Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

 

Let me explain how good a movie Spider-Man: No Way Home is: as soon as it was done, I wanted to watch it again. As I sit here typing this, I am wondering how soon I can see it again. It is, to put it simply, quite possibly the best Spider-Man film ever. 

Strangely enough, it shouldn't be. It shouldn't even work. As a rule, comic book movies with multiple villains almost never work. And even when they do more or less work (The Dark Knight), they still don't work quite as well as the ones that concentrate on a single villain.

Sidebar: For those who take exception to what I just said in relation to The Dark Knight, while it is a very good Batman movie, there are about four or five points in the movie where you think it's over and it's not. And Two Face does seem kinda shoehorned in. The movie would have worked much better with just The Joker as the villain and Two Face getting his own movie.

The Spider-Man series is especially notorious for movies with multiple villains not working. Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 both make the same mistakes even: Peter spending an awful lot of the movie crying and having 3 villains each, with at least one of the villains being completely unnecessary. In the case of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, I'll even argue that two of the villains are completely unnecessary. That entry did not need either The Green Goblin or The Rhino.

So yes, a movie with no less than 5 villains in it should really not work. It should be a dissatisfying mess and a candidate for worst movie of all time. However, this is an MCU movie and one thing that Marvel has taught us over the last 13 years is that they know how to tell a story. As a result, not only is this movie completely satisfying, it's a candidate for being one of the very best comic book movies ever. We're talking Avengers: Endgame or Superman: The Movie levels of greatness. We're talking about two and half hours of pure movie magic. 

The film picks up where Spider-Man: Far From Home left off. Mysterio has revealed to the world that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, an act that turns the hapless teenager's life upside down. Half the world hates him, the paparazzi won't go away, and he and his friends Ned and MJ can't get into college. So Peter goes to Dr. Strange and asks for a spell that will make the world forget he's Spider-Man. The spell goes sideways, which opens a portal to the multiverse and lets in the primary villains from the first five Spider-Man movies: The Green Goblin (the real one IMO), Doctor Octopus, Sandman, The Lizard and Electro. Spidey has to contain them, but when he finds out they're all going to die upon returning to their worlds, he decides to try to help them instead. That's the type of hero Spider-Man is.

If you've stayed away from spoilers as I always try to, you're in for quite a ride. Even if you know or think you know some of what's going to happen, I promise you there's things in this movie you'll never see coming. It's a complete delight, alternately funny and heartbreaking.

The cast is fantastic. I've liked Tom Holland's Spidey since his first appearance in Captain America: Civil War. He really is the comic book Spidey come to life. Marissa Tomei remains the best Aunt May ever. Zendaya and Jacob Batalon give their usual strong performances as MJ and Ned. Ditto Benedict Cumberbatch as Dr. Strange. As far as the villains go, it's a delight to see Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin and Alfred Molina's Doc Ock again. Those two prove again that they are among the best screen villains in history. Not only that, but Jamie Foxx, Rhys Ifans, and Thomas Haden Church get another shot to get their villains right.

Sidebar: The biggest problem with Spider-Man 3 is Venom, who is completely superfluous. Haden Church did a fine job as Sandman and the film should have just been about him. Similarly, Foxx was cheated out of making Electro into a really great villain with the introduction of The (fake) Green Goblin in Amazing Spider-Man 2. In fact, it can be argued that Haden Church, Foxx, and Ifans were all done a disservice by the scripts. For that matter, so was Andrew Garfield, who was a perfectly good Spider-Man stuck with lackluster scripts. I'd argue that he's the Pierce Brosnan or Peter Capaldi (for you Doctor Who fans) of the Spider-Man films.

I've been a Spider-Man film since I was a little kid. Hell, I wanted to be Spider-Man when I was a little kid (I almost kinda still do). This is the Spider-Man movie I've waited for since I was about six years old. A complete geek-out fest of a film and one I personally can't wait to revisit.