Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

 

It's hard to deny that the trailer for this one got the fans hyped beyond all measure, as it gave us glimpses of not only a multiverse but beloved bad guys from previous installments were hinted at, with Alfred Molina's Doc Ock being the pivotal evildoer. What we got, is a film that is gleefully filled with fanservice but in all honesty a bit of a jumbled mess at times, trying to manhandle a ton of characters at the same time and not always succeeding as well as it would like.

Still fun, though. 

At the end of the last film, Spider-Man's secret identity was revealed to the entire world and things have become complicated, to say the least. Peter Parker is now an outcast, but worst of all is that his friends and family are suffering the unwanted attention of pretty much everyone. Peter wants to change all this and he goes to see Doctor Strange, because if the Sorcerer Supreme cannot fix this, who can?

But because Peter keeps changing a spell that would make the world forget who he is, things go south rather rapidly and villains from other universes start to show up in his. We never really got a Sinisiter Six film, but here we have Doc Ock, Green Goblin, Electro, Sandman ànd the Lizard, so it's pretty close to it. Peter wants to send them all back to their own dimension, but he does want to help them as well so they won't get killed. He manages to fix Doc Ock, but before he can do the same to the others, Electro and Green Goblin rebel and now it's on. 

There's help coming from an unexpected angle, though... 

Okay, maybe it's not that unexpected, multiverse thingies and so on, but somehow spoiling it would feel rather dirty. 

There's no sense in denying the pleasure one derives from seeing darn good villains again. Willem Dafoe is spot on as Green Goblin and Alfred Molina always was one of the best Spider-Man villains out there. But it was fun bringing back Thomas Haden Church as Sandman as well. Okay, Lizard is someone else this time, but that's okay. And they did give Jamie Foxx a decent makeover, as this version of Electro looks and feels a lot better than the blue Ultimate version they tried in 'The Amazing Spider-Man 2'. Maybe that is the best thing to take away from this film: nostalgia can be a good thing and the decision not to recast these classic villains but instead bring back the original actors who portrayed them is the best choice. Heck, this even makes it so Spider-Man is outshone for the most part. 

But that is also one of the downsides of this film: they try to cram in so much and so many characters that it starts to feel a little too much. Naturally, not every villain gets the same amount of attention and the heroes are actually woefully underutilized. The 'wink wink' moments where they try to tie all the various variants together don't always work as well, although the death of Aunt May does hit a little harder than one would think, as her character was present for more than one film. 

If you consider that a spoiler, you would be right. But then there's the Internet. 

For fans, this one is undoubtedly a pleasure to watch. But if this is your first exposure to cinematic Spider-Man, you would do well to actually brush up on every Spider-Man film out there, including the ones starring Tobey Maguire ànd Andrew Garfield, or you will be left a little confused. This one is clearly for the fans and therefore less interesting for casual viewers.