I love the Disney Parks and my all-time favorite ride is the now defunct The Great Movie Ride. For those unfamiliar, it’s a pretty simple dark ride that movies you through rooms of animatronic scenes from classic movies of the 1920s to 1980s. They do their best to give it a story, having a gangster take over the ride from the ride operator midway through. It’s pretty forced, but I appreciate the effort. The finale of the ride is a video montage of film history, cutting together hundreds of films, famous scenes, and iconic songs and scores. The emotions of that ride were cheaply gained but authentic, and ultimately, I’d rather have it make me feel something than make perfect sense.
I bring this up, because that’s exactly my opinion of Spider-Man: No Way Home. It’s a movie that struggles to justify its plot but makes up for it in the emotions it brings out.
Marvel and Sony have been advertising this movie for a while on the idea that it’s a crossover of 3 generations of Spider-Man films. Alfred Molina’s Doc Oc was prominently featured in the trailers. Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin was strongly hinted at. I think everyone paying any attention figured seeing Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire was a question of when and how much, not if. Ultimately, they do show up for significant parts but not before a lot of really forced plotting.
The idea for this movie is that Peter Parker (Tom Holland) has been revealed as Spider-Man and it’s ruining his life more than all the other Avengers for some reason. He convinces Dr. Strange to cast a spell to make everyone forget his identity, but Peter changes his parameters midway through and ruins it. That opens the gates to let a few villains from other multi-verses into his universe. It just so happens that it’s villains from the worlds of the 2002 and 2012 movies. Instead of simply capturing the villains (which he does pretty easily) and sending them back, Peter decides it’s better to try and reform them first. This has disastrous consequences and eventually requires him to recruit two other Spider-Men into his universe: Tobey and Andrew.
That all is a stretch. It screams “fan service”. It’s a painfully reverse-engineered screenplay. I applaud the filmmakers for how well they integrated ideas like the multi-verse from other ends of the MCU into this for the story, but it’s undeniable that over an hour of the movie is spent setting up a chess board in only somewhat engaging ways.
That said, I don’t care. And there are two reasons for this. 1) Once the Spider-Men are together, they are so much fun. Ignoring the film quality, they’ve never cast a bad Spider-Man and seeing the different takes on the same character gave the movie so much life. Not to mention most of the villains are fun. Much of the Sam Rami movies’ success was Willem Dafoe and Alfred Molina as great villains. Anything to bring them back is welcome, since the modern MCU continues to have a villain problem. 2) Like The Great Movie Ride, No Way Home understands the power of using history to connect with an audience. I got chills seeing Andrew and especially Tobey show up as 20 years of the franchise came flooding into my brain. It’s a weird evolution of the MCU. Step 1: Bring the heroes they introduced together (The Avengers). Step 2: Payoff years of their own mythology (Avengers: Endgame). Step 3: Payoff decades of work with Marvel characters all-around (No Way Home). Between Into the Spider-Verse and this, the Spider-Man franchise has turned into the most self-examining superhero franchise and knows how to play on the audience’s past knowledge and expectations for new story.
What’s really crazy is when you start going galaxy brain on this. This movie is fundamentally a factory reset that allows Sony to take more control over the character. Think about it. Aunt May is dead and delivers the “great power, great responsibility” line, which is traditionally the kicking off point for Spider-Man. He’s back to a hidden identity. The Avengers have all forgotten him, so he’s not beholden to those team ups. As a struggling nobody in New York, he can be a photographer selling pictures of Spider-Man to J. Jonah Jameson. Marvel just gifted Sony a clean slate. The only downside is no Zendaya as MJ if they continue with this angle*.
*Btw: That final scene between Peter and MJ was just terrific. If that really is the farewell to MJ, then it’s a damn great one. Zendaya and Tom Holland played that so well.
Then there’s the fact that neither previous Spider-Man franchise had a proper ending, and No Way Home actually completed those arcs to an extent. It sounds like Tobey’s Peter and Mary Jane made things work. He’s lasted into “middle-back pain” age and has found some peace. Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man movies were abruptly ended because they weren’t good. Garfield was never the problem with them though. The one aspect of those movies that worked was him and Emma Stone’s chemistry, so Gwen’s death is the only moment of significance from the films. He gets to make good on that by saving MJ in the way that he couldn’t save Gwen. A surprisingly moving scene.
I suspect this movie will never be better than it is at this moment. It’s a film designed for surprise and delight. You’re supposed to come out of that movie beaming, and I was. Over time, when the novelty of the crossover wears off, I’m sure the sweaty place-setting and pacing problems will be more noticeable. I sure as hell enjoyed the movie though. I could get into some proper review points like saying who in the cast worked best or praise the action-set pieces, but there’s no point. The product remains consistent in those ways. No Way Home just got the emotion right better than nearly any other MCU movie.
Verdict: Strongly Recommend
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