Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) Movie Review

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) Movie Review

There is always such a ridiculous amount of hype surrounding movies like Spider-Man: No Way Home before their release that it becomes a bit of a turnoff for me. In the early days of Henrysmovieguide, in the era of films like Captain America: Civil War and Batman v Superman, I would wrap myself up in online discussions and speculations over the trailers of huge blockbusters, the little easter eggs in the films themselves, rumors of movies to follow, and so on and so on. Over time I stopped concerning myself with things like that, and nowadays I just prefer to go into movies knowing only what the trailer gives away, at most. I don’t like the feeling of spoiling the movie for myself, which I feel like delving too deep into online rumors does. Unfortunately, No Way Home was spoiled from pretty much the very start. It seemed that as soon as this film began production, parts of the movie that would have been legitimately surprising to see in the theater were being revealed left and right by an assortment of sources. I’m not necessarily a “please don’t spoil the movie” type of person, but it did feel like some of the magic of the film had already been lost before I went to see this. If you haven’t seen this already, or haven’t even heard the widely-spread word of the spoilers yet, I’ll try to keep this review as spoiler-free as possible, although I might add in an extra paragraph at the very end with spoilers in it so I can comfortably talk about my thoughts on the movie. 

I also can’t really lay out much of the plot at all without giving major spoilers away for this movie and even the last one, so I’ll just try my best. No Way Home picks up almost exactly where Far From Home left off. Quentin Beck aka Mysterio’s (Jake Gyllenhaal; such a weird casting decision in my opinion) video recorded at the time of his death in which he reveals that the identity of Spider-Man is Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is being broadcast on huge billboard screens in NYC (something that always strikes me as very unrealistic about these type of movies). With this information made public, everyone suddenly knows about Peter’s secret identity. Peter and his friends MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon) are shunned and openly demonstrated against; Peter is framed as the ruthless killer responsibe for Beck’s death. Their college applications are all denied because of the controversy, and out of guilt and shame, Peter seeks the help of Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch). He asks Strange to whip up a spell that will make the world forget that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. The spell goes haphazardly, causing a massive intergalactic breach to occur, and drags in people from other universes who know that Spider-Man is Peter Parker. Now that these people from other universes have arrived in the “current” universe, Spider-Man and his friends have to find a way to send these people back safely to their universes; meanwhile, these people are turning on them. 

Writing that without necessarily spoiling anything specific was so tedious and covered almost none of the actual story, so hopefully that can serve as at least a semi-satisfactory plot synopsis. Honestly on second thought I’m not really sure how I’m gonna review this movie without spoiling it (Iron Man dies!!), so I’ll just try my best and see how far I can get. This movie achieves something that very few other huge movies like this do, which is offering so much fan service that it actually becomes a bold creative decision. At some point a few months before this film’s release, I saw a meme that said something along the lines of “I hope the new Spider-Man movie lives up to expectations,” along with a picture of “the expectations” that included pretty much every character from every Spider-Man movie ever, along with Batman and John Wick and RoboCop for good measure. I remember thinking to myself, “Why not?” Nothing like that had ever really been done before. I felt like the apparently very uptight people making these Marvel movies should just go all out and throw a bunch of random stuff into the movie, possibly even at the expense of the quality of the film. On one hand, yes, I do want a good movie, but on the other hand, I think it’d be almost more fun to have a truly unpredictable and unhinged modern superhero movie, something that we have never really gotten before. No Way Home does not include everything from the meme’s “expectations,” (unfortunately, Batman is not in the movie…just kidding, yes he is) but maybe my favorite thing about it is that it doesn’t shy away from finding a way to make everything work that could possibly work. If you’re a fan of the MCU or previous Spider-Man movies, trust me when I say that this will essentially feel like Fan Service: The Movie. And in my mind, that’s not a bad thing, because No Way Home takes its fan service to a nearly unprecedented level in a way that feels daring. This isn’t your run-of-the-mill Spider-Man movie like Far From Home kinda was (not a bad movie, but still). No Way Home also balances everything it has going on very well; it never feels overdone or especially messy, which is impressive considering how much it brings upon itself. I’m not sure how many more Tom Holland Spider-Man movies they’re planning to make, but I felt like this was a super solid finish to the trilogy. The ending is interesting and not an ending you’d think they’d want to wrap everything up with, so future films seem like a guarantee, but I’m not really sure where there is to go from here. Unless Spider-Man goes to space or something (oh wait, he’s already done that), off the top of my head I can’t really imagine a way for there to be any sort of next movie that’s bigger in scale than this. To me, this is the movie where Tom Holland finally proves that he’s a good Spider-Man. Sure, he’s been a “good” Spider-Man, and I haven’t had a problem with him previously, but until No Way Home I hadn’t really gotten that more dramatic, “battle within” feel out of his role. It feels like Peter Parker really becomes a man in this movie, beyond the naive high schooler he’s been in previous films. I would say most of the cast does a good job here. Jacob Batalon plays Ned with enough awkward enthusiasm to make his character likeable. Zendaya’s character isn’t really given time to do much in this movie; she was a more prominent feature of the last few Spider-Man films. There are points in the movie where I feel like there are too many jokes being made and to say every single joke lands would, in my opinion, be untrue. Which is honestly to be expected to a degree. Marvel makes movies for a very large audience and some of the jokes that may be targeted toward a slightly younger or easier-to-make-laugh audience might come across as slightly lame to me, but that’s not to say I didn’t laugh or have fun during the movie. No Way Home is honestly a blast and it’s for sure a good movie to watch on a big screen. It seems like every time a Marvel movie comes out, the critics rush to call it a “spectacular thrill ride” or something like that, but I would agree that this one lives up to the hype. 

