Spider-Man No Way Home

I've got a few Spider-Man movie reviews behind me at this point, and the consensus generally has been that unless you're doing something genuinely refreshing with exceptional craft, like Into the Spider-Verse, you're likely to find me an unforgiving audience due to the fact that after three separate incarnations of the exact same character during a time that encompassed some of my most formative
years where film is concerned, I am all Spider-Manned out.

Peter Parker just doesn't interest me. And it's not like there are specific problems with Tom Holland's version of the character, and it's not like I have incredibly strong ties to the comic versions of Peter either. I've just seen three different versions of this exact dude that simply aren't different enough from one to the other for me to care about their largely repetitive story beats. My favorite live-action Spidey-film to this point has always been Spider-Man 2, and that's in large part due to Alfred Molina's absolutely stellar portrayal of Doctor Octopus.

Those of you who have seen No Way Home, trailers for No Way Home, or heck, the picture up there might suspect there's a sharp left turn coming in this review. For those of you who haven't, minor-to-major plot spoilers below.

No Way Home was a blast. I thoroughly enjoyed just about every second. And while the typical wit and charm of the MCU is there for all of that, Disney's Marvel is not the reason I did. That would be Sony. Alfred Molina, Jamie Foxx, and Willem Defoe reprise their respective Spidey villains with a frankly remarkable level of class and skill that was joyous to behold. Andrew Garfield and Toby McGuire reprising their iterations of Spider-Man were similarly inspired. And the fact that we got this exact plot to occur, with its hints of the multi-verse and an end-credit scene that drew Venom in too, well, I feel perfectly comfortable giving credit for that to Into the Spider-Verse.

So frankly Sony did all of the leg-work in laying the foundation for me to enjoy this film. But it was still Marvel who got it made in service of kick-starting their own multi-verse, so I suppose they get some credit here.

The movie is well made from top-to-bottom, a very nicely constructed action blockbuster in the vein of other MCU films. If you've watched things from the MCU before, you will know what to expect here in terms of character development, story development, production design, and fight choreography. It's shot well and performed well, with a special shout-out to Zendaya, who was delightful. All of this has been true of the other MCU Spider-Man films, though, and I panned those. I wasn't here for a well-made action movie, and I'm generally not here for the Peter Parker story anymore either.

Or at least that's what I thought. As it happens, pulling in the other two versions of Peter (effectively canonizing the Amazing Spider-Man and original Spider-Man trilogy into the MCU multi-verse) was exactly what was needed to get me invested. And I'm not fooling myself here; it was a calculated ploy to capture my nostalgia. I suspected that going in, but my idiot nostalgia walked wide-eyed into the clearing anyway and gave the dangling animal carcass a tug.

On a personal level it was just so much fun to see Andrew and Toby reprising their roles. I really enjoyed those movies when they came out and I was in the target demographic (okay, aside from Spider-Man 3, that one was hard to get on with). I really like the version of this history where my Spider-Man 2 DVD is now a part of my MCU collection and not just some random other thing. I also absolutely adored Defoe's version of the Green Goblin, and Molina's Doc Ock still is one of the most complicated villain performances in superhero film history. There was a lot of quality work done in the earlier films, and No Way Home did an excellent job not just incorporating it, but also respecting it.

And I may be a little biased, but the rogues gallery of Spider-Man villains in this movie, all of whom were pulled from older Spider-Man movies, feel more... well, Spidey than the MCU versions of Vulture and Mysterio. Whether that's because Disney was trying too hard to stuff them into existing MCU cannon or they were just too afraid to let their origins be campy like they were in the comics, I'm not sure. But they didn't have the same sort of tragedy that the other Spidey villains do. And having all those tragic figures from other Spidey movies in here with three different Spidey's trying to help them rather than just get rid of them was a really nice change from the status quo to my eye.

I also really appreciated that they absolutely acknowledged Toby's ability to just shoot web out of his wrist and then just rolled with it. They actually hung a lot of lanterns on the little idiosyncratic differences between the various iterations of Spider-Man, and managed to make them all seem valid in the process. Which was lovely.

So I had a great time. If you've felt like the past few MCU Spider-Man movies were a little rote or juvenile but you grew up with the older films, I suspect you're going to like this one a lot. If you've been growing up with Tom Holland's Spider-Man but you've seen the older ones here and there, I suspect you're also going to like this one a lot. If you've never seen a Spider-Man movie before, I suspect you're going to be very confused.

But hey, the movie still has good action. So maybe you'll be fine?