There is a playful unpredictability to the Spider-Man comic books that’s often missing from modern superhero movies in the way they feel so precisely calculated.

Director Jon Watts and his team have delivered a true event movie, a double-sized crossover issue of a comic book. And yet they generally avoid getting weighed down by the expectations fans have for this film, somehow sidestepping the cluttered traps of other crowded part threes. “No Way Home” is crowded, but it’s also surprisingly spry, inventive, and just entertaining.

The film picks up immediately after the end of “Spider-Man: Far From Home,” with the sound of that film’s closing scene playing over the Marvel logo. Mysterio has revealed the identity of the man in the red tights, which means nothing will ever be the same for Peter Parker (Tom Holland). It opens with a series of scenes about the pitfalls of super-fame, particularly how it impacts Peter’s girlfriend M.J. (Zendaya) and best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon). It reaches a peak when M.I.T. denies all three of them admission, citing the controversy about Peter’s identity and the roles his buddies played in his adventures.

Peter has a plan. The “wizard” he met when he saved half the population with The Avengers can cast a spell and make it all go away. So he asks Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to make the world forget that Spider-Man is Peter Parker, which, of course, immediately backfires. He doesn’t want M.J. or Ned or Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) to forget everything they’ve been through together, and so the spell gets derailed in the middle of it. Strange barely gets it under control. And then Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina) and the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe) show up.

As the previews have revealed, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” weaves characters and mythology from previous Spider-Man films into the universe of the current one.

For a generation, the line about Spidey was “With great power comes great responsibility.” This film is about the modern Peter Parker learning what that means.

So many modern superhero movies have confronted what it means to be a superhero, but this is the first time it’s really been highlighted in the current run of Peter Parker, which turns “No Way Home” into something of a graduation story. It’s the one in which Parker has to grow up and deal with not just the fame that comes with Spider-Man but how his decisions will have more impact than most kids planning to go to college. It asks some interesting questions about empathy as Peter is put in a position to basically try to save the men who tried to kill other multiverse versions of him. And it playfully becomes a commentary on correcting mistakes of the past not just in the life of Holland’s Parker but those of characters made long before he stepped into the role. “No way Home” is about the weight of heroic decisions. Even the right ones mean you may not be able to go home again.

The big final showdown doesn’t succumb to the common over-done hollowness of Marvel film climaxes because it has undeniable emotional weight.

(SD-Agencies)