spider man no way home movie review essay

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The best of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” reminded me why I used to love comic books, especially the ones about a boy named Peter Parker. There was a playful unpredictability to them that has often been missing from modern superhero movies, which feel so precisely calculated. Yes, of course, “No Way Home” is incredibly calculated, a way to make more headlines after killing off so many of its event characters in Phase 3, but it’s also a film that’s often bursting with creative joy.

Director Jon Watts and his team have delivered a true event movie, a double-sized crossover issue of a comic book that the young me would have waited in line to read first, excitedly turning every page with breathless anticipation of the next twist and turn. And yet they generally avoid getting weighed down by the expectations fans have for this film, somehow sidestepping the cluttered traps of other crowded part threes. “No Way Home” is crowded, but it’s also surprisingly spry, inventive, and just purely entertaining, leading to a final act that not only earns its emotions but pays off some of the ones you may have about this character that you forgot.

Note: I will very carefully avoid spoilers but stay offline until you see it because there are going to be landmines on social media.

“No Way Home” picks up immediately after the end of “Spider-Man: Far From Home,” with the sound of that film’s closing scene playing over the Marvel logo. Mysterio has revealed the identity of the man in the red tights, which means nothing will ever be the same for Peter Parker ( Tom Holland ). With an almost slapstick energy, “No Way Home” opens with a series of scenes about the pitfalls of super-fame, particularly how it impacts Peter’s girlfriend M.J. (Zendaya) and best bud Ned ( Jacob Batalon ). It reaches a peak when M.I.T. denies all three of them admission, citing the controversy about Peter’s identity and the roles his buddies played in his super-adventures.

Peter has a plan. The “wizard” he met when he saved half the population with The Avengers can cast a spell and make it all go away. So he asks Dr. Strange ( Benedict Cumberbatch ) to make the world forget that Spider-Man is Peter Parker, which, of course, immediately backfires. He doesn’t want M.J. or Ned or Aunt May ( Marisa Tomei ) to forget everything they’ve been through together, and so the spell gets derailed in the middle of it. Strange barely gets it under control. And then Doc Ock ( Alfred Molina ) and the Green Goblin ( Willem Dafoe ) show up.

As the previews have revealed, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” weaves characters and mythology from the other cinematic iterations of this character into the universe of the current one, but I’m happy to report that it’s more than a casting gimmick. My concern going in was that this would merely be a case of “ Batman Forever ” or even “ Spider-Man 3 ,” where more was often the enemy of good. It’s not. The villains that return from the Sam Raimi and Marc Webb films don’t overcrowd the narrative as much as they speak to a theme that emerges in the film that ties this entire series back to the other ones. For a generation, the line about Spidey was “With great power comes great responsibility.” “Spider-Man: No Way Home” is about the modern Peter Parker learning what that means. (It also helps a great deal to have actors like Molina and Dafoe in villain roles again given how the lack of memorable villains has been a problem in the MCU.)

So many modern superhero movies have confronted what it means to be a superhero, but this is the first time it’s really been foregrounded in the current run of Peter Parker, which turns “No Way Home” into something of a graduation story. It’s the one in which Parker has to grow up and deal with not just the fame that comes with Spider-Man but how his decisions will have more impact than most kids planning to go to college. It asks some interesting questions about empathy as Peter is put in a position to basically try to save the men who tried to kill other multiverse iterations of him. And it playfully becomes a commentary on correcting mistakes of the past not just in the life of Holland’s Parker but those of characters (and even filmmakers) made long before he stepped into the role. "No way Home" is about the weight of heroic decisions. Even the right ones mean you may not be able to go home again.

Watts hasn’t gotten enough credit in his other two Spider-Man movies for his action and “No Way Home” should correct that. There are two major sequences—a stunner in a mirror dimension in which Spidey fights Strange, and the climactic one—but it’s also filled with expertly rendered minor action beats throughout. There’s a fluidity to the action here that’s underrated as Mauro Fiore ’s camera swoops and dives with Spider-Man. And the big final showdown doesn’t succumb to the common over-done hollowness of MCU climaxes because it has undeniable emotional weight. I also want to note that Michael Giacchino ’s score here is one of the best in the MCU, by far. It’s one of the few themes in the entire cinematic universe that feels heroic.

