Spider-Man: No Way Home

Three’s A Crowd?????

No, absolutely not. Three isn’t a crowd in Spider-Man: No Way Home. The film brings three versions of the beloved Wallcrawler to the big screen in one big film and does a fine job for the most part. There are also five villains to contend with who, surprisingly, work quite well as a whole although a couple of them get shoved to the wayside in my opinion. If you’re looking for my spoiler free review, here it is: If you enjoyed the any of the Spider-Man films that starred any of the three Spideys in this flick, you’re going to enjoy this film. It does a fine job of blending the three heroes and their villains together without getting too confusing. It’s the most solid entry in the MCU since Captain America: The Winter Soldier as well. It’s not the best MCU flick out there, but it is the best one in a long time. Go see it. You won’t regret it.

So there you have it, my spoiler free review. Below this photo of Spidey and MJ, there be spoilers!!!

Spider-Man: No Way Home gives webslinging fans the closure that they deserve with Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s respective Spider-verses. The Tom Holland story in this film basically sets up what will most likely be the basis of the plot in Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness. In the film, Mysterio has revealed to the world that Peter Parker is Spider-Man and, as a result, has pretty much ruined the lives of MJ (Zendaya), Ned (Jacob Batalon), Happy (Jon Favreau), and Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), as well as poor Peter. In an attempt to fix things, Peter seeks out the help of Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch). Strange reluctantly agrees to help Peter but while he’s casting a spell to fix things, Peter alters the spell five times. This results in five villains from other universes entering Peter’s world. It also brings along Andrew Garfield Amazing Spider-Man and Tobey Maguire’s Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. Then things get a little bit screwy. Holland’s Spider-Man decides that he’s going to help “cure” the villains from the other universes and send them home where they will apparently arrive alive and well. By doing this, however, he causes even more trouble for his friends and family. He then teams up with Maguire and Garfield in order to cure the villains and then tries to have everything fixed yet again by Doctor Strange. It’s a pretty good plot but it’s also highly predictable.

Predictable, you say? Yes, it’s absolutely predictable. Of the five villains that come through to Peter’s world, I knew right away that Doctor Octopus and Sandman would want to be cured. Why? Because they really weren’t bad guys in their previous films. They were just good people placed into very bad situations. Electro? Oh, he started out as a decent enough guy, but once he tasted the electricity he wanted more of it. I figured that he would go either way in the movie and he did, literally, go from good to bad to good to bad and then good again. Lizard? Poor Lizard was an afterthought in this film. The one guy that I had complete confidence in going rogue was Green Goblin and he didn’t disappoint. Heck, he even went for the killshot on Aunt May (triggering some Maguire-like vengeance in Holland) and tried unsuccessfully to finish off Maguire’s Spider-Man. Does that mean that I disliked the film? Nope. I really enjoyed it. It was fun to see all three Spideys back on the screen and I loved seeing all of the villains return. But there were a few problems with the film.

Before I get into those problems I want to address some of the good things in this film. I’ve already mentioned how much I enjoyed seeing all of the Spider-Men and the villains back on the screen, but there were a lot of other good things about this film. First and foremost, the cast was strong. Zendaya has grown into her version of MJ. I didn’t care for her performance in Homecoming but she has impressed me in both of the sequels. She delivered one of the best performances in the bunch. Garfield comes in a close second and Maguire isn’t too far behind him. Of the villains, Willem Dafoe had the meatiest part as Green Goblin and he was given a lot more to do in this film than in his Maguire flick, but I can’t deny that Alfred Molina (Doc Ock) and Thomas Haden Church (Sandman) both did brilliant jobs as their respective villains. Electro was much better this time around but Jamie Foxx still seemed a bit off as the character. Rhys Ifans didn’t have much of anything to do in this film except to growl a bit and be the butt of a few dinosaur jokes.

I also enjoyed the action in this film. The CGI was obvious for pretty much the entire film, but the story held up enough that I looked beyond the film’s computer-generated shortcomings. I also liked many of the Easter eggs that popped up in the film. My favorite was the “Ditko” graffiti. I’m not going to tell you were it was because I want you to find it for yourself. I also enjoyed seeing Charlie Cox reprise his role as Matt Murdock/Daredevil. Many of the film’s scenes also hearkened back to the films of Maguire and Garfield. I enjoyed many of them but a few of them were pretty heavy handed. I also have to admit that with all of those Spideys and all of those villains running around, the film managed to stay fairly straightforward with ample time given to almost all of the characters. Perhaps the thing that I enjoyed the most is that with Peter no longer known by anybody as Spider-Man, the whole “Stark Industries supplies Spider-Man with all of his suits” business is done! That’s one of the biggest hang-ups that I have had with Holland’s Spider-Man. Overall it was a very good flick but some of the misfires bugged me.

Number One: Who in the heck was in charge of Benedict Cumberbatch’s hair and goatee???? They looked terribly fake on the screen.

Number Two: Why was there so much talking and “witty” banter between everyone all of the time? It’s funny when the Spideys all interact but it gets a bit long in the tooth as it continues throughout the film.

Number Three: We got five villains from the other Spider-verses but we had zero new baddies in Holland’s world unless you count Tom Hardy’s Venom in the mid-credits scene or MIT’s admissions department in the beginning of the film.

Number Four: Speaking of Venom, where was Topher Grace’s version???? I completely hated that character in Spider-Man 3 but it would have been wonderful to see him vindicated in this film. Plus, we could have had a decent Sinister Six outing in the movie.

Ultimately the good outweighs the bad in this film. On the surface it is your typical MCU film, generalized enough for mass audiences and film-only fans of Marvel who will wax (fairly recent) nostalgic about the heroes and villains of past versions of the character. It also contains just enough Easter eggs to appease fans of the actual comic books but also plenty that will make film-only fans feel “in the know” like comic readers. It gives the aforementioned closure to most of the villains introduced in the previous films of Garfield and Maguire as well. It’s a good film that deserves most of the accolades that it will most surely receive. It’s far from perfect but it’s the best Marvel film to come along in a long time in my opinion.

Thanks for reading my review. Please leave a comment whether you agree or disagree with me. I know that there are a ton of people out there that love this film wholeheartedly. That’s absolutely fine with me. I’m glad that they love it that much. I just hope that folks can look at this film beyond all of the hype and the rose-colored reviews that I’ve read so far. It’s good but it definitely isn’t perfect.