Spider-Man: No Way Home | Review
In 2019, the legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese got a lot of online flack from comic book fans when he called Marvel movies “not cinema” and compared them to “theme parks.” A month later, he clarified his remarks, not by playing them down, but by explaining what he meant in greater depth. He said:
For me, for the filmmakers I came to love and respect, for my friends who started making movies around the same time that I did, cinema was about revelation — aesthetic, emotional and spiritual revelation. It was about characters — the complexity of people and their contradictory and sometimes paradoxical natures, the way they can hurt one another and love one another and suddenly come face to face with themselves.
. . . Many of the elements that define cinema as I know it are there in Marvel pictures. What’s not there is revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger. Nothing is at risk. The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes.
They are sequels in name but they are remakes in spirit, and everything in them is officially sanctioned because it can’t really be any other way. That’s the nature of modern film franchises: market-researched, audience-tested, vetted, modified, revetted and remodified until they’re ready for consumption.
And Scorsese is absolutely correct. For as well-made and enjoyable as Marvel movies (and superhero movies overall) are, they’re not cinema. I’ve complained countless times in my reviews of Marvel movies regarding their in-house, paint-by-numbers approach to storytelling. They lack creative risks or anything close to what Scorsese calls “aesthetic, emotional, and spiritual revelation.” There are a few exceptions, of course (like Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy), but for most of these types of films, the logic applies.
Scorsese’s words hold truth, but that doesn’t mean Marvel movies can’t be wildly entertaining, and that’s exactly what Spider-Man: No Way Home is. The third installment in Marvel and Sony’s co-production, directed by Jon Watts, and starring Tom Holland, is the type of massively ambitious superhero film that only Marvel Studios can pull off.
Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Spider-Man (Tom Holland)
After being doxxed by Jake Gyllenhaal’s villainous Mysterio in the previous film, Far From Home, and framed for his murder, Holland’s Peter Parker is struggling to keep his life from falling apart. His Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) and friends MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon) are sticking beside him, but they become collateral damage due to their close association with him.
Desperate for a solution, Peter asks fellow superhero Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to cast a spell to make everyone forget his secret identity. It’s safe to say, this doesn’t end well, and as the trailers have already shown, villains from across the multiverse show up and wreak havoc (aka the ones from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films starring Tobey Maguire, and Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man films starring Andrew Garfield).
To be honest, I was cautiously optimistic going into my first viewing of No Way Home. I think Tom Holland’s Spider-Man films have been great so far, but my biggest criticism of the MCU’s take on the character has always been the character not standing on his own. Holland’s first two Spider-Man films, Homecoming and Far From Home, relied on major connections to Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.); both films' villains are ones who turned bad because of Stark. And each film had a mentor figure for Peter, including Stark, Mysterio, and Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). The trailers for No Way Home showed a lot of Doctor Strange, who appeared to be the latest mentor for Peter. It’s upsetting because all of these creative decisions took the character away from being the “friendly neighborhood Spider-Man” and put him in a larger sandbox too preoccupied with The Avengers, and also because Peter already has a mentor figure back home—Aunt May.
Willem Dafoe returns as The Green Goblin
What also had me concerned was the large number of villains set to appear. The marketing has already confirmed the return of iconic villains from the previous two cinematic Spider-Man series: Willem Dafoe’s Dr. Norman Osborn/The Green Goblin, Alfred Molina’s Dr. Otto Octavius/Doc Ock, and Thomas Haden Church’s Flint Marko/Sandman from the Raimi trilogy, and Rhys Ifans’s Dr. Curt Connors/The Lizard and Jamie Foxx’s Max Dillon/Electro from Webb’s duology. I don’t know what it is with Spider-Man films and their need to have multiple villains in their series cappers (Spider-Man 3, The Amazing Spider-Man 2), but it never bodes well (it’s also funny how excited fans are for the return of these major characters, considering how most of them were ridiculed by critics and fans alike when their films originally came out—has nostalgia blinded everyone so much that it doesn’t matter what callback is provided so long as it’s provided anyway?).
So it’s with great pleasure to report that No Way Home sticks the landing, and then some! Doctor Strange isn’t Peter’s mentor figure. Aunt May finally gets the attention she deserves as Peter’s moral compass. The villains don’t overwhelm the film and are, instead, given some surprising depth that wasn’t given to most of them in their original features (Dafoe and Molina are especially great here, and seeing these two overqualified actors bounce off one another is a lot of fun). The villains’ reintroduction allows the film to go in some wonderfully surprising directions that subvert superhero tropes. Fighting and killing villains is the easy route, but the film asks “what if there’s a better way?” No Way Home takes an unexpectedly abolitionist route, believing in reform, not punishment.
Electro (Jamie Foxx), Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) and The Lizard (Rhys Ifans)
No Way Home is the darkest film in Holland’s trilogy. His Peter Parker is finally wrestling with what it means to be Spider-Man, and Tom Holland is downright outstanding in this (I might even say awards worthy). “With great power there must also come great responsibility” are the words that have kept the character grounded since the comic books. This film takes this idea and runs with it, testing Peter like never before, breaking him almost beyond repair. He finally grows up.
The film’s darkness is also what allows No Way Home to be the most moving film in Holland’s trilogy (there were at least three or four moments where I choked up and held back tears). Spider-Man has always been a character defined by huge losses since his comic book days, whether it’s Uncle Ben or Gwen Stacy. Peter must cope with unimaginable loss, yet he can’t let these deaths be meaningless. He must allow these deaths to lead him toward a greater purpose.
Peter Parker / Spider-Man (Tom Holland), MJ (Zendaya), and Ned (Jacob Batalon)
Having seen the film twice now, I’m confident in saying Spider-Man: No Way Home is the best moviegoing experience I’ve had since Avengers: Endgame (there was cheering from beginning to end, sometimes shaking the entire auditorium). It’s a film that balances grandiose storytelling, memorable characters, and fan service without feeling shallow (I’m looking at you, Rise of Skywalker). This isn’t to say the film is without flaws. I don’t like how easily the film glossed over the dramatic and legal ramifications from Mysterio’s scheme in the last film; it feels like screenwriters Chris McKenna (Community) and Erik Sommers (American Dad!) were uninterested in dealing with the fallout from Far From Home’s ending (which they wrote!) and just jumped right into a multiverse plot. This is the third Spider-Man film in a row that features villains that are not tied to Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, making him once again cleaning up other people’s messes. There’s some lapses in logic akin to Bruce Banner/The Hulk’s “I’m always angry” line from 2012’s The Avengers. And it’s genuinely concerning how much of today’s pop culture relies on nostalgia. But it’s hard to complain when the film is this much fun! This film doesn’t offer the cinematic revelations Scorsese spoke about. It’s a theme park ride that captures and maintains your attention long enough to make you forget about any of that.
And like how Endgame wrapped up ten years of storytelling in an epicly satisfying fashion, No Way Home manages to wrap up the legacy of two decades of Spider-Man films in stunning fashion, sometimes in ways we never knew we needed (unlike Andrew Garfield’s films, Tobey Maguire’s at least had a proper conclusion). The best part? No Way Home has an actual ending, unlike too many MCU films that have come out this year. It’s beautiful, touching, and teases a Spider-Man I’ve been waiting for ever since it got rebooted in 2017. It’s the type of ending that feels like a true ending—to the film and Holland’s trilogy—while leaving room for future installments to take the character in more exciting, and hopefully more grounded, directions. Welcome home, Spidey.
