Unusually for me, I managed to drum up the impetus to see this within a couple of days of release. I have felt no compunction to turn up on time for any Marvel release before (except for the advance screening of Guardians of the Galaxy) and therefore metaphorically end up at any of their parties late enough to catch the DJ packing up to leave.
Spider-Man is one such example, so getting to this before it actually hits terrestrial TV screens is something of a scoop for me personally.
Where we currently sit, Peter Parker has been outed as Spider-Man by Mysterio at the end of the last film and what struck me more than anything about this new effort was just how different his infamy would have meant in the sixties or seventies compared to the smartphone generation and their access to everything, everywhere, all the time and all at once.
Getting Doctor Strange involved takes us even further away from what Spider-Man's original portrayal would have required. This is more magic than reality, dabbling in all of the things the we have witnessed Dr Strange dealing with in other adventures both with the others and his own.
Of the three films in this incarnation and the ones that have come before it, this is easily the most unbelievable, ridiculous and at the same time probably also the warmest and congenial. To take this as canon, given everything that has gone before, is ludicrous of course and the characters presented here are literally universes away from what we would normally expect. Not without good reason, however, and kind of the point. In this regard, the appearances of many cameos featured here are without real relevance, aside from the kitchen sink approach of throwing literally everything at it for the sake of bells and whistles.
It would be hard to argue that the main plot of the entire film has not been inspired by the enormous success of the animated Spiderverse project which is currently due a second outing of its own. Not many Marvel projects can boast an Oscar, so who could blame them for trying to transfer that same success to this.
This is the film that Spider-Man fans have been aching for, not too heavily laden with as much exposition as we might expect, but just about the required amount to satisfy. As an event, it is quite the finale and tribute to a whole collection of films. Not the best Spider-Man film of the last twenty years, but certainly a nod to the fans and to the franchise's more recent history.