How are you, dear boy?
Just trying to do better.
One of the biggest complaints about the MCU as it’s rolled on its bulldozery way is that you can’t go watch the new one unless you’ve watched all the others which is becoming a more and more gargantuan task. The correct time to start watching the MCU is ten years ago or else there’s nothing you can do. There’s validity to this criticism. But leave it to the MCU to just double down on it by opening the gates to the Multiverse and, in one fell swoop, adding SEVEN more movies to the total movies you need to have seen in order to get the maximum amount of value out of the latest MCU film, Spider-Man: No Way Home.
See, the MCU’s Peter Parker, once again delightfully played by Tom Holland, has been outed as Spider-Man, so he goes to Doctor Strange in hopes that Strange can use some kind of a spell to make everyone forget Spider-Man’s secret identity. Things go haywire, however, when that spell breaches the MCU, reaches into the multiverse and starts pulling people who know Spider-Man’s secret identity into the MCU from those other universes. These would include such figures as Willem Dafoe’s Norman Osborne/Green Goblin, Alfred Molina’s Otto Octavius/Doctor Octopus and Thomas Haden Church’s Flint Marko/Sandman (all from the Sam Raimi/Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies) and Rhys Ifan’s Curt Conners/The Lizard and Jamie Foxx’s Max what the **** was his last name God I don’t ******* know/Electro (from the Marc Webb/Andrew Garfield AMAZING Spider-Man movies). Eventually Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield also show up as their universe’s Peter Parkers and the stage is set for an epic smackdown. Oh, right, Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock/Venom shows up from those Venom movies, but that’s only in a credits scene, so I’ll allow that one because I love how much fun Tom Hardy has playing that ridiculous character.
So, look, this movie is ridiculously overstuffed. It’s that same old “too many villains” thing that has dogged comic book movies for decades. Having too many villians is exactly what sunk a couple of little movies you may have heard of called Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man 2. I think that’s what makes the glut of villains here feel even more egregious than usual: they literally pulled villains from MOVIES THAT HAD TOO MANY VILLAINS in order TO GIVE THIS MOVIE TOO MANY VILLAINS. There are some exposition related reasons why this movie wants to have a villain from each of the five previous Spider-Man movies (and they were probably also really patting themselves on the back for finally “technically” having a Sinister Six movie or something), but you could get around that, I think. We really don’t need Sandman or The Lizard. They’re the least interesting characters and they’re also entirely CGI creations; the only footage of Thomas Haden Church and Rhys Ifans in this movie are literally just shots from Spider-Man 2 & The Amazing Spider-Man. Here’s one way you can tell there’s too much going on here: Far From Home brought back the delightful J.K. Simmons as one of his most delightful characters, J. Jonah Jameson and he’s back in this movie, but the movie has no time for him and he has nothing to do. One of the most indelible performances/characters of all comic book cinema and he’s reduced to basically doing nothing memorable. Would I trade “Flint Marko” whinging some more about his daughter for ten more minutes of J.K. Simmons? Would I ever.
This movie also comes after the release of the animated film, Spider-Man: Into the Multiverse. This is a double-edged sword in my opinion. It means, on the one hand, that this movie can kind of trust that people who saw that movie are basically familiar with the multiverse as a concept. On the other hand, this movie has to contend with the fact that Into the Multiverse did the concept about a hundred times better and one is constantly being reminded of that movie while watching this one. One thing I didn’t like about No Way Home is that we went ahead and did the whole “With great power” bit, just with Aunt May instead of Uncle Ben. Oh, spoilers. Anyway, Aunt May dies and she gets the big line; one of the things I liked about this iteration of Spider-Man is that we just skipped all of that. I didn’t know we were skipping it all happening with Uncle Ben just so we could do it after all with Aunt May. Regardless, that stuff doesn’t work that well and that includes a scene where the three Spider-Men bond over the fact that they’ve all lost someone who gave them that lesson. The scene here isn’t terrible, but I was reminded of the exact same scene being in Into the Multiverse and that one made me actually cry, even though it included Spider-Ham and Noir Spider-Man. That movie, man. That Multiverse movie is one of the all-timers. Wait, what am I talking about? Oh, yeah, No Way Home.
Anyway, I feel like to this point I’ve been mostly negative and even a little snarky, but, end of the day, I liked this movie overall. I’m a fan of Tom Holland’s version of Peter Parker and Zendaya’s MJ and have been from the beginning. I liked the dynamic between Peter and Doctor Strange. And while I complained about some of the villains, I actually liked the other three. Alfred Molina, I thought, just went right back into character in a kind of crazy good way; his Doc Ock has always been one of the most tragic comic book movie villains and I liked his depiction here. Willem Dafoe’s performance as Green Goblin in that original Spider-Man movie has also always been a great turn and I thought he did a great job here as well. It’s just fun to watch Willem Dafoe be crazy, you know? This movie isn’t the most quotable of the MCU films, but “Norman’s on sabbatical, honey” is an instant classic. And I liked what they did with Jamie Foxx’s Electro; Foxx really deserved a better movie and a better written character than he got in Amazing Spider-Man 2 and I’m glad he got the chance to basically redeem the character. Speaking of which, I also really liked that this movie focused so heavily on HELPING the villains, on trying to cure them of the conditions that had rendered them monstrous or insane. That felt genuinely refreshing to me; yes, of course, they do eventually have to start punching each other, but I felt like this movie and the performances by the villains and the emotional baggage from the previous movies, really did make me feel something when it came to the villains being cured. This elevates this movie somewhat, in my opinion, over just a pure nostalgia-fest. This isn’t just bringing back Doc Ock for cheap thrills; it’s bringing him back to give him a better ending, a less tragic and sad ending, and seeing the madness leave Molina’s face was one of my favorite moments in this movie.
I think the same could be said of Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man as well. He’s another one who deserved better than he got. I thought he gave a really good performance in a couple of movies that were decent at best and godawful at worst. I guess that makes this the best movie Garfield got to be Spider-Man in and so I’m glad he got to do it; he honestly gives the performance of the movie for me. Tobey Maguire has less to do in terms of big emotional lifting and wrapping up any dangling plot threads or emotional baggage, but it is a pleasure to see him again and, for all the baggage that comes with the word “nostalgia” these days, maybe it’s overthinking it to try to go any deeper than that. It was cool to see him as Peter Parker again. Maybe that’s enough. Maybe this movie isn’t automatically cancer just because that’s enough. I mean, it’s also not automatically a masterpiece just because that’s enough. You get where I’m going with this.
So, end of the day, where am I really on this movie? I’m really positive actually. It still isn’t as good as Far From Home, but I’d say it’s better than Homecoming. It is self-referential in terms of being a blockbuster that’s kind of about blockbuster filmmaking, but it’s not as smart about it as Far From Home was. Still, this one’s just a ball of energetic entertainment and while I’d certainly have trimmed some fat (it was, hilariously, re-released to theaters as a LONGER movie; no thank you), it’s never really annoying or dull, just predictable at times. Not sure how I feel about that ending though; I probably won’t know for sure how I feel about it until we get the next one and we see how they execute the premise. The fact that I’ll be down for that says a lot about the ways this movie works all by itself. 3 ½ stars.
tl;dr – certainly flawed and VERY overstuffed, but it features some great performances, some real emotional heft and the “nostalgia” is deployed in a smarter and deeper way than expected. 3 ½ stars.