With so much to love about “No Way Home,” the only shame is that it’s not a bit more tightly presented. There’s no reason for this movie to be 148 minutes, especially given how much the first half has a habit of repeating its themes and plot points. Watts (and the MCU in general) has a habit of over-explaining things and there’s a sharper version of “No Way Home” that trusts its audience a bit more, allowing them to unpack the themes that these characters have a habit of explicitly stating. And, no offense to Batalon, turning Ned into a major character baffles me a bit. He always feels like a distraction from what really works here. On the other hand, this is the first of these three films that has allowed Zendaya and Holland’s chemistry to shine. In particular, she nails the emotional final beats of her character in a way that adds weight to a film that can feel a bit airy in terms of performance.

“Spider-Man: No Way Home” could have just been a greatest hits, a way to pull different projects into the same IP just because the producers can. Some will see it that way just on premise alone, but there’s more going on here than the previews would have you believe. It’s about what historic heroes and villains mean to us in the first place—why we care so much and what we consider a victory over evil. More than any movie in the MCU that I can remember, it made me want to dig out my old box of Spider-Man comic books. That’s a heroic accomplishment.

In theaters on December 17 th .

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Film credits.

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

Rated PG-13 for sequences of action/violence, some language and brief suggestive comments.

148 minutes

Tom Holland as Peter Parker / Spider-Man

Zendaya as Michelle 'MJ' Jones

Benedict Cumberbatch as Stephen Strange / Doctor Strange

Jon Favreau as Harold 'Happy' Hogan

Jacob Batalon as Ned Leeds

Marisa Tomei as May Parker

Alfred Molina as Otto Octavius / Doctor Octopus

Jamie Foxx as Max Dillon / Electro

Willem Dafoe as Norman Osborn / Green Goblin

Tony Revolori as Eugene 'Flash' Thompson

Angourie Rice as Betty Brant

Martin Starr as Mr. Harrington

Hannibal Buress as Coach Wilson

J.B. Smoove as Mr. Dell

J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson

Benedict Wong as Wong

Writer (based on the Marvel comic book by)

• Steve Ditko
• Chris McKenna
• Erik Sommers

Cinematographer

• Mauro Fiore
• Michael Giacchino

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'Spider-Man: No Way Home' Spoiler-Packed Review: A Marvel Masterclass

As Tom Holland and Zendaya swing into home release, let's just say we'll all be signing the Amazing Spider-Man 3 petition.

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No Way Home stuck the tricky landing.

It's the next Avengers: Endgame . It's bigger than Avengers: Endgame, because it combines 20 years of movies, instead of 10. It's the movie that will save cinema, and it features the best best-friend handshake of all time.

Prepare for all of those hot takes and more right here in CNET's global spoiler-packed review of Spider-Man: No Way Home , available to buy and watch at home on Vudu now (and coming to Blu-ray and DVD April 12). The third Tom Holland Spider-Man movie  broke box office records , and the reviews are, for the most part, radiant. It's the crowd-pleasing, fan-servicing Spider-Man bonanza years in the making, and somehow it sticks the landing.

Check out how CNET staffers reacted to Spider-Man: No Way Home below.

'A masterclass'

Spider-Man: No Way Home is a masterclass in balancing MCU Peter Parker's story with nearly 20 years of legacy elements. Green Goblin is particularly intense, and Willem Dafoe is clearly having an amazing time being a total monster. Ditching the silly flight suit was a wise move; the new look lets Dafoe do plenty of face acting and brings him much closer to the horrible comics version of the character.

The arrival of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield Peters was magnificently timed, bringing hope in a super dark moment. It was fun to catch up with Maguire after 14 years – I was super relieved he and MJ stuck together. However, Garfield reminds us that he's the most talented actor to play the role (but got stuck with a mess of a movie in The Amazing Spider-Man 2); he oozes charm every moment he's on screen. 

-- Sean Keane, London

'Best bit: Charlie Cox's pitch-perfect Matt Murdock cameo'

Pretty much everything you've read about in the online rumor mills is in the film – even the now-iconic midair fight, which has its missing characters airbrushed back in. The result is that, much as with an Apple press event when all the news has leaked ahead of time, the surprises aren't really all that surprising, even if they're still pretty cool. 

