Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 2 hours, 28 minutes
Director: Jon Watts
Quick Impressions:
This movie could have been called Spider-Man: Wish Fulfillment, but I like seeing my wishes fulfilled, so I thoroughly enjoyed it. To be honest, I wasn’t that excited to go. We used to take the whole family to movies like this, but my six-year-old just does not enjoy movies and will not sit through them in the theater. So we had to split up. Monday afternoon, I took my daughter. Later this week, my husband and our older son (who has already seen it) are going with my dad. I wish I could take my mom and watch her be surprised to discover what the movie is up to. Maybe I can find a version of her in another universe. (With my luck, the Mom in that universe has already seen Spider-Man: No Way Home. She’s probably dating Andrew Garfield, and he took her to the premiere.) (Or maybe in that universe, she plays Aunt May!)
To be honest, I have a pretty bad case of superhero fatigue. I’m way behind on Marvel TV shows, and I feel no pressing need to catch up. (I’m sure they’re good. I just don’t care right now.) (That’s not intended as any sort of insult to Marvel, just an acknowledgement than I’m less than eager for new superhero fare.)
But I do particularly like Spider-Man (in all his incarnations). And I love stories about the multiverse. (I like to imagine there’s another me out there somewhere who has a better sense of what she’s doing with her life and how to organize her closet.) This trailer had me hooked. I would go for the supporting cast alone. (It’s a good thing we didn’t take my six-year-old, though. He only goes if we bribe him with an Icee, and the Icee machines were all out of order. In fact, the theater had only popcorn, very limited candy, Coke, bottled Dasani water, and ice cream sandwiches. I’m guessing a shipment didn’t come in, which must be frustrating when they’re trying so hard to show people the allure of the theater!)
The Good:
Marvel has already given us Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. All those heroes over all those years, all coming together in one amazing ending. Now Sony and Marvel have joined forces to give us every Spider-Man movie ever, all at once! To be honest, I’m impressed. What they’ve come up with is a pretty epic way to reimagine and re-present the material available. (Also, it seems fair that this movie is making a ton of money because the Spider-Man franchise has been unusually successful. Back before there was a Marvel movie every three seconds, Spider-Man 2 was a conspicuously high-quality, way-paving superhero film. So I think it’s cool to see the Spider-Man franchise get a big, epic Avengers-style finale (though finale is perhaps a misleading word. I’m sure Spider-Man will return…and soon, if history is any indicator.) (I read another Tom Holland trilogy is in the works already.)
The other thing I love is that the creative team behind this project has found a way to make narrative sense of something that has drawn so much criticism (or at least comment) from fans and critics over the years. Every time you turn around, there’s another Spider-Man! If there’s not a sequel, there’s a reboot (immediately!). So I love the way No Way Home makes a meta joke of this by giving the audience a perfect in-world explanation for this weird phenomenon. The multi-verse! Forget external factors like who owns the rights to what and when they’ll lose them if they don’t do whatever. From now on, because of a reason supplied within the world of the story, all Spider-Man movies are going to be about the multi-verse. (Our family loved Into the Spider-Verse, by the way. Even the little one liked that. I half hope they make another multiverse-focused live action film like this and include Miles Morales, too!) There’s been a new Spider-Man every three seconds, you say? Of course! That’s all been by design! You had to meet all the characters who would eventually come together in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Whoever came up with the idea of cramming as many versions of Spider-Man characters as possible into one movie deserves a raise.
And now I run into some trouble because I’m trying to keep this review spoiler free, but I have no idea what constitutes a spoiler. The best parts of this movie are scenes that show something that trailers don’t. (I just rewatched the trailer! How did some events surprise me so much in the theater? The whole movie’s in that trailer—except what I wanted to talk about, of course. If you’re like me, you go in expecting certain things the trailer doesn’t show. But I won’t confirm or deny anything here. (Even though this movie has now been out for three-hundred years.) Unfortunately, that cuts out a lot I wanted to say, so this going to be a really short review!)
If you’ve seen the trailer, you know that Alfred Molina and Willem Dafoe are back. So I’ll start with a question. Have you seen all the Spider-Man movies? If you haven’t, you should. If you haven’t in a while, you should rewatch them. Halfway through this movie, I laughed at a joke, then thought to myself, “I’ll bet my daughter doesn’t remember any of the old Spider-Man movies. I don’t know if she’s even seen the Tobey Maguire ones. She was tiny when she saw the Andrew Garfield ones in the theater.”
(As it turns out, she did see the very first Spider-Man with my mother. Still, she was watching without a lot of crucial information. She insists that she still got most of the jokes and references, though. “I’m familiar with the plots of those movies,” she told me. “Everybody knows the main events of Spider-Man.” (But how would she know if she were missing something?) I still remember vividly when we took her older brother to Spider-Man 3. To my surprise, he was obsessed with the Peter/Harry plot thread. With so many other compelling villains, I was surprised he zeroed in on James Franco. But it made sense when he explained gravely, in his little four-year-old voice, “He was his bwuddah, and he betrayed him.” James Franco does not make an appearance in this movie, but even without him, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy is well represented!)
Remember when the original 2002 Spider-Man came out? I do. At the time, I remember everybody complaining, “Why would you cast Willem Dafoe as a villain having a psychotic break and then put him in a goblin mask so that no one can see his face?” And everybody was right to ask that question. Sam Raimi made some great Spider-Man movies, but it’s better for everyone when the audience can see Willem Dafoe’s face. I first began to fall in love with this movie when I realized it was going to ditch that mask and show us Dafoe’s reactions instead. We get to see Norman Osborn’s face unobscured, even when he’s wrestling with his darkest moments. No Way Home earns an A+ from me just for that.
