Spider-Man: No Way Home is a more heartfelt, better thought out, better acted, more pleasant version of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
Instead of magical creatures it’s villains from across the multiverse that our hero accidentally unleashes on New York and has to collect. The hero pays the price for what he’s done. Spider-Man might find the memory spell undone in some yet to be determined sequel, and that would be a waste, but right now I like to imagine there are Warner execs getting yelled at (we want a billion dollars and can’t have it because we made an aggressively bad FB sequel, wahhhh).
Jon Watts makes it look easy. He draws a better performance out of Garfield than Marc Webb, and I say that with a lot of respect for Garfield. I think he was really good this year in The Eyes of Tammy Faye (I’ll see Tick, Tick, Boom this week).
MJ is canonized as MJ Watson and actually a character in this movie. The story is less high school centric which works in its favor. We get to spend more meaningful time with Peter, Ned, and MJ and let Willem Dafoe, Jamie Fox, and Alfred Molina show off.
Marisa Tomei broke my heart in a good way. They actually say THE LINE in this movie.
No Way Home is an improvement on its predecessors and a worthy capstone to a trilogy. Love it.
My creative process is something that has come with time. I learned to knock all my quirks out so that I could write anywhere, because there’s inspiration and there’s writing. Inspiration can land anywhere: in the shower, walking your dog, on the train, but writing is something where you need to get it down and get it into a form so someone else can understand it and see it.
How would your teachers have described you as a kid?
Intense. I’ve mellowed out a lot since then. but I was trying to put on shows and trying to make movies when I was a teenager. I was a caricature theatre kid. Just so, so extra.
What’s your favourite moment in In The Heights?
It’s a blink-and-you-miss-it moment with Anthony Ramos where his dream is very close to coming true and he just yells, “Let’s go!” It’s a thing Anthony says all the time to rile up his friends and cast members but in that scene it’s said with a lot of emotion. It’s a very true moment.
What’s the last thing that made you cry?
This is cheesy. We’re editing the first movie I directed, Tick Tick Boom, and our stills photographer sent me a book of pictures from the set and I cried leafing through it. It’s a chronicle of the hardest year any of us have ever had.
What advice would you give your 21-year-old self now if you could?
Life’s longer than you think. Just take your time, things come back around.
Just felt the need to share that I think the Tick…Tick…BOOM! movie may have just completely changed who I am as a person like I am mid-crisis as we speak
