Spider-Man: No Way Home endured rampant casting and story speculation leading up to its release, teasing fans with the possibility of revisiting previous Spider-Man universes. No Way Home is the rare movie that not only satisfies fan expectations, but does so without sacrificing the emotional core of the story or robbing Tom Holland’s Peter Parker of narrative focus. In his previous appearances, Holland’s Parker has been a little too lightweight for my liking; his stories lacked needed gravitas and emotional weight or consequence—something that No Way Home handily rectifies. It’s careful to not lean egregiously into gratuitous fanservice as it successfully crafts crowd-pleasing moments that also serves the character arcs of the core trio: Holland’s Parker, Zendaya’s MJ, and Jacob Batalon’s Ned Leeds.
Holland has always been a winning Peter Parker, masterfully embodying the brash, awe-struck energy of a teen-aged superhero. He delivers when asked to carry more dramatic weight, but No Way Home gives Holland significantly more, allowing him to flex his range. In a film packed with story and characters, Holland is never outclassed, even when surrounded by Oscar-winners and stellar performances. No one phones in their performance, and some are given substantial screen time to deliver committed, gripping—sometimes terrifying—performances that do not disappoint.
Director Jon Watts returns for this threequel and stylistically steps up his direction. His work on the previous Holland Spider-Man movies have been perfectly fine: workmanlike but unremarkable. In No Way Home, Watts employs more confident visual tricks and framing in the first 30 minutes than in those two earlier movies combined. It’s a welcome bit of showing off, lending No Way Home a bolder, cinematic quality.
The Marvel films in general have always excelled at managing tone, and No Way Home balances light-hearted sequences and weightier moments perfectly, seamlessly transitioning from one to another. The story itself is a little scattershot. It’s clear that this multiversal movie was not intended when they released 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home, Tom Holland’s most recent Spider-Man adventure, and the first third of No Way Home feels like their initial intentions for a third Holland film. Instead, they breeze through some substantial plot developments to move the story in a new direction. This leads to some clunky plotting, but the movie moves at such a brisk pace, and towards such tantalizing ends, that the audience collectively shrugs at the script defects. The film asks us to sign off on insane plot holes in order to take us from Point A to Point B—but the movie so thoroughly lands its emotional story that the litany of plot head-scratchers really do fade away. It may be cheating, but I have to give a pass to a movie tackling such an ambitious narrative, and not only competently executing the story, but delivering satisfying, emotional highs throughout it’s lengthy run time.
I won’t discuss the much-guarded story revelations, but I was pleasantly surprised that No Way Home allowed itself to hue closer to some of the more idiosyncratic Marvel entries when telling it’s story. Not every story conflict and resolution derives from superbeings punching each other. For instance, a sizable section of the movie, and a crucial obstacle for our heroes, plays out like an apartment-bound sitcom of colorful characters. It’s a refreshing weirdness these movies should marinate in. But when the film dips into straightforward action, it truly delivers. One particular sequence is a notable departure from previous Holland movies, showcasing an terrifying intensity and urgency that Holland’s Spider-Man has rarely felt. It was electrifying.
No Way Home is really a “lemonade out of lemons” situation. Studio machinations led to the creation of different Spider-Man reboots, as Sony desperately held on to the film rights of Spider-Man over the past two decades. It was only in the wake of the failure of 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (the second Andrew Garfield film) that Sony and Marvel reached an agreement to work together and integrate the character into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And now business dealings between executives, that had nothing to do with story or creativity, made way for this bizarre cinematic experiment. It’s not the best Spider-Man film (argue between 2004’s Spider-Man 2 and 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse), but No Way Home is a fascinating culmination of Spider-Man’s film history so far, and a triumphant theatrical experience.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is playing in theaters. It runs 148 minutes and is rated PG-13 for sequences of action/violence, some language and brief suggestive comments.
