PLOT: After having his secret identity revealed, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) turns to Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) for help, only for the wizard’s spell to pull in various foes from the multiverse, leading to a challenge Spider-Man could never have seen coming.
REVIEW: Let me preface this by saying my review of Spider-Man: No Way Home is going to be pretty brief to keep it as spoiler-free as possible. Massive reveals that will send fans into overdrive start dropping less than twenty minutes into the film. The only thing I suppose I can talk about are some of the villains, as their parts are teased in the trailers, but even here, there are lots of surprises I don’t want to go into in the hope of allowing fans to experience this fresh.
Suffice to say, Spider-Man: No Way Home will not disappoint fans. It’s a substantial step-up for director Jon Watts. His two previous Spider-Man films always struck me as relatively minor and light. This is him playing on the Russo Bros., level, with this easily the biggest Marvel epic since Avengers: Endgame, and one that’s bound to rewrite the MCU playbook completely. For anyone that’s felt phase four of the MCU has been underwhelming, this will undoubtedly be seen as a massive course correction and one that promises to pay off handsomely in future installments, not only in the MCU proper but also Sony’s growing Spider-Verse.
In No Way Home, Peter Parker/Spider-Man is getting older and no longer the wide-eyed innocent of the first two movies. However, he’s still hanging on to some of his youthful idealism, with even Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange and one point noting that given what they experienced together in Infinity War and Endgame, he keeps forgetting just how much of a kid Parker is. By the time the credits roll, Holland’s Spider-Man is in a much different place, one that leaves him as a distinctly grown-up version of the character and one who’s aware of how deadly the stakes he’s playing with are. He makes decisions that put his friends and family in danger, and here there’s no rewinding time to make everything all better.
For Holland, it’s his best turn in the title role, although given how jam-packed the movie is, it probably isn’t surprising that his co-stars, Zendaya’s Mary Jane and Jacob Batalon’s Ned get a little less to do here than in previous installments. Still, Zendaya’s chemistry with Holland grounds the film somewhat, and it can’t be denied she’s been an amazing MJ. Even Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange isn’t quite as prominent as the trailers/poster might have you think. I’d say his role is about on the same size as Robert Downey Jr.’s in Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Marisa Tomei probably has her meatiest role to date as Aunt May, with her adding some gravitas to the second part of the film, while Jon Favreau is also back as her on-again/off-again hookup, Happy. Of course, the roles teased in the trailer, which I can reveal here, are Jamie Foxx as Electro and Alfred Molina as Doc Ock. Sure enough, they’re pulled in from the multiverse, and the events in their respective Spider-Man films aren’t retconned. Notably, the makeup used to make Molina look exactly like he did twenty years ago is excellent (or maybe Molina’s just kept himself in great shape – either way, it’s seamless). Both come off well, even Foxx, whose performance as Electro was controversial in The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
Of course, there’s way, way more to the villains that I can’t go into here, and I won’t. No, I’ll be good. All of this is only the tip of the web, and truth be told, none of you likely needs a review to tell you to see Spider-Man: No Way Home. If you want to know whether or not it lives up to the hype, it does. Big time. Everything about this is designed to please fans, with even shades of other Spider-Man scores hitting the soundtrack when their respective villains show up. But, I’m not going to go any further. We’ll all be talking about what happens in the last hour of this movie for months to come, and the franchise will never quite be the same again. There’s a whole lot to unpack, but until then, enjoy this epic Spider-Man adventure. They throw in literally everything but the kitchen sink here, and the hoops they must have jumped through to get this made at all (and during Covid to boot) can’t be underestimated.
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