**Yes, this has been out for weeks. Some people, though,
take their time getting out to these things (like my family, who finally went
last weekend), so I’m gonna play nice. Minimal spoiling here.**
1. Even given the patented Marvel Caginess, the trailers for
“No Way Home” felt like ones that gave away the whole store. You think you know
the plot of this movie. You don’t. Most of what’s in the trailers comes from
about the first third of the film. Mysterio’s deathbed outing of Peter Parker
(Tom Holland) as Spider-Man (via J. K. Simmons’s invaluable J. Jonah Jameson)
makes Peter’s life, and the lives of his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) and
his girlfriend MJ (Zendaya), hell. So Peter calls in an Avengers-level favor,
and asks reality-bending Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to make everyone
forget his secret identity. Except that Peter can’t make up his mind, and his
on-the-fly adding of amendments to his wishes crashes Strange’s spell. Reality
isn’t bent, but broken – and other people who know Peter’s secret start showing
up from different dimensions (a/k/a other Spider-Man films), including Doc Ock
(Alfred Molina), Norman “Green Goblin” Osborn (Willem Defoe), and Electro
(Jamie Foxx). It’s then up to Peter, his friends, and Strange to find these
interlopers a way home to their starting places – if there is one. This,
though, is just the set up. From here, the movie takes some turns in plot and
theme you may not see coming, And that’s where it gets more interesting.
2. At least as far back as Tim Burton’s “Batman Returns,”
Too Many Villains has been a besetting problem of superhero movies. With the
three dudes already named plus Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) and the Lizard
(Rhys Ifans) in the mix, “No Way Home” seems headed down that road. Instead,
the creative team has decided to make the sheer number of baddies a feature and
not a bug. After all, we know they’re coming. It’s Peter who doesn’t. And they
don’t turn out to be the real menace, anyway. All of these particular villains
share something (besides connection to Spidey): none of them chose villainhood.
These men did not originate with an axe to grind (as did, say, Killmonger,
Wilson Fisk, or The Vulture). They were each transformed by some accident
beyond their control – a treatment gone wrong, a mechanical disaster, a fall
into a physicality-bending device. They became bad because of their
circumstances and their acquiring strange abilities – much as Peter Parker
became a “hero” through his circumstances and acquiring powers. The threat that
hangs over “No Way Home” is fate, with the key question being how malleable it
is, and what the costs of fighting it – or embracing it – might be.
3. The last entry might make this sound serious. It isn’t;
not entirely. There is a lot of fun to be had in “No Way Home.” A certain
silliness is a part of the Spider-Man DNA, especially onscreen as far back as
the Sam Raimi entries, and Marvel films also have a wry streak owing to the
founding influence of Jon Favreau. This film pulls those threads together nicely.
This is all the more true once the universes start to collide, since some
characters know things others don’t, and we the audience know a lot more than
any of them. “No Way Home” gets in some nice moments of self-awareness and even
sometimes genre/series-awareness.
4. Stop a minute and go look up the acting award nominations
for Defoe, Molina, Foxx, and even Marisa Tomei (Peter’s Aunt May in the MCU).
The firepower here is pretty amazing, and “No Way Home” puts these people to
good use. (I’d argue this is especially true of Defoe, who, despite being a
very recognizable and physical actor, was weirdly stuck in a static mask and
armor for most of his original appearance; that’s fixed early here.) It feels a
bit like the later Harry Potter movies, where suddenly all those famous faces
have real notes to play. Sure, these people are doing some comic book cliches –
but they know how to do them in ways that feel fresh, even this far into the
Marvel Era.
5. It’s crossover city, but the story of “No Way Home”
actually feels pretty self-contained. It draws on previous films for context,
not advertising. I didn’t feel like I was being sold the Next Marvel Thing as
relentlessly as sometimes (though, yes, I know the next Dr. Strange film has
“multiverse” right there in the title). This feels more like a celebration of
all things Spidey, paying respects to, kidding, and tweaking its own lineage in
ways that recall some of the more recent Star Trek and Bond movies (and even,
in a way, “The Lego Batman Movie”). It hits some of the same theme and joke
threads as “Avengers: Endgame” and “Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse” without
feeling like a retread of either. Yes, the more Spider-Man films you know, the
more fun you’ll have – but this works pretty well on its own, too.
6. If I’ve a nit to pick, it’s that this movie is A LOT. It
has to be. But it also sometimes feels like it. There are weird pacing issues,
and for every moment I was caught in the action or loving a gag or, honestly,
cheering more content featuring two of my favorite pop-culture Doctors (Strange
and Ock) there were times I felt the running length or felt like things had
ground to a weird, jerky stop. Like most Marvel films, this could be trimmed a
little. On the whole, though, the better parts won out, and it never lingers
too long in exposition or overworn bits.
7. There are so many Marvel movies, it can be hard to
remember the particular heroes’ through-lines. This is, technically, the third
movie featuring Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, meaning his arc is (for now) a
trilogy. And that can be hard. Remember “Iron Man 3?” Me, neither. And
“Spider-Man 3” holds up better than I recalled, but it still feels a bit
overstuffed and undercooked. This third entry avoids most of the pitfalls. It’s
exciting, inventive, fun and serious in the right amounts, and, yes, this fan
admits to being contentedly fan-serviced in parts. Sometimes, for superheroes,
as the De La Soul song that plays over the credits says, “Three is the magic
number.” I’d say that’s the case here.
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