Spider-Man: No Way Home (a movie review post)

I'm not going to say that this is the best Spider-Man movie ever, but I can understand why people are saying it. If you're Spider-Man fan, No Way Home has it all. And it does it extremely well, pulling all these threads together and making a cohesive movie out of it. Well, that's a bit of an understatement. It was more than cohesive. It's a very excellent movie, and I would love to go see it again.

However, as an aside, I will probably not go back and see it again the theater. I'm still not really comfortable with movie theaters, especially with omicron out there doing its thing, and probably wouldn't actually have gone to see this except for my daughter is in town for Christmas and she really wanted to go to opening night. Spider-Man was actually pretty packed, much more so than Eternals.

It's really amazing to me that Marvel/Sony were able to get all of these actors back to reprise their roles from the earlier movies. And they seem to have stepped back into them so seamlessly. Even so, Alfred Molina really stood out to me in this one. He was perfectly sympathetic while still being completely villainous. And Willem Dafoe still crazy creepy/scary as the Green Goblin. And I'm not going to say more than that, at this point, because I don't want to be spoilery. I'll be spoilery when I get back to this movie on my MCU re-watch project.

More generally, it's even more clear that Doctor Strange and the multiverse are going to be big parts of what's coming up in the next big build up to... what? The next Avengers movie? The Avengers must be coming back as a team, but I haven't been hearing or seeing anything about a new Avengers movie. Maybe there won't be one this go around. What I have seen coming up (though very secretly) is Fantastic Four movie, and the multiverse has always been much more the playground of Reed Richards than it has been for the Avengers. I don't know... none of this has anything specifically to do with No Way Home other than the shenanigans of Doctor Strange. Speaking of whom, Cumberbatch was excellent. I become more and more impressed with him as an actor as time goes on. He's much more versatile than he seems that he would be, especially after his turn as Sherlock Holmes.

Okay, still trying to avoid being spoilery, but one of the things about Spider-Man in the comic books is that he has always been, pretty much, a solo act. Sure, he's participated in team things and done team-ups, but he's really a one-spider show. In the MCU, he was really brought in as part of the Avengers. I feel like the goal of this movie was extricate Spidey from his Avengers ties and return him to being just Spider-Man. There is a melancholy about the ending that also seems very appropriate for the character.

I suppose the thing that I can say most clearly about the movie is that there are no bad moments. There are no bumps. No "but why?s" Even for newcomers who may have little to no background in the MCU, I think this movie sets everything up well enough to be understandable. Sure, having a broader background is nice, but it's really unnecessary. Actually, almost no knowledge of the MCU is necessary other than that it might feel more comfortable to know who Doctor Strange is, but they cover that part pretty well in the movie, too.

Having said that, if you're Spider-Man fan and are familiar with all of the other Spider-Man movies (the non-MCU ones), the movie is so much richer. It was really a lot of fun. A lot. So, then, is it the best Spider-Man movie ever? I'm still going to go with Spider-Man. That's still one of the best origin stories for a super hero ever done, and it has a certain quality to it that I don't know can be replicated. Maybe one day. I mean, the Captain America movies did get better as they went despite having one of the other top origin stories ever. And maybe I'll change my mind. I haven't seen the original Raimi Spider-Man in ages; maybe I should go back and watch that again and see what I think of it now. But, for the moment, I'm going to say that No Way Home is... you got it, amazing but not the best. It is right up there, though.