Spiderman: No Way Home review

MAJOR SPOILERS, since doing any sort of real discussion about this movie without getting spoilery is absurd.

NWH arrives not just with the hype that any big new MCU film would, but with the unhidden secret that a big part of its plot involves the multiverse and bringing in villains from past pre-MCU Spiderman films. And there is also the slightly better concealed secret that the film also was bringing back both Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. It's a level of anticipation that no MCU film has touched since Endgame.

But the movie lives up to it. NWH is a home run, delivering exactly what anyone would want, whether they just want a fun Spiderman adventure, or are more interested in the callback characters and the nostalgia for a character that, hell, even I have spent almost half my life watching in movies.

So the last movie had the tag where J. Jonah Jameson revealed Peter Parker's identity and also accused him of murdering Mysterio. This movie picks up immediately after that. Peter is cleared pretty quickly of any legal danger (thanks to Charlie Cox's Matt Murdock, officially  bringing his Daredevil into the MCU), but all the other areas of his life and everyone's close to him is basically being wrecked.

So he seeks out Doctor Strange and asks him to do a spell to make his identity a secret again. Things go awry as seen in the trailers, and through breaches from the.multiverse here comes Doc Ock, Green Goblin, Electro, Sandman and The Lizard.

Strange wants to scoop them all up and get them back to their worlds as fast as possible. But once Peter finds out the deal, that they will all die once this happens, he goes rogue and tries to save them. It's a testament to how well written this movie is that Peter wanting to save all these villains does not come off as lunacy. But it makes sense. He puts all that Stark tech to use, whether to fashion a new device to keep Ock in control of his robotic arms, or create a serum to cure Norman Osborn, and so on.

Things don't work out as planned, the villains get loose. Tragedy strikes. Peter needs help, and it arrives in the form of, yes, Maguire and Garfield. You know it's coming. But fuck, man, it is so cool to see these guys back. And these aren't just quick in and out cameos either. We get a lot of screen time for both. The rooftop scene where the 2 elder Spideys meet Tom Holland is just spectacular. The writing is so sharp the whole movie.

The climax with the 3 Spidermen versus the Sinister Si...well, Five (well, Four really since Doc Ock takes to the non-villainy) is dazzling and exciting and a top notch example of multi-character action choreography.

And then after all this, the film wrecks you with a genuinely heartbreaking and sad, but also hopeful ending. A bit similar to the wonderful ending to The Amazing Spiderman 2. Given that they are not going to stop making Spiderman movies (Sony isn't going to suddenly not like money), there will likely be some amount of walking this back, but it's an incredibly poignant way to wrap up this trilogy of films. It does work as a trilogy, since whatever next comes for the MCU and Spiderman it will be quite different. I mean, high school's over. 

A lot of the attention with this movie will go to the pre-MCU characters, but this is also a great movie for all the returning main cast. Tom Holland fits this role perfectly by now, and gets a little more dramatic material to do this time. Zendaya's inimitable charm, and Jacob Batalon's goofiness are both really well deployed, and both get to be pretty useful to the plot in ways non-super-powered supporting characters often don't. Marisa Tomei and Jon Favreau are great in their scenes. I hope this isn't the last appearance for some of them.

But yeah the old actors coming back do stand out. It's hardly just fan service. Sure there are lots of fun references to the older movies, and even to the memes (or maybe I just watch so much Spiderman meme stuff that everything becomes meme), but again this movie is really well written, and what they do with these actors actually enriches all the old movies and makes them better. In particular I just fucking loved Garfield in this. He was so great in two movies that were just not close to as good as he deserved to be in. And then Sony dumped him and made the Marvel deal. It paid off, but Garfield never got closure and now has.

NWH is definitely the best of the 3 MCU Spiderman films. After 1 viewing I can't quite bring myself to put it ahead of the first 2 Raimi films though.