Spider-Man: No Way Home — Review Thread

Much has been made about the future of both the MCU in its post-Avengers life as well as the future of theatrical distribution for movies in general, and both are inextricably linked. In 2021, not much was able to break through aside from modest numbers here and there with the pandemic still very much in our lives. One thing can be certain though: Marvel movies are unstoppable at the box office no matter what's going on in the outside world. Marvel entered the next phase of films following the monumental success of Avengers: Endgame with their most under-the-radar lineup yet among Black Widow, Shang-Chi, and the critically panned Eternals and yet each of them walked away with pretty impressive takeaways considering the lack of built-in marquee around them. So given their success, all eyes turned to Marvel's surefire hit to cap off another year living in corona - Spider-Man: No Way Home. The hype for the latest film featuring one of the most popular characters in the world was certainly palpable, and even doing your best to avoid spoilers felt like a losing battle as speculation and theories swirled around every frame of its trailer. After being served appetizers, it's finally time for the main course and No Way Home absolutely delivers, though it might have leaned too much into fan service to the detriment of really nailing down all of its lofty goals.

Spider-Man has always worked as a character for multiple reasons, one of which being that Peter Parker (played again by Tom Holland) is a kid and while well-meaning manages to screw things up for himself and those around him and has to fix it all. He's a protagonist that naturally creates dramatic situations, and his big heart often doubles down on these issues which has inherently made him a more interesting superhero than most of his peers. No Way Home leans on these elements by picking up where Far From Home left off where Peter's identity has been revealed to the whole world, who not only know who he is but view him as a pariah for killing Mysterio in a bit of dramatic irony that doesn't stretch much beyond the first twenty minutes. This is a great launching pad for the movie to unfold from - as not only is Peter's life turned completely upside-down - but so are his friends and family, namely that of MJ (Zendaya) and Aunt May (Marisa Tomei). Peter, being the selfless guy he is, can't stomach that their lives are being hurt by association and so he enlists the help of Doctor Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to concoct a spell where everyone will forget that he's Spider-Man. Well, Peter bumbles things up right on cue and the spell goes awry, resulting in villains from Spider-Man movies of the past returning. We're treated to Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina) from Spider-Man 2, Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe) from Spider-Man, Electrode (Jamie Foxx) from The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and to very much lesser extents The Lizard (Rhys Ifans) and Sandman (Thomas Hayden Church). For a franchise that's remolded itself into three iterations to bring all of these villains back is pretty damn cool, and their arrivals all work pretty well. Marvel has proven themselves to be the masters in balancing acts of juggling several characters in one film, and while only three of them actually matter in the grand scheme of things it's a giddy spectacle to take in nonetheless.

Essentially what the film boils down to is that Peter - much to the behest of Dr. Strange who wants to simply exterminate these villains since it's their fate - wants to do more than send them back but wants to turn them from evil back to the good people they once were before Spider-Man inexplicably messed them up. It's an interesting route to pursue and certainly fitting of Peter as a character, but things do get a little messy here. Peter creates a serum that will destroy their evil impulses and make them good again, a silly plot device even for a comic book film. It's a lot easier than him sitting down with each and playing Freud, but I never really bought it either. The other issue is that they don't have a goal in this movie other than killing Spider-Man, so once they arrive there's little actually driving the plot and later the villains are removed entirely for awhile just seemingly waiting around to Spider-Man to coax them out of whatever the hell it is they're doing. It becomes evident that not a lot of thought beyond getting all of them together onscreen went into all of this, and if the heroes get to have their fun and banter amongst one another why not them too? In the end as cool as it is to see all of these entities on the screen at once, not even Marvel can divide and conquer well enough to give them all a reason and purpose.

Which brings me to the biggest spoilers of the MCU outside of the Avengers films where At the same time though, upon leaving the theater it sets in that all these diversions are sort of just that, and the fan service overload has certainly made more interesting plot lines and paths to pursue take a backseat as a casualty. I suppose that's always the tradeoff when it comes to packing in all of the best ideas that people have dreamed up of seeing on the big screen since they were children actually happen, and most will gladly take the epic fan service any day.

Having said that, the film does ultimately do what the franchise under Tom Holland has always done. After Peter makes the ultimate decision in a movie full of tough choices, This is a bold story device that will be extremely interesting to see how it plays out in the next installment, but once again Spider-Man has proven to be Marvel's blessing in always being able to move the franchise and character along with more interesting ideas than a lot of his peers because of the very human relationships that are at the character's core. Despite making a largely plotless film that can certainly be dismissed as an entertaining jaunt of extreme fan service by its detractors, the movie also ends in an even more interesting place than it begins that both closes a chapter and also opens up numerous possibilities of where to go next. There are things to criticize undoubtedly, but Spider-Man: No Way Home delivers the blockbuster goods and continues to take the character in the most interesting direction of any of Marvel's current offerings.

