Swinging into theaters to the tune of raucous crowds is Marvel Studios’ 27th entry in their cinematic universe, Spider-Man: No Way Home. The third entry in the sub-franchise owned by Sony and Marvel. This time Peter Parker faces his biggest, most revered foes in the wake of his reveal to the entire world. No Way Home uses this as the foundation for the biggest Spider-Man story ever put to film, but it proves to be too much for the script to handle in another disappointing adventure for Marvel’s cash cow. Beyond a career best turn for Tom Holland, a deft Jon Watts hand and eye in the director’s chair, and Michael Giacchino waving his hands like a madman for the score composition, No Way Home is a bloated, tired, nonsensical entry in the Spider-Man mythos that weaponizes nostalgia to make us forget how much of it makes very little sense.
The shortcomings of Peter’s previous adventures in the MCU stem from a misunderstanding of definitive traits. This character flourishes with less, because it means more. Peter’s ability to walk the tightrope of living two lives in the face of constant danger allows us the opportunity to empathize with the difficulties of being normal under heroic circumstances. It shows us that even the most physically capable heroes still have to deal with the minutiae of life. No Way Home is the first entry that understands this. The minutiae may be major because the story entails it, but the principle of understanding that being Spider-Man and being Peter Parker is difficult, is understood. The wants of Peter Parker conflict with the burdens of being Spider-Man, and forcing him to come to terms with his desires is a true source of conflict. It shows that sometimes it isn’t villains getting in the way, it can be yourself that is the biggest obstacle, and reconciling with that can forge you into the person you need to be for the people around you. There’s something poignant and universally heroic about that principle, and Spider-Man may very well be the one that embodies it the best. This story tries to do just that, but through a surprising amount of irony, it can’t get out of it’s own way. Jon Watts manages to direct this better than his previous attempts, but that only says so much because there isn’t any distinct style or flourish that sets him apart from anyone else who directs in this universe. At the very least, it’s far more adequate and honed in on an encompassing idea than what we’ve seen before, and that’s admirable. The same can be said for composer Michael Giacchino. A guy who never seems to stop finding work in Hollywood for being perfectly okay, carries some of the film. He fluidly merges musical cues of various characters into the audible symbolism of its centerpiece. Not only does it elevate poor action sequences, overlay predictably dumb dialogue, but it will perk your ears upright. The stringing of Dr. Strange’s mysticism marrying the horns of Spider-Man blaring throughout a set piece is a welcome surprise for a franchise that typically forgets how important music is to a movie. With that being said; that’s all there is to say about No Way Home that is good.
Any fear of No Way Home catering to fanservice and weaponizing it’s nostalgia bait through returning cast members from previous films, is a harrowing, shameful truth. With the marketing for the film centered around the long-awaited return of Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock, Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin, and Jamie Foxx’s Electro (for all five people that wanted it), you had to begin to wonder how far they were going to push it. Not too long after, the confirmation of Rhys Ifan’s Lizard and Thomas Haden Church’s Sandman were announced as well, and No Way Home began to take shape with sinister circumstances for the wall crawler. With this in mind it became clear what type of movie No Way Home was going to be, and that boded well for many fans, but concerned anybody who was already skeptical of this approach to Spider-Man. Often promoted as Spider-Man’s “Endgame”, it lives up to the comparison, but for all the wrong reasons. Much like Endgame, No Way Home is a bonafide “trailer movie”. There’s some semblance of an exoskeleton meant to take the form of a broader picture, but it remains to be seen because the script is madly in love with plot over narrative. Which is what all trailers do. They sell the sizzle, but they don’t sell the steak of the narrative, and the entire picture is a 2.5 hour extension of that. It’s big, plot moments we’ve already bought our tickets for, but the connective tissue that the film is supposed to explore is predicated on meme culture and metatextual screenwriting. Dialogue is spilled from the mouths of de-aged icons that only means something to us, but has no narrative or personal implications for Peter Parker. It’s intended to make us laugh, point at the screen and clap, or maybe slap our buddies’ arm because we collectively meme’d these moments for years, but it amounts to meaning nothing other than a wink and a nod that might as well be a headbutt.
Which is ironic considering we’re just a few years removed from Into the Spiderverse. A movie that has its fair share of winks and nods, but it’s all done in service to the bigger picture. That movie understands moments of being self-aware are fleeting and inconsequential to the narrative. No Way Home’s story is built on the back of being conscious of the audience sitting in the auditorium and watching the movie. The goal is to pile drive this movie with as many familiar faces and quotes as possible to make sure that the audience doesn’t miss a lick of it. It’s hard to miss too because the movie will often stop dead in its tracks to banter about something that has exclusive meaning to us.
