Spider-Man: No Way Home

The Peter Parker movie buried inside an MCU event

Superhero/Action ‧ 148 minutes ‧ PG-13 ‧ 2021 ‧ 6 min read

"With great power, there must also come great responsibility."

My take on No Way Home is pretty simple: I like what happens to Tom Holland's Peter Parker a lot more than I like the movie that gets him there. Coming off Far From Home, I was happy that this movie finally seemed interested in Peter as an actual person again. He makes his own decisions, he screws things up, he argues with other heroes, he tries to help people who do not necessarily deserve it, and when those decisions go wrong, he actually has to live with the consequences.

That should not be a radical change. It is just Peter Parker. But after the first two movies, it feels like one. Homecoming at least understood that Peter was a teenager. Far From Home kept pulling him back toward Tony Stark and the larger MCU. No Way Home finally gives Peter his own backbone again.

The tragedy is that the movie does not really trust that story to stand on its own.

Instead, everything is wrapped in the multiverse. Tobey Maguire is back. Andrew Garfield is back. The old villains are back. The movie becomes a giant celebration of Spider-Man movies rather than simply being the next story about this Spider-Man. I understand why people loved that when it came out. I understand why seeing all of these characters in one movie was exciting. It was exciting. I am not immune to that.

But the more I look at it, the more I wish this had just been Tom Holland's movie.

The multiverse material is easily my least favorite part of No Way Home. My problem is not the idea itself. Spider-Man can absolutely work with a multiverse. Into the Spider-Verse proved that. My problem is that this movie still looks, feels, and behaves almost exactly like an MCU movie even when it is bringing in characters from two completely different Spider-Man franchises.

Raimi's Spider-Man does not suddenly start looking like Raimi's Spider-Man again. Webb's Spider-Man does not suddenly feel like the movies he came from. Everybody gets pulled into the same visual language, the same jokes, the same rhythm, and the same MCU style. The whole point of bringing these versions together should have been that they are different. Instead, the movie mostly makes them feel like guests inside Tom Holland's movie.

That especially bothers me because I actually love the symbolism that comes out of the three Peters being together. The scene where Tobey's Peter stops Andrew's Peter from killing Norman is great. Andrew gets a moment of closure for something the audience knows he has been carrying for years. Tobey gets to be the older Spider-Man who has already learned some of the lessons Tom's Peter still needs to learn.

I also love the quieter idea of the older Spider-Man being completely comfortable with who he is. He is sewing up his suit, getting coffee, helping people at night, and just existing as Spider-Man. There is something really nice about that. He does not need a giant suit or a billionaire's approval. He is just Spider-Man because that is who he became.

Andrew's Peter gets a different kind of moment, and honestly, it is probably the best use the movie finds for the multiverse. He gets to save MJ when Tom's Peter cannot. It does not undo Gwen's death, but you can see that he gets a tiny bit of closure from being able to stop someone else from falling. That is genuinely meaningful.

The problem is that I do not think those moments require this much movie around them. I would rather have watched Tom's Peter go through his own story about becoming harsher, losing the people around him, and finally understanding what being Spider-Man actually means.

Aunt May is another example of what I mean. She finally gets to matter. In Homecoming she is mostly part of Peter's home life. In Far From Home, I do not think the movie knows what to do with her. Here, she finally becomes the moral center of Peter's story. She is the person who tells him that helping these villains matters even if there is no guarantee they will change.

Her death is what actually drives Peter into the darker part of the movie, and that works. This is the first time in the Holland movies where a personal loss really changes Peter rather than simply becoming another part of the larger MCU plot. He becomes angry. He wants revenge. He starts making choices based on that anger. For once, the movie lets him be wrong in a very Peter Parker way.

That is why the ending works for me emotionally even though I have plenty of problems with the movie around it. Peter eventually understands that helping people does not mean getting the ending he wants. He gives up his relationships, his place in the world, and basically everything familiar so that other people can have a better life. It is a real sacrifice.

I just wish he had not needed two other Spider-Men to get there.