8/10 

Spider-Man: No Way Home(12/27/2021)

I’ve had my ups and my downs with the Marvel Cinematic Universe but without exception I’ve seen every one of their movies in the theaters and while I haven’t seen all of them opening night I almost always went to see them within the first couple of days of release. There have been a couple of exceptions, but generally speaking I’m pretty stoked to see them, especially in the last couple of years. That has been somewhat tested this year, though not really by my choosing. It took me six days of waiting in order to see Shang-Chi and Eternals, which probably doesn’t seem very long to normal people but for someone trying to remain in “the discourse” that’s quite the pain. And the reason for these delays is, of course, COVID. With the virus floating around it just seemed irresponsible to go to these movies while the crowds are too big to maintain reasonable social distancing. Fortunately the crowds for those movies did thin out enough to slip into weekday afternoon screenings shortly after release and not have to deal with crowds that were too out of control. That was not the case with Spider-Man: No Way Home. The movie released right at the onset of the Omicron Varient, when you’d think people were at their most afraid to go to the movies than ever, but instead the audiences who shunned cinema-going all year suddenly decided that this was the time to absolutely pack in the theaters and every damn screening of the thing was basically sold out for the better part of ten days. I finally got into a screening that was only about half full after its second weekend, which still doesn’t seem like the most responsible thing I’ve ever done, but it did allow me to finally stop running in fear from spoilers on the internet so I guess that’s a relief.

The film picks up right where Spider-Man: Far From Home left off: with Peter Parker (Tom Holland) having his identity as Spider-Man revealed to the world by J. Jonah Jameson (J. K. Simmons). Parker is able to dodge legal liability from the deceased Mysterio’s attempts to frame him but public opinion is divided about him and this scrutiny extends to his girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) and best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon). When this notoriety affects all three of their ability to get into MIT as they had planned Parker decides to take something of a desperate action. He visits Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and asks if there is some sort of sorcery that can be used to somehow solve his problem and Strange agrees but in the process of casting the spell something goes wrong and Strange needs to contain it rather than let it go through and asks Parker to leave. On his way out he gets a hot tip that an MIT representative is on the highway heading to the airport and he swings out to the highway overpass in order to try to convince her to let MJ and Ned in but then something bizarre happens: the highway is attacked by Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina)… the one we all saw in the 2004 film Spider-Man 2. Soon it becomes apparent that Dr. Strange’s spell did have some odd side effects because it soon becomes apparent that the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe) and other villains from alternate Spider-Man universes have shown up in this continuity and Spider-Man will need to hustle to stop them all and send them back where they belong.

So, obviously the big novelty of this movie is that it’s using the concept of the “multi-verse” to make this a crossover with Sony’s pre-MCU Spider-Man movies, thus officially making them canon in a way. As pure fan service that’s really cool but there are some downsides. First and foremost three of the five movies they’re drawing characters from kind of suck. Spider-Man 3 was plainly kind of a disaster and I didn’t like either of Andrew Gafield’s Spider-Man movies even a little. Jamie Foxx’s Electro is a bad character, I barely even remembered what The Lizard’s deal was, and while The Sandman looked cool he does not have an arc I’m remotely attached to. Truth be told I was never much of a fan of the Willem Dafoe Green Goblin either; I dug his performance but I always thought his costume kind of sucked, so really Alfred Molina’s Dr. Octopus is the only villain here that I’m unreservedly happy to have back. The film does try to undo some of the mistakes of the past in realizing some of these characters (like getting rid of Electro’s stupid blue makeup) there’s only so much they can really do to try to make some of these characters work and that’s a problem and the way the film almost seems to pause for applause whenever some of these characters show up is kind of cringe.

I would also note that I find the magical conceits used to make these crossovers happen did not make a ton of sense to me. Dr. Strange generally behaves in what strikes me as a fairly out of character way to be trying to do this memory erasure spell in the first place and the fact that the spell goes awry through a sort of silly comedy is a bit weak to rest a film on. I also found Strange’s rather vague description that the spell is, and I paraphrase, “drawing people who know Peter Parker is Spider-Man into this universe” seems a bit odd given that this phenomenon is pretty selective about who it draws in: where is the Kirsten Dunst Mary Jane or the Emma Stone Gwen Stacy or the James Franco Harry Osborne or any number of other non-super villains who know Spider-Man’s identity? There are various financial (or in the case of Franco moral) reasons these actors aren’t here and there likely wouldn’t have been a place in the movie for them anyway, but a clearer explanation for who is crossing into the universe and why would have been appreciated (and don’t get me started on how little sense the post-credits cameo makes). Without getting too deep into spoilers I also don’t really get how the ultimate resolution to this predicament works either and how it doesn’t undo most of what Spider-Man was trying to accomplish through much of the rest of the movie.