The story’s priorities shift from making this a story about Peter Parker coming to terms with accepting the consequences of his actions (a rousing first for this iteration of the hero), into an abundance of fan service with meaningless visual sequences not even worthy of being a desktop wallpaper. Despite Watts’ adequate attempts at directing, it’s astonishing how he continues to miss the mark in structuring images. There isn’t any iconography or visual thrill because it’s masked in CGI-slush that is unbelievably empty in terms of scale, purpose, and vision. That is perhaps a by-product of the MCU’s ingredients for their “house style”, but it’s worthy of a laugh or two when these villains all appeared in movies that are far more rich in terms of visual texture. Think about the high speed train sequence from Spider-Man 2, the horrifying rubble of Spider-Man’s finale, or even the clocktower fight in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. All of them are exciting sequences of action because we can see what’s happening in a finite space. The finale of No Way Home is big, but it never feels larger than it is. We’re convinced it is because it’s adhering to our narrative of what we need the movie to do, but there’s no sense of perspective or scale. A cutaway shot to a civilian, a pullback to an extreme wide shot, or anything to amplify the intensity of the situation on a scale that overwhelms it’s characters would go a long way. Call back to any of the great superhero movies where the camera is not only engaged with the immediate action, but how the people around them perceive that, and how the setting is affected by it. It’s empty space without a single soul in the most populated city in the country laying an eye on key dramatic events. Talk about being emotionally disconnected from the material.
Lastly, the screenplay for No Way Home is inexcusably bad. Cameos are a given in these movies. On the other hand, Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers pen a script that is over reliant on plot contrivances and convenience to make sense of it’s absurd narrative. It takes so many leaps to make absolutely sure that the narrative is an afterthought because all that matters is plot. When you take a look at this movie, there is very little narrative substance connecting the plot, but that’s only because there’s an abundance of it. Any chance there is for Peter or Spider-Man to face any sort of danger, he’s saved by the bell. It’s always something that immediately eliminates any potential momentum as well. Add all of this to the fact that the source of conflict between Peter and the villains is complete nonsense, and you’ve got yourself one of the worst scripts of the year. The mental gymnastics required to understand the logistics and propositions of it’s deflated story makes Tenet seem like paint by numbers. It’s similar to Endgame in this regard as well. None of it actually makes any sense if you think about it; but what does thinking matter if the plot is full of big moments to try and make us forget?
That’s the issue. There isn’t a proper narrative. Sure, by the end it might make you wonder what the follow-up will do if this didn’t hit the mark. Didn’t the last one do that? What about the one before that? None of the story is actually concerned about making sure Peter Parker figures out how to be Spider-Man, because the Dr. Strange sequel matters. So do the universe-sized implications of everything else. Dr. Strange isn’t in this movie for no reason. He was sought after by Peter so the table could be set for his next movie. Why do you think there are specific cameos? It’s not world building, it’s blatant pandering to make sure that we sign up for the next one to make it seem like we’ll miss out on so much if we skip one of them. Sure, the cameos and supporting roles influence the narrative in some capacity, but it’s never necessary if there’s enough creativity to find a source of conflict within your protagonist. Why can’t they do that? Why is it so hard to siphon meaning from a foe that was wronged by this Spider-Man? What happened to the set-up in Homecoming that teased three villains? Where are they? Plenty of questions, but the only answer is the marketability of nostalgia. Why? Because our narrative matters more than the narrative on screen.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is a disaster. Outside of a stellar Tom Holland, an adequate Jon Watts, and a great Michael Giacchino, nothing about this movie really works. Willem Dafoe is great at being hammy, but all of the dialogue, motivation, and decisions strive to make sure it only makes sense for plot advancements. It introduces some interesting propositions about fate, but like the other 26, it’s all text, and the structuring of that text makes no sense. There’s plenty of nostalgia to check off every BINGO card and punch ticket on your way to the next one. None of the action is memorable or good, and the CGI whirlwind is near an all-time low for this franchise. When you consider that these returning villains all look significantly more believable in their previous iterations, it says a lot. It’s shameless, gross fan-service that baits it’s entire audience with nostalgia because what we once loved apparently matters more than what’s out there now. Every other Spider-Man iteration outside of this Watts trilogy (yes, even the Venom films) is interested in getting us engaged with their world through the eyes of their protagonist. This trilogy is only interested in allowing us to watch this iteration of Spider-Man through our eyes instead of Peter’s.
What happened to watching a movie and feeling emotionally moved because you saw something new?