct a film featuring another CGI creature with a bifurcated personality. He captures the discombobulation of Venom’s symbiotic relationship vividly but struggles to create comprehensible set pieces. His prior directorial efforts include the special-effect-laden but visually weak Mowgli, and the aesthetics aren’t any better here.

The action is as messy as the first Venom perhaps even more so now that our blobby protagonist is facing off against the equally gloppy Carnage (Woody Harrelson). Carnage is created when the serial killer Cletus Kasady, whom Eddie is interviewing on death row, accidentally ingests a piece of the Venom symbiote after biting Eddie’s finger. Harrelson tries to imbue the villain with a real sense of danger, but he’s so irredeemably evil from the moment the movie begins that his performance has no suspense. Even eating the symbiote doesn’t change him much. The film tries to give the character more depth by focusing on his relationship with Shriek (Naomie Harris), his imprisoned love interest with the superpower of yelling very loudly, but her part is even more underwritten, so their connection falls flat. Perhaps the film doesn’t flesh out Carnage and Shriek because of its short running time, but Let There Be Carnage is too exhausting to last any longer than it does. The viewing experience is like going to a nightclub and having someone scream the plot in your ear over a thumping bass line—ironic, given that Venom’s biggest weakness is sound waves. Serkis is clearly most invested in Hardy and his two-faced performance. Even more than the first film’s director, Ruben Fleischer, Serkis understands that Venom’s primary intrigue is the romantic push and pull between symbiote and host. So, like the first movie, he structures the sequel as a romantic comedy, having the couple bicker, break up, and finally rediscover the joy of their partnership. Hardy can communicate so much emotion through the barest grunt, and he delights in Venom’s florid dialogue, popping his sludgy head out of Eddie’s torso for face-to-face chats. “I need brains,” he demands of Eddie, who won’t let him consume human flesh. “Chickens have brains,” Eddie counters. “I most passionately disagree!” Venom whines. When the pair briefly split, Venom inhabits other bodies, covers himself in glow sticks, and goes out dancing, proclaiming, “I’m out of the Eddie closet!” Their eventual reunion comes after a recalcitrant Venom, realizing he cannot live without his original host, inhabits the body of Eddie’s ex-fiancée, Anne (Michelle Williams, a monumental actor who is still game for the absurdity). But this twisted love story keeps getting derailed by superhero business. Whenever the film cuts back to Carnage’s or Shriek’s rampages, it loses its edge; when it’s just Tom Hardy in his apartment, preparing a chaotic breakfast with alien tendrils, it brims with hilarious physical comedy. There isn’t anything quite like Venom, and the sequel knows it, but the unbridled silliness isn’t enough to justify the ticket price. Perhaps the third, inevitable installment could just be a black-box play, or a series of Hardy’s monologues with his alien love anything to finally free Venom from the boring strictures of its genre.