Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

By: Mike Ward on Thursday, December 23

PG-13 Running Time: 148 mins

SHOULD I SEE IT?

YES

  • Believe the hype. Follow the money. Whatever it takes: Spider-Man: No Way Home is among the best you will find in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

  • Full of surprises, but also creates a winning balance between fanservice for the most loyal of Spider-Man fans, and entertaining and enjoyable for more recent converts.

  • The movie where Tom Holland truly makes Spider-Man his very own, a character a generation of moviegoers will remember as being synonymous with the Marvel movies they have now grown up watching.

NO

  • You detest joy and most anything fun.

  • With the surprises it delivers, and multiple villains returning for No Way Home, some may dismiss this as little more than an event film designed to simply exist as a version of “Spider-Man: The Reunion Special.” You’re wrong, but hey - you do you my friend.

  • I get that some people just have zero interest in superhero films, and certainly Marvel movies. Nothing here will change your way of thinking.


OUR REVIEW

As I write this in the days after Spider-Man: No Way Home earned the second largest box office opening in movie history (and during an ongoing, ever-changing global pandemic no less!), the fear of revealing spoilers remains. Rumors about who may or may not show up, where the film fits into the overall Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), what it means for Tom Holland’s future as Peter Parker, etc., all plays a role in making the elements of the film difficult to discuss.

Spider-Man: No Way Home has already been seen by tens of millions of people and still, on Twitter, people are upset when any kind of  significant detail is shared. I get it. We don’t really have movies like No Way Home very often nowadays - movies which feel like major events and can feel new, even with multiple viewings. A friend of mine has seen it three times already, and has loved it more each time and still doesn’t want to talk about it yet.

So what can be said about Holland’s third Spider-Man film? 

Directed by Jon Watts, the film is fantastic, thrilling, and surprisingly emotional - a perfect 150-minute escape from the daily discussions of the economy, Build Back Better, senators Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema, the Omicron variant, Dr. Fauci, the January 6th insurrection and whatever else occupies our daily news feeds. In grossing $260 million domestically in a mere three days, clearly this was what we all needed, collectively, as a culture and society.

While an air of secrecy and mystery certainly amplifies the excitement around Spider-Man: No Way Home, I think people underestimated how invested people are in this iteration of the Spider-Man story. Holland is pitch-perfect as a teenage Peter Parker. His sixth appearance in the MCU proves his best yet, largely built upon great chemistry with Zendaya, back again as Peter’s girlfriend, MJ, and Jacob Batalon, portraying best friend Ned. Even in a superhero film where a guy slings webbing from his hands and can fly through the sky and climb buildings and defy gravity, the core relationships drive the story.

That goes a long way. 

For this trio of besties, they’ve reached their senior year without much cinematic pomp and circumstance. Sure, all three are attempting to get into MIT, but we thankfully shy away from the senior proms and last-year-of-high-school tropes we often see when high school stories play out on the big screen. Instead, Watts gets right down to business with an efficient, character-driven, action-minded screenplay from Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers (writers or co-writers of all three Holland-led Spider-Man movies). 

Instead, we pick right up from where the previous film, Spider-Man: Far From Home ended. Mysterio (portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal) reveals Spider-Man’s identity to the world and alleging he is a murderer. On Times Square billboards and video feeds, tabloid journalist J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons) has his “Daily Bugle” podcast/streaming news show drumming up discontent and anger with Parker’s actions. Now branded a murderer in the court of public opinion, society turns sharply against Parker. Soon investigators and authorities are rounding up Parker, his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), MJ and Ned. 

Reeling from May’s recent break-up with him, bodyguard and security detail, Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau), hang-dogs a bit but is nonetheless willing to help the family any way he can. Once it becomes unsafe to stay in their apartment, Peter and May move into Hogan’s security-enabled high-rise home to establish how to clear Peter’s name and fix the chaos that has been unleashed.

Most know that Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) becomes a key contributor to the film (he’s on the posters and in the marketing). His mentoring and tough love of Peter falls on somewhat deaf ears, as Peter is too headstrong to fully rationalize Strange’s advice. Using a powerful spell to try and “fix” Peter’s mess, Strange is interrupted routinely by Parker’s second-guessing of both his decisions and Strange’s advice. This uncertainty and consternation unleashes a bevy of problems that neither Peter or Doctor Strange properly anticipate. And naturally it is Peter, believing and wanting to fix everything himself, who forces Doctor Strange to exit and ropes in MJ and Ned to put their engineering minds to work on how to solve the latest emerging threat to humanity and all of mankind.

It is true that Spider-Man: No Way Home is a film full of fanservice, tackling quite a large number of “what if’s” and “what could be’s.” The film finally blurs the ridiculousness of segregating out who owns what Marvel character and property, and which characters belong where. By blending together storylines that need to belong together, the film works expertly well.

I have to say, in a chaotic and emotionally challenging year, Spider-Man: No Way Home hit me right where it needed to, and somehow right at the perfect time. Full of emotion, heart, action, and humor, I personally rank this as the second best Spider-Man film to date, second only to Tobey Maguire’s turn in Spider-Man 2.

Marvel films succeed not only in consistently creating entertaining movies, but also in the way they handle endings and loss. We have seen it in the death of Tony Stark in Avengers: Endgame. And though we all realized another set of Marvel movies were eventually coming, the “Snap” or the “Blip” by Thanos at the conclusion of Avengers: Infinity War was moving and powerful, leaving audience members gasping and emotionally upset in seeing some beloved characters literally disintegrate before their very eyes.

As Peter faces losses both personal and symbolic, he is forced to rationalize a new reality for himself. In the end, with words left unsaid and a bittersweet, half-hearted smile ending this trilogy, Spider-Man: No Way Home gives us a film full of memorable moments rivaling some of the most meaningful within the MCU. 

CAST & CREW

Starring: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jacob Batalon, Jon Favreau, Marisa Tomei, Willem Dafoe, Jamie Foxx, Alfred Molina, J.K. Simmons, Tony Revolori, Rhys Ifans, Thomas Haden Church, Benedict Wong, Angourie Rice, J.B. Smoove, Hannibal Buress, Martin Starr, Charlie Cox, Arian Moayed, Andrew Garfield, Tobey Maguire

Director: Jon Watts
Written by: Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers
Based on the Marvel series “Spider-Man” by Stan Lee, Steve Ditko
Release Date: December 17, 2021
Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures Releasing