Having said that, the Tom Holland Spider-Man universe has a pretty strong foundation to work from and it remains a pretty strong here. The supporting cast we’ve come to enjoy (Zendaya, Jacob Batalon, Marisa Tomei, Jon Favreau, etc.) has not really missed a beat and Jon Watts continues to impress behind the camera. I have no idea if this guy can direct outside the MCU, and frankly I have a hunch that like the Russo Brothers his skills may well not translate to anything grittier, but he plainly understands the right tone for Spider-Man and knows his audience. After a year of kind of weak MCU movies I think this did come closer to recapturing that magic audiences have come to expect from these movies and I appreciate that too, but after watching it I did feel I was a touch unsatisfied. The film’s status as the movie that’s “saving theaters” by becoming a record-setting hit may have imbued it with an Avengers like air of importance for this franchise that it was maybe never meant to have and an event status it can’t quite live up to. Slight resentment that I needed to compromise my health to see the damn thing may also have biased me against it just a bit. That said I don’t think this is all a matter of context there are script issues that left me unsure about this thing and the fan service nature of its most prominent elements is ultimately kind of hollow. I fear I’ve been more negative about this movie than I intended to be, though I also fear I’m giving it a bit of a pass on certain things out of fanboyism, it’s kind of a movie that feels a bit mood dependent in how much you’re inclined to forgive it for holes and circumstance did not have me in the most forgiving mood when I watched it.

*** out of Five

Well, that "reveal" was 75% spoiled for me (and my audience) well ahead of time and was kind of predictable by that point in the movie generally so for me it just felt kind of awkward when the movie just stopped for a tick at the reveals.  As for Garfield... hated him then, hate him now, and hate him in most other roles he plays too for that matter.  Possibly my least favorite major actor working today, and he's still dopey looking here.  Frankly Tobey Maguire feels pretty rusty here too, neither actor really does anything to reflect that their characters have grown or changed over the years since we left off with them, it's just a pretty uninteresting way to use both of them.

Loved the movie
9/10

As someone who has a solid grasp of the notion of alternate realities, I was very pleased with how time travel was handled in Endgame.  They actually handled it the way quantum theory is generally understood, even though most of the audience didn't get it.  Looking at No Way Home through that same lens opens up a number of new timelines that I need to write down so I can properly wrap my brain around it.  Here is as good a place as any. 

To begin with, the timelines of the multiverse in which Green Goblin, Doc Ock, et al are from still exist, and they still died in them.  When those characters were drawn out of their universes, they created new timelines, rather than eliminating existing ones. At this point, there is the timeline in which they were killed fighting Spidey (or were in jail/on the run/on vacation in some cases and destined to die much later), and a timeline in which they disappeared entirely at some point while life in that universe went on without them forever.  When Toby and Andrew were pulled from their respective timelines, their disappearance would also have created new timelines that would go on without them forever.

During the finale in the MCU timeline when the Sinister Six got sent away by Dr. Strange, their reappearances back where they came from would again have created new timelines.  They will encounter people who are indistinguishable from who they knew before they came to the MCU, but they aren't truly the same.  This also applies to Toby and Andrew.  They went to a timeline full of people they're familiar with, but the universe in which they disappeared will continue to exist as well. 

Since they all came from different points in their respective timelines, they're all going to different universes, too.  Older Toby isn't going to run into Norman or Otto when he gets back.  He might encounter Sandman again, but it won't be the Sandman he fought in the MCU.  It will be one that has the same memories as the one he met years before.  What's really interesting is that Norman can tell the Otto of his new timeline not to do anything crazy, like install an A.I. into his nervous system with nothing but a tiny, easily shorted out microchip to maintain control of it.  Maybe tell the lab running weird experiments on sand to maintain better security on their testing grounds and prevent Flint from becoming Sandman, and warn Peter about the dangers of playing with alien goo, and his Dr. Connors about screwing around with reptile DNA.

So, given the ending of the movie...

I'll get to it eventually...

Noted for Film Club!

The villains are ridiculous, the soundtrack selections are embarrassing, and Garfield looks less like a real teenager than the Dear Evan Hansen guy. They only exist to extend the license deal on the character and the mythology they set up to try to turn it into an extended universe are laughable.  These are movies that shouldn't exist and if anyone tells you they are somehow "redeemed" by No Way Home don't believe them.

Doesn't that movie end with a teenage girl having her neck broken tragically?  That movie tries to get way too sincerely emotional at the end to play the "it's trying to be cheesy" card.