I might just skip to the “end paragraph” now so that I can talk with spoilers in another paragraph below this. Spider-Man: No Way Home is a movie that will surely leave anyone who has any investment in Marvel or the Spider-Man saga more than satisfied. If you’re into big-budget blockbusters at all, you’ll get something out of this movie. Personally, I wouldn’t jump to calling it the best Marvel movie ever or anything, but it pretty much hits every expectation I could’ve had. This movie seems to be already very well-regarded by fans, and deservedly so. I would probably give this an A- as a grade. It’s not my favorite Spider-Man movie ever, but it’s one of the better ones, and in terms of another addition to the MCU’s lineup, it doesn’t really get too much better than this.

Review paragraph with spoilers:

So, yes, the other Spider-Men (Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield) and a bunch of the old villains, including Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), Dr. Octopus (Alfred Molina), Electro (Jamie Foxx), Sandman (Thomas Haden Church), and Lizard (Rhys Ifans) all come back and are in this movie. J.K. Simmons comes back as J. Jonah Jameson too, by the way. Even though I pretty much already knew it was coming, it was still sort of crazy to see them back in No Way Home. When Garfield and especially Maguire walked onto the screen in the theater, a bunch of people in the crowd clapped and cheered, which is something that I don’t see very often. As someone who has seen every live-action Spider-Man movie and has a certain place in my heart for the original Sam Raimi trilogy especially (those will always be the best Spider-Man movies as far as I’m concerned), it was cool to see all three Spider-Men teaming up to fight all of the villains at once. The conversations between them are a definite highlight of the movie. One of my favorite moments of the whole film is when Garfield’s Spider-Man saves MJ from falling off the Statue of Liberty as a redemption for when he failed to save Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) when she fell off a building in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. I kinda wish there had been some sort of reference to the emo phase of Peter Parker in Spider-Man 3 (the most underrated Spider-Man movie, and maybe one of the overhated movies of all time), but you can only ask for so much I suppose. One small criticism I have is how this movie handled some of the villains, though. Jamie Foxx’s Electro comes across as sort of a one-liner machine and I guess he’s supposed to be funny but it doesn’t really work in my opinion. Willem Dafoe still brings an appropriate amount of menace to his role as the Green Goblin, but he’s just so old and the film trying to frame him as some sort of legitimate threat came across as sort of weak. I’m glad they brought everyone back but Sandman and the Lizard also had so few lines that it seems like they came back just for the sake of the audience recognizing them and not much else. I did, however, like how they made Dr. Octopus a “good guy” for the majority of the film. So, yeah, I guess those are my thoughts with spoilers.