The villains are also a mixed bag. Willem Dafoe is still great, and bringing Norman Osborn back actually gives the movie someone who understands exactly how to get under Peter's skin. Alfred Molina works because Doctor Octopus already had a complete story. Jamie Foxx gets the opportunity to play a much lighter version of Electro, which is an improvement over his actual TASM 2 performance. The Green Goblin is probably the villain who benefits most from returning because he gets to push Tom's Peter into making a decision he cannot take back.

Even then, the villains are often more interesting because of the movies they came from than because of what No Way Home actually does with them. They arrive with years of character development already completed. The film can borrow that emotional history without having to build it itself.

That is really my issue with the whole movie. So much of its emotional impact comes from things that happened somewhere else. Tobey brings the Raimi trilogy. Andrew brings his history with Gwen. The villains bring their original movies. The audience brings its own nostalgia. Tom's Peter is standing in the middle of all of that, and sometimes I wonder how much of the movie would actually work without the other films doing the heavy lifting.

Even the suit situation bothers me a little. Peter eventually gets another upgraded suit, and it is perfectly fine, but I do not think he needed it. One of the things I liked about the previous movies was seeing the different Peters have very distinct costumes that reflected their worlds. Here, the suit mostly becomes another piece of MCU equipment in a movie already crowded with other people's identities.

That is another reason Spider-Man 1, Spider-Man 2, TASM 1, and even the weaker sequels can stand out to me. They have their own visual identities. You can tell what movie you are watching. No Way Home deliberately blends all of these versions together, but in doing so, it loses some of what made each one interesting.

I also cannot ignore how much this movie is built around being an event. It was the movie where you were supposed to cheer when someone appeared, recognize a reference, remember a quote, or realize which villain was coming next. I am not against that. Movies can be events. But I do not think being an event automatically makes something a great movie.

And that is why the current reputation of No Way Home is a little strange to me. I have seen people treat criticism of it as criticism of Spider-Man himself, as though saying the movie is not very good means you do not understand the character. I do understand the character. That is actually why I like the parts where Tom's Peter is finally allowed to act like Peter Parker.

I like this Peter making a mistake because he wants to help people. I like him refusing to kill Norman. I like Aunt May pushing him toward responsibility. I like the consequences. I like the ending. Those are all good Spider-Man ideas.

I just wish they were in a Spider-Man movie instead of inside a giant crossover event.

In a better version of this story, No Way Home would have been the second movie in this trilogy. Peter would make a major mistake, lose someone important, become consumed by anger, and then have to rebuild himself. There would be no multiverse. There would be no need to bring back two other Spider-Men just to help explain what Spider-Man means. Tom's Peter could have gone through all of this on his own.

Then the third movie could have been about Peter finally graduating, accepting that his old life is gone, and becoming the Spider-Man we first saw glimpses of in Homecoming. Instead, the franchise used the multiverse as the centerpiece, and I think some of the character work gets buried underneath the event.

No Way Home is why I have such a hard time giving this movie a score that matches the affection people have for it. I understand the hype. I understand why people cried. I understand why people cheered. I did too. There are moments here that genuinely mean something to me.

But I also think about what I am going to remember. I am going to remember Tobey and Andrew returning. I am going to remember the cheers. I am going to remember the memes and the theater reaction. I am going to remember the big multiverse moments. And that is the problem. The movie does some genuinely good things for Tom Holland's Peter Parker, but those are not necessarily the things it is going to be remembered for.

I wish it were.

Spider-Man: No Way Home gets a 2/5 from me. That is higher than Far From Home because this movie finally remembers that Peter Parker needs to make choices and suffer consequences of his own. I actually like Tom's character arc here. I just do not think the movie surrounding that arc is very good. The MCU filmmaking, the constant multiverse spectacle, the crossover structure, and the dependence on two other Spider-Men keep getting in the way.

The frustrating part is that there is a genuinely great Tom Holland Spider-Man story buried inside this movie. I just wish that was the thing everyone was talking about.

(It finally became Peter Parker's story. Unfortunately, it still had to be a Marvel event first.)