Film Review: Spider-Man: No Way Home
Images courtesy of Sony Pictures.
The latest movie in the Spider-Man franchise continues the webslinger’s penchant for redefining what cinema can achieve. Quickly looking back on prior Spider-Man movies, this series has redefined what a superhero movie can achieve with the original trilogy, what a multiverse can achieve with Into the Spiderverse, and who the world’s most popular superhero is with Disney’s debut billion-dollar blowout, Homecoming.
Spider-Man as a vessel can accomplish literally anything and exists as a source of true originality in a bleak universe of cookie-cutter, clout-chasing, comic book-inspired cinema. Coming at us with a (mostly) original feature last time with 2019’s Far From Home, Disney, in partnership with Sony, has created what prior to December 2021, only existed as fan fiction… But this time with the actual budget to secure the rights to Spidey’s 20+ year catalogue of cinematic adventures. Those billions in box-office returns have been put to phenomenal use, I can confirm today.
There’s a fine line between what’s a spoiler for No Way Home and what has already been confirmed as pre-accepted fact – like, Sam Raimi’s Doc Oc returning, which feels like a fact everyone is already aware of - the tentacles are on the literal poster - but how much should be revealed before I’ve sold Disney’s third entry into the franchise as something truly special? Trick question – I already think I’ve done the job.
So, without spoiling a single thing, I’ll say that the movie was far funnier than I expected it to be. Don’t get me wrong, No Way Home is one of the worst nostalgia-bait offenders ever created, but I feel as though the genre-hardened Disney succeeded again in crafting tantalizing plot twists that justify this story existing. Even in a movie that could’ve just basked in audience’s appreciation for memories, Disney went above and beyond deliver scenes with the best pay-off since Endgame’s time-travelling ones.
The simplest concession to be made here, of course, is the fact that I grew up watching the original big screen adaptions of Spider-Man 20 years ago, and I prevailed through Marc Webb’s kinda funny smelling early 2010’s Amazing Spiderman adaptions, and spent my childhood immersed in the console tie-in games. Would younger or less committed viewers be as satiated with novel references and plotlines from movies that were knocking around when Disney was busy with Lilo & Stitch?
That’s the debate with nostalgia in general really, does a movie relish in, or does it add something to the source material? Besides countless loopholes that I’m sure enthusiasts will spend the next month or so ironing out, I can say that Disney certainly justifies dragging up all this baggage, if only to highlight their own iteration’s unique take on the character, with the most literal contrast between what has come before that cinema has ever seen.
Spiderman-Man: No Way Home is showing in cinemas now.