Friendly Neighborhood Spider-...Mans?

Film: Spider-Man: No Way Home
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

A couple of years ago, I would have happily told you that I was fully on board with all of the MCU properties, or at least most of them. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but when I watched Avengers: Endgame, some of that ended for me. It felt like we had reached the end of a complete story (which we had, of course), and knowing what I know about comic books, I know that nothing ever really gets resolved. Finishing Endgame felt like a good place to get off the ride. And yet, I think it might be impossible to be fully abreast of modern culture without staying at least a little familiar with the later stories. And so, here I am finishing up the latest Spider-Man troika with Spider-Man: No Way Home.

No longer content with simpler stories of a hero taking on an enemy, or even several enemies, we’re going full-tilt into the Multiverse with this one. At the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home, the secret identity of Spider-Man as Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is revealed to the world, and he is held responsible for the death of Mysterio, who was actually the bad guy the whole time. With his secret out, his life becomes a trainwreck; he is constantly harassed, and because of the scandal, he is refused admission to every college he applies for. Worse, the same thing happens to his friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) and Parker’s girlfriend MJ (Zendaya).

In desperation, Peter goes to Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and asks for him to cast a spell that essentially causes everyone in the world to forget he is Spider-Man. But, he keeps adding conditions to the spell and it spirals out of control. Strange contains the spell as best he can, but a few things creep through the cracks. Essentially, the spell has opened up some portals from the Multiverse, and other Spider-Mans (Spider-Men?) and other universe villains creep through. What this means for us in the audience is that this movie is going to connect the previous two Spider-Man universes with the Marvel Universe. We’ll get original trilogy Spider-Man Tobey Maguire, along with his Green Goblin/Normal Osbourne (Willem Dafoe), Otto Octavius/Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina), and Sandman/Flint Marko (Thomas Haden Church). From the second set of movies, we get another Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield), Lizard (Rhys Ifans), and Max Dillon/Electro (Jamie Foxx).

The Peter Parker of this universe essentially teams up with the Peter Parkers when he learns that sending the other universe villains back to their own universe will essentially put them back where they were moments before they were killed. He instead decides to cure them, reversing their various psychopathies or physical issues before sending them back to their own places. Of course, this is complicated by the fact that they don’t want to go back, and in the case of Norman Osbourne, don’t want the cure.

There’s a lot here that works. Tom Holland, at least for me, is the right person to actually play Spider-Man. He’s always been a teen, and most commonly depicted as a kid in high school. Holland looks the part far more than either Maguire or Garfield did. There are also a lot of nice “comparing the different Spider-Man aspects” to the film that honestly felt like it owed a large debt to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. It also doesn’t pull any punches, including the death of a beloved character.

I’m a little bit at a disadvantage here since I never saw either of the Andrew Garfield movies. There’s a lot of loose ends flying around in this movie that need to get tied up, and there is some sense of needing to know some of the backstory from the other films to really follow what is happening. You could easily watch the first two films of this trilogy having never seen a previous Spider-Man film or anything much from the MCU. That’s changed here—this one is fully immersed in MCU lore and requires at least passing knowledge of the Maguire and Garfield roles.

It is, of course, big and blustery with big fights and lots of property destruction. That’s par for the course. Spider-Man: No Way Home is also close to 150 minutes long, including the credits, which also include a post-credits sequence that brings Eddie Brock/Venom (Tom Hardy) into the MCU and a teaser trailer for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Honestly, this movie is fine. It’s busier than it needs to be—not a lot happens with Connors/Lizard, for instance, and he feels like an afterthought much of the time. The same is kind of true with Flint Marko/Sandman, seemingly here because we need a villain representative from all three of Maguire’s movies and both of Garfield’s. The plot generally does work, and the casting, as always is top-notch. J.K. Simmons, Marisa Tomei, and Benedict Wong are always standouts.

And so I suppose I’m a little torn. This is good, but it’s also overwhelming, loud, and filled with a lot of crashing stuff and noise and thunder. And for all of this, they couldn’t fully replicate the “Spider-Man pointing at himself” meme.

Why to watch Spider-Man: No Way Home: Multiple Spider-Mans/Men is a fun idea.
Why not to watch: It’s loud and probably 20 minutes too long.