Spider-man No Way Home: No Way It Would Be as Good Without Nostalgia

Fresh off the rack, Spider-man’s latest film ‘No Way Home’ landed in cinemas yesterday and fans flocked in the masses with high hopes and expectations, of which I was among them. Having taken the liberty to refresh my familiarity with all the Toby Maguire films, and as an avid fan of the Andrew Garfield ones (the best spiderman), I was on very much reacquainted with the meme status the originals hold.

 Of course, the speculation that there would be a spiderman reunion with the respective actors immeasurable, with every interview Andrew Garfield attending for ‘Tik Tik Boom’ involving a hefty question on his potential involvement in ‘No Way Home’, all he could do was deny the rumours. However, with the trailer rekindling fond memories of the early 2000’s spiderman movies, the odds were in the fans favour.

Before I go on, I will preface this that what follows contains major plot spoilers, so if you have not already, heed my advice, and go and see it for yourself on the big screen.

 I think the best way for me to go about illustrating my thoughts on this film is to break it down in to two parts: the aspect relying on the older movies and nostalgia, and that which involves Tom Holland’s Spiderman. Now let me start with the positive, and that is the reintroduction of all the old-school villains. This is by far the best feature of ‘No Way Home’, with an incredible performance by Defoe which is honestly Oscar worthy, and even as someone in his sixties, he insisted on doing all the stunts himself which is remarkably impressive. The interaction and chemistry between the five villains were entertaining to watch, with ironic acknowledgements that they should be more careful where they fall providing further light relief. I must admit I did laugh profusely when Norman Osbourne said “you know, I’m somewhat of a scientist myself” – this was 100% an ode to fans given the popularity of the meme format. Jamie Fox’s final interaction with Andrew was a nice acknowledgement of the “into the spider verse” franchise, with him thinking spiderman was black, and saying there should be a black spiderman. My only gripe with this section was Sandman’s damascene conversion from helping spiderman to fighting him, I felt like this was very much brushed over and could have used some further development.

Now, moving onto the moment I was so eagerly anticipating: the reintroduction of the two previous spidermen. This was superbly executed I thought, and when Andrew took of his mask, I joined the cinema in a loud cheer of rejoice, and an even louder one for 46 year old Toby Maguire. Much like the villains, the manner with which they came to terms with the multiverse was amusing and the mild chitter chatter was very Tarantino-esque insofar as it made talk about nothing rather engaging.

I am often hesitant to commend movies preying on nostalgia – it’s a cheap money grab from toying with emotions, however, if there were a scenario where it would work best, this was certainly it.

Now, onto what I disliked, and alas, its pretty much all in relation to the current Spider-man story line. Tom Holland’s plot and reason for going to Dr Strange seemed so shallow, for Holland to interrupt the spell that resulted in the multiverse shenanigans, and for Strange not to acknowledge the notion that Spider-man does not want every single person to forget who he is seemed so blindingly obvious, yet it did not seem to appear to one of the most powerful and smartest individuals in the marvel cinematic universe. Not only this, but when Strange is about to solve the entire mess, Tom Holland has some sudden Epiphone to be this overly virtuous moral saint, and cure the five villains, all of whom are not from his universe, and in their respective universe have tried to kill spider-man, but oh no, that would be bad to send them back wouldn’t it. This was effectively comparable to Spider-man wanting to risk the lives of 7 billion people to ‘cure’ 5 villains. Utterly fanciful and annoyingly stupid. The film would have worked so much better had the villains not been so easily captured, and this entire scene was removed.

I must say, however, that the portrayal of the Daily Bugle as some ‘Alex Jones’ right wing news station nock of was very amusing, and the advertisement of supplements rang to true to how Jones’ show operates. This was a very well implemented dig at those sort of news networks.

‘No Way Home’ is the sum of its parts, those being the superb inclusion of the old, with the fusion of the disappointing new. It is for this reason that I cannot give this film more than a 7.5, which is frustrating because it had potential to one of the best marvels films, but rushed plot development and thin incentives left me feeling somewhat disappointed.

In case like me you feel this way, I would advise waiting for the two separate final credit scenes, as you will find a teaser for Dr Strange 2, and an indicator to spider-man’s next villain.

So, a request to screen writers, please, iron out the bumps in your plots.