Called to Ixtenco, Mexico, to investigate an unexpected temporal storm, SHIELD agents Nick Fury and Maria Hill encounter the Earth Elemental, a bizarre previously unknown entity, who is in turn conquered by Mysterio, a super-powered being, who appears and defeats the alien, then revealing himself as a man called Quentin Beck.

In New York City, the Midtown School of Science and Technology restarts its academic year after ’The Blip’ eight months earlier, following the events of The Avengers taking on Thanos, with the school planning a two-week summer field trip to Europe. Peter Parker, while still distraught over Tony Stark's death, plans to use the break to confess his feelings for classmate Michelle ‘MJ’ Jones and reassess his life as Spider-Man. At a fundraiser for the homeless organised by his Aunt May, Parker is told by Happy Hogan that Nick Fury wants to contact him, but Peter ignores the call, and leaves after being upset by multiple questions about Tony Stark.

Peter and his class, with tutors Mr. Harrington and Mr. Dell, arrive in Venice, where he finds his classmate Brad is a competitor for MJ's attention. The city is attacked by The Water Elemental, creating havoc, until Quentin Beck arrives and manages to destroy the being.

Fury meets with Peter and gives him Stark's glasses, which are equipped with the artificial intelligence E.D.I.T.H., standing for ‘Even Dead, I’'m The Hero’, a Stark quip, which has access to all the databases of Stark Industries and commands a large orbital weapons supply and were meant for his successor. Beck goes public, saying The Elementals and himself come from an alternate reality, one of many in the Multiverse, and he has vowed to destroy them since they killed his family. Peter decides to rejoin his class rather then becoming involved with the workings of SHIELD once more.

Finding the Fire Elemental is projected to strike in Prague, Fury manipulates the party’s itinerary, having them redirected there, and when it attacks a carnival Peter dons his Spider-Man outfit and, with Beck, destroys the creature. Fury and Hill invite Parker and Beck to Berlin in order to consider forming a new superhero team, but Peter believes Beck is more worthy than himself of being Stark's successor and gives him the E.D.I.T.H. glasses. He doesn’t know that Beck is a former employee of Stark Industries, a former holographic-illusions specialist, and fired for his volatile and unstable nature. He and a team of aggrieved former Stark employees have faked all the Elementals attacks through advanced holographic drones and fooled onlookers with Beck’s heroic tackling of the beings.

MJ reveals to Peter that she knows he is Spider-Man, much to his surprise, and together they examine a piece of debris she salvaged during the carnival battle, finding it is a micro-projector that generates a simulation of the Air Elemental, leading them to realise Mysterio / Beck is a fraud. Travelling to Berlin to meet Nick Fury, Peter realises he has been tricked by Beck, being presented with multiple holographic representations of creatures and alien beings before managing to escape Beck’s trap, but as he escapes the building he is hit by a train and injured.

Finding himself in the Netherlands, Peter contacts Hogan, who flies Parker to London in a Stark jet, and revealing a suit-manufacturing machine left behind by Stark, which Parker uses to synthesise a specially adapted costume. In London, where the school party has now landed, and are visiting the Tower of London, Beck uses E.D.I.T.H. to create his biggest illusion yet, a fusion of all four Elementals attacking the city, intending it to cover him killing MJ and any others of the school party to whom Peter may have told about Beck’s real identity, as Peter / Spider-Man arrives on the scene and Beck and his crew launch hundreds of armoured, weaponised drones as MJ and her classmates try to take shelter in the seemingly impregnable Tower….

The Marvel Cinematic Universe may be moving into a new ‘phase’ after the events of Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, but their occasional guest, Peter Parker, is now in his own third phase, after the groundbreaking Sam Raimi trilogy (2002-07), the misjudged Andrew Garfield duo (’12-14), and now the third iteration with a very comfortably-cast Tom Holland in the role of the young, conflicted web-slinger, and, seventeen years after Sony first gambled with a big-budget Spidey film, which some industry insiders warned against, saying the only superheroes which warranted the $100m+ budget treatment were Superman and Batman, it seems that the franchise has finally settled into a style and tone which critics and audiences alike are enjoying, and in the very likeable Holland a very capable and more age-appropriate actor, credibly playing a few years younger than his actual twenty-three.

The Sam Raimi pics certainly began well, Spider-Man 2 being an almost perfect superhero movie, before succumbing to franchise bloat with the over-stuffed, overlong Spider-Man 3, before the bizarre decision to recast and reboot the series from the very beginning (just how many times can an audience watch Uncle Ben get shot?), with a clearly too old Garfield, a grimmer, grittier feel, going very much against the whole tone of Stan Lee’s most personal and nurtured creation, and a feeling of mild contempt towards the audience, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ending just as the battle much of the film has been building up to, Spidey vs Aleksei Sytsevich / The Rhino, clicks into place, needing only a caption saying ‘Come back in two years to see how this ends’.

The character’s dealings with the Avengers have led into a clever explanation of the events of the two final films in the series as ‘The Blip’, explaining the time lapse involved, and life is getting back to normal, although Peter Parker is in two minds over his superpowers, concerned about the responsibility involved, and instead opts to travel on a rather elaborate field trip with his class, stopping off in Venice, Prague and London, in order to admit to MJ (the oddly inert Zendaya) his feeling for her, just as SHIELD’s Nick Fury is trying to determine his commitment to the cause, and bizarre creatures, The Elementals, are turning up and wreaking havoc, causing the arrival of a new superhero, Mysterio, or Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhall - Brokeback Mountain / Nightcrawler) to his mum, who seems to fit the gap in the absence of Tony Stark and several others.

Of course nothing is quite what it seems, and Beck’s real intentions are revealed after dealing with the Fire Elemental in Prague in one of the film’s very well staged set-pieces, and Peter and MJ also start to realise that the alien attacks seem staged, but who Beck actually is and how it links into Stark’s bequest to Peter, the EDITH glasses, the acronym being a typical self-aggrandising Stark joke, is intelligent and fun, and played with suitable gravity by Gyllenhall, an actor who in recent years has started to attract the sort of critical respect he deserves. The final extended climax, on Tower Bridge and The Tower Of London, is one of the best prolonged action finales of any Marvel film, imaginative, brilliantly executed and with some stunning effects, backed by a truly superb score by Michael Giacchino, leading to a nice plot twist which will be explored in further sequels, and also features the unexpected return of a character from the Raimi years.

Directed by Jon Watts (Clown / Cop Car), who also helmed the previous Spider-Man: Homecoming (’17), one gets the feeling that the producers crew and cast know they'’ve got the formula right, finally. The cast are all well suited to their roles, although comedian J.B. Smoove in the minor role of teacher Mr.Dell does seems once again to be acting in a completely different film to everybody else, and the relationships are convincing. The series’ side characters, such Aunt May (Marisa Tomei - My Cousin Vinny / The Wrestler) and Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau, now becoming better known as a director of Disney’s CGI remakes) are also better integrated and have amusing subplots of their own, and while the film is watchable as a stand-alone pic, the mid-credits scenes link it firmly into the MCU, even though Sony’s decision to sever ties with Disney / Marvel over the sordid subject of money (albeit millions and millions of dollars), may mean that Peter Parker is operating solo for the foreseeable future.