Film Review: Spider-Man: No Way Home
There’s Compassion at the center of the Uneven, crowd-pleasing Spider-Man: No Way Home
The eagerly-anticipated Spider-Man: No Way Home, Tom Holland’s third solo outing as the web-slinging superhero, is the shaggiest and certainly the most stylistically inert of the MCU Spideys. Overstuffed and frenetic, the film cracks open the Marvel Multiverse with equal parts sincerity and pandering. It’s anything but artful, but there’s no denying the power of its crossover charms; even more impressively, No Way Home tackles heroic compassion in a way that finally strikes true at the heart of Spider-Man. Minor spoilers ahead…
One of the biggest criticisms levied at the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s iteration of Spider-Man is that he doesn't really feel like Spider-Man. Taking a working class superhero - who has existed across 60 years of balancing web-slinging with being a nerd, paying rent, getting good grades, and getting the girl - and turning him into the ward of a tech billionaire feels just a little iconoclastic. Of course, a rich and solvent Peter Parker isn’t exactly outside of canon, but in the comics, every time Spider-Man soared a little too high or got a little too comfortable, a new writer would topple his life over and return him to his humble status quo. Spider-Man: No Way Home, Tom Holland’s third solo outing as the wall-crawler, feels like one of those topplings; director Jon Watts caps his trilogy by putting Peter through a physical and emotional wringer while interrogating what it truly means to be a hero - it just so happens to coincide with the big screen debut of the Marvel multiverse. An earnest attempt to marry tender character study with a massive, never-before-done crossover event across two beloved Spider-Verses (and one not-so-beloved), No Way Home overflows with messy nostalgia and pandering that not even this coldhearted critic can fully resist.
Picking up mere seconds after Far From Home, No Way Home finds Peter reeling from his identity being revealed to the world. Framed by J. Jonah Jameson (a hammy J.K. Simmons) through Mysterio’s “deathbed” confession for the StarkTech drone attack in London, Peter goes into hiding with his girlfriend M.J. (Zendaya) and his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon). His reputation scuttled and his - along with M.J.’s and Ned’s - chances of getting into MIT dashed, Peter seeks out the help of Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to put the genie back in the bottle. Recklessly casting a spell to erase the memory of Peter Parker as Spider-Man from the collective consciousness of the entire world, Strange botches the glamour when Peter meddles with the magic one too many times. Instead of erasing Spider-Man’s identity, the spell inadvertently rips a hole in multiversal spacetime, pulling in interlopers that know Peter is Spider-Man from other universes. Among these menaces? Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina), Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), and Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) from the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films; and Electro (Jamie Foxx) and The Lizard (Rhys Ifans) from The Amazing Spider-Man universe.
“…No Way Home overflows with messy nostalgia and pandering that not even this coldhearted critic can fully resist.”
Spider-Man: No Way Home is an equal opportunity employer when it comes to its rogues’ gallery, but let’s face it, we’re really only here for Doc Ock and Green Goblin, and the movie knows it. The two big Raimi Spider-Man villains clearly get the most screen time and are actually the best parts of the movie - with Dafoe in particular stealing every scene he’s in - but its also padded out with the big bads that neither the narrative nor the audience cares for: Electro, Connors, and Sandman are just distracting window dressing that steal precious time from the infinitely more interesting Otto Octavius and Norman Osborne.
Which brings us to another problem. The Tom Holland Spider-Man films - and the MCU as a whole - have long suffered from a dearth of visual panache. With No Way Home, these stylistic deficits are especially exaggerated with its supervillain circus, drawing unflattering parallels to flavors not tasted since a cheeky Sam Raimi sat behind the lens and a kineticism not felt since Marc Webb directed Andrew Garfield in The Amazing Spider-Man. While easily glossed over with singular threats like Michael Keaton’s Vulture or Jake Gyllenhaal’s meta-illusionist Mysterio, the seams of artifice for the Marvel Cinematic Universe really start to show when the screen is jammed full of multiversal baddies. No Way Home finds inventiveness and a brisk visual acuity when Peter and Doctor Strange duke it out in the Mirror Universe over a magical Macguffin, but otherwise, most of the film’s action takes place on grey concrete, nighttime fields, and browned construction sites. There are no two ways about it: No Way Home isn’t a particularly good-looking movie.
“Even amidst all the punching and kicking, we’re reminded that superheroics — for once — isn’t all about the punching and kicking…”
But when it comes to the central multiversal conflict, its inner workings are actually quite layered. Digging to the heart of the Spider-Man character in ways never before attempted in live-action film, No Way Home gives its big villains surprisingly more to do than just sneer at the camera, only to be jaunted back to their home universes. Perhaps the first Spider-Man movie to seriously ponder the infamous “with great power comes great responsibility” with weighty consequence, No Way Home finds the compassion at the center of Peter Parker. With Aunt May (Marisa Tomei, finally given something of substance to do in the franchise) as his whispering conscience, Holland’s Peter - embodying the selfless essence of the character - isn’t interested in throttling his foes back to where they came from; instead, he truly wants to help them. Whether it’s a faulty A.I. chip, a dangerous split personality, or an unquenchable thirst for electricity, we’re reminded that No Way Home’s villains aren’t true monsters, but damaged people. Even amidst all the punching and kicking, we’re reminded that superheroics - for once - isn’t all about the punching and kicking, and that’s great.
And is there fan service? Of course there is. At various points throughout No Way Home, it seems like it’s all reverse-engineered to produce the most hoots and hollers from a packed theater. Memes, callbacks, and big surprise cameos, it’s all a little shameless, but I’d be made of stone not to be won over by the film’s big moments and the characters I haven’t seen in years, creeping into the MCU - I suspect many will be quite powerless when Doc Ock’s whirring tentacles sprout from the ground, or when Norman Osborne’s iconic Dafoe cackle reverberates through the airwaves. The third act has even more surprises up its sleeve, some of which turned my theater into screeching barbarians clawing at the screen, but - again - I would be straight up lying if I said I didn’t feel any joy from the yanking of my nostalgia heartstrings. Perhaps Martin Scorsese was right when he said superhero movies are like theme park rides, but you can do a lot worse than one that actually understands Spider-Man the way No Way Home does.
