Spidey and his amazing friends swing into action with their installment Spider-Man: No Way Home. 2021 has been an up and down year for Marvel with mixed reviews. Both Black Widow and The Eternals received mixed reviews while Shang-Chi received raves. The clean winner however will be Spider-Man. No Way Home closes out the Tom Holland trilogy of films in an spectacular and emotionally driven way.
This review will not contain spoilers beyond what has already been seen in the trailers. No Way Home takes place shortly after the events in Far From Home where everyone learns that Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is Spider-Man. This begins a series of events that affects the lives of not only Peter but MJ, Ned and Aunt May. There are some who see Spider-Man as a hero. And there are others like J. Jonah Jameson who see him as a villain and the murderer of Mysterio (played by Jake Gyllenhaal).
Is there a Doctor in the house?
With the lives of those Peter cares about disrupted by the knowing his identity, he seeks the help of Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch). Thinking Strange is still the keeper of the time stone, Peter asks if the good doctor could go back in time and change certain events. Strange doesn’t have the stone anymore but offers to cast a spell that would make everyone forget Peter’s not so secret identity. Wong warns Strange of the potential consequences but he decides to cast it anyway. With Peter constantly changing the parameters of the spell, something very bad occurs. The spell rips at the fabric of time and space opening up the multiverse with sinister results.
Enter another Doctor!
As the multiverse overlaps into Peter’s world, a familiar foe of another Spider-Man enters. Doctor Otto Octavius (played once again by Alfred Molina). It doesn’t take long for Doc Ock to discover this isn’t the Peter he has fought in the past. Spidey is able to disable Doc’s mechanical arms and places him in a holding cell back to the Sanctorum. Other foes like Electro (Jamie Foxx) and The Sandman are also captured and imprisoned.
Elsewhere, Norman Osborne aka the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), wreaks havoc but the human side of his persona leads him to Aunt May for help. Peter takes him back to the Sanctorum and he, MJ and Ned try to figure out their next move. However, Dr. Strange has different plans. In order to restore the multiverse, Strange wants to send the villains back to their respective worlds even if it means sending them back to their death.
Peter feels that they can be saved and since it was his interference that brought them into his world, he was the one responsible for them. This sets up a fight between Strange and Spider-Man. Spidey gets the upper hand confining Strange in the Mirror Dimension.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.
The rest of the film is a race against time and dealing with the consequences of what we want versus what we need. No Way Home comes full circle on multiple levels (pun intended), where the past, present and potential future all meet. It’s an extravaganza of special effects and emotions. These emotions may make even the most jaded of film directors (and you know who you are) feel differently about such films in terms of their place in cinema. The feelings will run deep if you are vested as a fan of Spider-Man. This is Infinity War/Endgame level of emotions. Director Jon Watts delivers arguably the best live action Spider-Man film to date. Often in trilogies, the actors kind of phone it in. Not this ensemble. They brought it all the way home.
As with all Marvel films, please stay through the mid-credit and post credit scenes to catch a glance of the MCU’s future.
Directed by: Jon Watts
Starring: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jacob Batalon, Jon Favreau, Alfred Molina, Jamie Foxx, Willem Dafoe and Marisa Tomei
PG13 148 Mins
SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME – ****1/2 (out of 5 stars)
May the Dork be with you,
JPB
The Dork Knight