I like the way the movie uses Doc Ock, too. My thoughts on how his portrayal here improves on the (excellent) 2004 movie get spoilery fast. So I’ll just say that I’m happy to see Alfred Molina return. I think the character deserves the journey he gets in this film. Jamie Foxx (who gets some funny lines), Thomas Hayden Church, and Rhys Ifans are back, too. And as you surely noticed in the trailer, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Dr. Strange plays a crucial role in this film, too.
Gradually discovering the full cast of this movie made me realize just how many actors in the Spider-Man series have been Oscar winners or nominees or have starred in Oscar winning or nominated films. It’s basically everyone. And a huge number of key players in No Way Home are also key players in movies generating Oscar buzz this year. (I’ll be honest and say I was hoping we might get one more cameo in a post credits scene, but I’m perfectly satisfied with the fantastic array of past Spider-Man luminaries we do get to see.)
One particular guest star impressed me far more than I expected. I remember thinking, “Were you always this good in this part?” (That’s not the way I remember it, though I didn’t have any particular complaints at the time, either.) The person’s dialogue seems conspicuously more amusing than everyone else’s, but maybe I’m just hyper-focused on this actor right now, wondering if the person will get an Oscar nomination this year. (I want to say who it is. I think you might be able to figure out who it is. But so many people in this cast could get an Oscar nomination this year that I think I’m speaking in sufficiently veiled terms.)
The early scenes of this movie are passably entertaining, but once I realized the plan for the “visitors” from the multi-verse, No Way Home got my attention by tapping into themes (and concepts) that I love to explore. This is definitely a Spider-Man movie for the present moment, a time when so many of us are realizing how much we all need healing.
Marissa Tomei gets a particularly nice moment, too. She has one line which rings painfully true for her character in the situation. It made me think of my mother (rather inexplicably. To be fair, the entire movie made me think of my mother. She liked the first two movies in this trilogy. I know she would enjoyed this one, too!)
Both Zendaya and Jacob Batalon are quite funny and have wonderful chemistry with Tom Holland. I also liked Michael Giachhino’s score (some of which is familiar).
Best Action Sequence:
One of my favorite moments in the entire movie happens when MJ ends up falling from a great height. It’s clear what will happen here, and it’s strangely satisfying to watch. In fact, it made me tear up.
Best Scene:
For some bizarre reason, that scene where Zendaya falls probably was my favorite of the film, but Marisa Tomei gets a moment I found quite moving, too, and I love some of the jokes in the science lab.
Best Scene Visually:
The scene with Ned’s grandma features fun use of magic and some silly but delightful visual humor.
The Negatives:
As we were driving home, my daughter said, “I’m trying to think about the exact wording of the spell, and how exactly that worked and how their solution fixed what happened. And I was trying to figure out what exactly they were doing in the lab and think about what chemicals they were mixing.”
“Don’t think about it too hard,” I advised her.
“But I’m not sure why this happened,” she said.
“It happened,” I told her, “so that all of those actors playing all of those characters could come back and be in this movie so that the audience would come back to the theater and watch it.”
I really liked the movie, but I feel like you would have to be a child to watch and concern yourself with the logistics of this plot. How did it happen? Science. Why did the science work like that? Magic. But why did that spell go wrong the way that it did? So you could see Alfred Molina, Willem Dafoe, Jamie Foxx, Rhys Ifans, Thomas Hayden Church, and the surprise guest stars all together in the same movie. You liked that, right? So stop asking questions and eat your popcorn. The movie theater is thrilled to have you back.
I don’t think this plot would hold up to much scrutiny, but who cares? (If you think too much, you’ll only find yourself realizing that if these people were brought back to the second they were taken, then there won’t be time for anyone to realize they’ve changed. So this whole thing is sort of a purgatory scenario. We aren’t reforming lives. We’re saving souls.) Again, so what?
“But it is weird, right,” I said to my daughter, “that the ending is just like Fantastic Beasts?”
Neither of us likes the very ending of the movie. For one thing, it is just like Fantastic Beasts. They must have cut out the scene where Dr. Strange and Peter watch Fantastic Beasts together. Maybe the audience is expected to forget we just saw that ending so recently in another movie. (I mean, MJ is even standing there in front of baked goods. It’s more of a donut shop than a bakery, but still.)
What we dislike more than the ending’s familiarity, though, is its depressing bleakness. As the story progresses it gets increasingly rousing and full of friendships. Then suddenly the ending is so lonely and sad.
From a certain point of view, the action sequences in this film also seemed pretty lackluster, especially when compared to the memorable battles of Sam Raimi’s trilogy. But what this film lacks in innovative action, it makes up for in humor and emotional resonance.
Also at one point Peter makes an ill-considered promise to Flash (Tony Revolori). I expected more to come of that.
Overall:
I wish I could show Spider-Man: No Way Home to someone new who has seen all the other Spider-Man movies and would appreciate the fun surprises this film has to offer. I also wish my husband would hurry up and go see the movie so we can talk about it together. Spider-Man: No Way Home is by far the strongest blockbuster I can recall seeing all year. (Take that with a grain of salt, though, because I haven’t seen many movies in the theater this year, and my memory could be better.) More than anything, this movie made me want to watch every Spider-Man film since 2002 again, and mark my words, I’m going to do that soon!