Movie Review: Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) directed by Jon Watts

Peter Parker (Tom Holland) has been outed as Spider-Man, which is bad enough. He's also being accused by Daily Bugle editor and online commentator J. Jonah Jameson (J. K. Simmons) of killing Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhall), who died in Spider-Man: Far From Home. The public is divided about the blame but the noisiest ones seem to be those who think Peter is a murderer. He can hardly walk down the street or go to school with out some uncomfortable situation--either fawning admiration or vitriolic denunciation. Driven to desperation, Peter goes to Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) for a magic spell to erase everyone's memory that he is Spider-Man. Strange reluctantly agrees but as the spell is being cast, Peter keeps changing it by adding people whom he doesn't want changed, like MJ (Zendaya) and Aunt May (Marisa Tomei). He asks for so many changes that the spell goes wrong, starting to pull people from other universes who know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. People like Otto Octavius aka Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina), Norman Osborne aka Green Goblin (Willem Defoe), and three other villains from earlier movies that predate Spider-Man entering the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Doctor Strange wants Peter to capture the rogues so he can send them back to their proper universes. The only problem is, each villain was on the verge of dying before they crossed over, so sending them back is a death sentence. Young Peter is not okay with that--he wants to save them somehow.

The plot moves along at a good pace as Peter's plans don't work out the way he wants them too. Holland gives a great performance as an earnest and somewhat naive teen who wants to make things right but also make them easy for himself. His moral conflict is easy to relate to. And he wants what's truly good for the villains--not that they are defeated but that they are "fixed." That involves not just taking away their superpowers but putting them back on a better, more humane path. The movie acknowledges that you can't always force someone to be good, but it also applauds the effort to try, a very morally satisfying message. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that plans eventually work out for a good ending, though the journey there is exciting and surprising.

The movie is also chock-full of nods to the previous movies. The filmmakers keep the honesty and integrity of Spider-Man's character and look at different ways he reacts to situations. They maintain the core drama of Spider-Man stories, a teen dealing with responsibilities that life hasn't fully prepared him for, mostly because he hasn't had enough life yet (again, something easy for viewers to relate to). So many emotional and comic moments pay off earlier moments in previous films. That's not to say the film is hard to appreciate if you haven't kept up. Two of my children went with me. They have only seen the other Tom Holland films and were able to keep up with the story and catch the hints to previous events. The movie is very good on its own and even greater with the larger narrative context of the character. Since I am a big Spider-Man fan, I was immensely happy with the film.

Highly recommended.