Spider-Man: No Way Home
Year: 2021
Rating: PG-13
Length: 148 minutes / 2.47 hours
First off, if you haven’t seen this movie yet, I want to warn you that there are spoilers in this review. There’s no way I can talk about this movie freely without divulging key plot points. With this out of the way, I want to recognize that nostalgia played a big part in the hype for this third entry in the Tom Holland Spider-Man series. No Way Home is the kind of film that I figured could never be made due to all the different rights needed (much like Ready Player One (2018) and all its nerdy references). That Marvel and Sony pulled this off is testament to their ability to make the impossible happen.
I was glad that this latest reboot of the Spider-Man franchise forewent the “origin story” in Homecoming (2017). Little did I know, they’d pull the same trick that Skyfall (2012) did with the James Bond franchise by putting the origin story in the third film. However, No Way Home had a lot of baggage to carry from the previous Spider-Man movies that either fizzled out or failed to be made. Bringing back villains from these previous entries was a genius move, even if it didn’t fully complete the “Sinister Six” grouping that fans would have liked.
With Marvel’s introduction of the multiverse into their cinematic canon, they primed No Way Home to bring all three Spider-Men together to find the redemption they failed to obtain in their respective series. Unfortunately, the one reason I have to take a star away from my review of this movie is that they spend far too much time merely wallowing in nostalgic references. Like, I get it, these Spider-Men want to show how their experiences match, but when they’re literally spending minutes on screen just quipping back-and-forth moments from the previous movies, it got me rolling my eyes and waiting for it to end. Ultimately, though, this was a strong demarcation for the Tom Holland era of the franchise, and a great action-filled movie as well.
An excellent and well-thought-out cash-in on 20 years of Spider-Man nostalgia, I give Spider-Man: No Way Home 4.0 stars out of 5.
