All about loss, loneliness, and trauma, BND was a good ride. The antagonist's story fits nicely with the themes of the movie. Tom Holland feels and looks older than his high school Peter Parker of movies past. They fixed another of my gripes with No Way Home (and a lot of Marvel movies): it does not look like it was shot on green screen, and Peter's Spidey-suit looks like an actual fabric costume that exists in the real world, not painted-on CGI nonsense.
There's at least two big surprises in the movie, depending on how you count, both of which felt earned and normal, and surprisingly, most of the lightness comes from the buddy comedy with one of the darkest characters in Marvel - the Punisher.
My only gripe: as the movie begins, Parker has been living alone in NYC for four years while his former friends Ned and MJ are away at MIT. He has told no one about the magic curse that erased the world's memories of him. I understand that he's scared to spill the beans to Ned or MJ because their friendship means so much to him, but there's at least two former friends of his he could approach and explain his story, who could believe him: Bruce Banner and Doctor Strange. For someone utterly alone in the world, it seems like a small gamble to approach his former Avenger friends and rebuild those relationships?
