Director: Jon Watts
Notable Cast: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Benedict
Cumberbatch, Jacob Batalon, Jon Favreau, Jamie Foxx, Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina,
Marisa Tomei, Benedict Wong, Rhys Ifans, Thomas Haden Church, JK Simmons
The final of four Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) films in
2021 just happens to be one of the safest ones. In a year filled with giant
question marks around new heroes like Shang-Chi and Eternals or
the long-awaited, and still very mediocre, Black Widow, Spider-Man: No
Way Home seemed like the one that audiences could devour with the most
ease. It was a hero in his third solo film of the franchise, one with a deep
history in pop culture, and audiences were craving a bit of comfort food in the
wake of a new wave of pandemic after a long and tumultuous year.
Marvel understood the need and so did Sony, considering it
was a cooperative effort between the two studios in the most obvious ways
possible.
The box office numbers reflect this choice as audiences
still repeatedly flock to theaters to see this third Spider-Man solo
flick. It’s not shocking. That’s what No Way Home is built to be
as a film. It’s pure crowd-pleasing popcorn material through and through,
almost to a fault. Nonetheless, through its dynamic action and charming
performances, it’s hard not to love Spider-Man: No Way Home to some
degree even if its reliance on nostalgia overpowers so much of its run-time and
material.
As expected, No Way Home does adhere to the current
state of MCU and the previous Spider-Man films with relative ease. It
helps that director Jon Watts returns to the fold, a Disney staple now that
he’s been confirmed to direct the upcoming Fantastic Four reboot, and
for those expecting quips galore, larger than life spectacle, and easy to
follow series of character arcs, then that’s what No Way Home delivers.
For those tired of the formula, even with its interesting angles and approaches
to some returning characters, then No Way Home is not going to strike
much merit. For those already 25+ films invested (not counting all previous Spider-Man
iterations from Sony) then it’s liable to snag some big moments of joy from its
audience.
With the previously mentioned collaboration in full swing
between Disney’s Marvel arm and Sony with the now fully unveiled ‘multi-verse’
for the MCU, it allowed No Way Home to take advantage of all previous Spider-Man
films and their material - which includes characters like the villains of
previous films collaborating in a makeshift Sinister Six mode.
On one hand, this allows No Way Home to pick and
choose the better aspects of previous films, shave out the problematic parts,
and make jokes about the flaws or auteur choices made by previous filmmakers.
It also makes the film heavily rely on an audience that understands, remembers,
and (more importantly) cares about any of those characters. If you don’t fall
into those categories, so much of No Way Home is going to fall utterly flat.
Certainly, this multiverse angle actively fixes some issues
for characters like Electro, played by a non-blue Jamie Foxx, but it also hopes that people remember why Octavius or Osborn (played with the usual movie
stealing layered performances from Molina and Dafoe respectively) are the way
they are and why we should believe any of their character choices throughout
the narrative. Of course, it still treats Lizard like the CGI turd he was in The
Amazing Spider-Man. That’s just par for the course though.
Because there are so many characters, from the MCU and Sony
worlds, No Way Home can struggle in giving any of them the proper
treatment as layered characters. Sure, some of the heroes get some redeeming
moments, but there is an active element to No Way Home that feels like
it relies so heavily on nostalgia that it fails to truly have its own separate
identity. It’s a Frankenstein’s Monster of stitched together franchises - with
Doctor Strange popping up for shits and giggles to be a catalyst for everything
- and when it draws so much attention to the seams (literally the world is
being ripped apart by the seams in the third act) that it’s hard not to think
about the industry contracts and schedules and other behind the scenes material
instead of being lost in the artistic world.
Granted, as mentioned previously, No Way Home is
relatively well executed. The writing and narrative may not leave a lot of room
for nuance beyond “oh look, we replicated that meme in our own way, isn’t that
charming?,” but the execution is relatively strong.
Director Watts has a knack for visual pops and he continues
to embrace a relative sense of fun with the film, even if the latter half is
very much in the vein of layering on plenty of Spider-Trauma onto Holland’s
Peter Parker. The action is visually stunning, although the final action set
piece does get muddled with its nighttime visage, and there are enough jokes to
chuckle at to keep one’s attention even when the film starts to crumble into
science and mystic gobblety gook. The performances are strong throughout, a
blessing for so many characters that receive so little new depth - including a
bafflingly flatlined use of Sandman, and MCU fans are obviously eager to dig
through all of the Easter Eggs and future franchising setups.
If anything, the film ends on a relatively strong note that
takes the MCU version of Spider-Man far away from its Iron Man Lite
elements and back to the core character aspects that made the superhero such a
fan favorite.
While Spider-Man: No Way Home was more of a mixed
effort than the initial word of mouth and critical praise indicated, it does
have its charm and action-packed fun to be the consumable safe product that the
MCU needed after a year of larger swings (for them). It’s chock full of
nostalgia and surprises for those invested, but it rarely leaves room for those
who are a bit more skeptical of the Marvel brand.
Quite frankly, I’m more excited to see where the Spider-Man
solo films go from here now that they’ve gotten this transition film out of the
way to get our beloved hero back to his roots.
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