The three Spider-Men do what they came to, although I would have liked to see more Maguire-Garfield interaction as a pair of fish-out-of-water (universe?) heroes, and they could have clawed back some excess Happy Hogan screen time. One of the film's best grace notes is how the characters from the first two Spider-verses are stunned that magic (of the Dr. Strange variety) exists on Earth-616 ( or is it Earth-199999 ?). In fact, in the film's denouement, Spider-Tom resets himself to something closer to those more grounded incarnations, with a hand-sewn suit and a new shabby neighborhood to patrol. Best bit: Charlie Cox's pitch-perfect Matt Murdock cameo. Worst bit: They couldn't find a spot for 1970's TV Spider-Man Nicholas Hammond .

-- Dan Ackerman, New York

'Redemption'

I've always said Avengers: Endgame is the best MCU movie because it's the movie that pulls from more than a decade of movies to make an amazing and coherent movie. Then we have No Way Home, and it does that even one better. It combines three different universes that were never meant to tie together, and it just works. 

What I appreciate the most about No Way Home is how much redemption this film provided for Andrew Garfield and Jamie Foxx. These are two great actors who were put into a bad sequel, but they were given another shot. Foxx establishes himself as the smoothest supervillain Spider-Man ever faced, while Garfield gives everything that you want from a great hero. I think the biggest compliment for No Way Home is that it's easily on the same level as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which many consider to be the best Spider-Man movie. 

-- Oscar Gonzalez, New York

'Sense of closure'

No Way Home is not only an excellent movie on its own, but it somehow retroactively makes prior movies — going back to the original Tobey Maguire trilogy — better. The film could have easily brought in the cast of the previous films in one-off cameos, but No Way Home brilliantly incorporates many of these characters so they're critical to the plot and the development of Tom Holland's Spider-Man.

Andrew Garfield, as mentioned, was dealt a poor film, and the way the film resolved his arc by saving Tom Holland's MJ (after, spoilers, losing Gwen Stacy the same way) was powerful, as was seeing Maguire stop Holland from killing Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin. Little grace notes like Maguire reconnecting with Alfred Molina's Doc Ock and Garfield talking with Jamie Foxx's Electro were nice moments that offered a cathartic sense of closure.

The ending, when Holland's Spider-Man opts to live in a world where no one remembers his Peter Parker, brings back that classic down-on-his-luck character that doesn't have the luxury and Stark technology or aid from the Avengers. By turning the "Home" trilogy into an extended origin story, it lets us better appreciate the films while getting hyped up for what's next.

-- Roger Cheng,  New York

'Incredibly moving'

I'm struck by this film's emotional impact. Not only was it thrilling to see the three Spider-Men come together, but it was also incredibly moving to watch them relate to one another's pain and loss. Nothing makes a superhero more relatable than the problems they can't solve, and their struggles with accepting a fate they can't change. 

I loved the advice the older Spider-Men gave to Tom Holland's character to never become bitter about what's happened in the past, because it won't fix anything. It made me think about how everyone watching in that theater had surely experienced some form of loss and grief, and we could all take a moment to disconnect from that pain and find comfort in these characters – and, by extension, in each other.

-- Abrar Al-Heeti, San Francisco

'Real stakes'

My favorite thing about this film is its commitment to real stakes and the consequences that come with them. It would have been easy for the writers to have come up with a quick fix from Dr. Strange to make a happy-ending all around, but Peter is forced to make a real sacrifice and give up the things that are most important to him.

The dynamic between the three Spider-Men was absolutely brilliant. Some people might think that the "joke" got old during their dialogues (for example, how the eldest Spider-Man's superhero body could actually make webbing), but I was eating up every minute of it. All three absolutely nailed their characters, and where they realistically could have been in their lives this many years later. Though this proved once and for all what I've always thought: Andrew Garfield is the king of all Spider-Men.

 --  Andy Altman, San Francisco

'Blending vibes'

If there's one thing you absolutely need to give this film credit for, it's how seamlessly it blended the vibe of each Peter and his film set. Tobey Maguire's mature Peter has always held more of the weight of this responsibility, so it felt all the more rewarding to see him as a sage mentor for not just Tom Holland's Spider-Man, but also Andrew Garfield's. Meanwhile, Garfield's Peter was easily the most troubled, so to see him finally shed the emotional baggage and guilt in No Way Home felt right. 

Yes, this is me echoing all the demands for an Amazing Spider-Man 3. 

Tom Holland himself did a lot of heavy lifting, but I think it was most important to have No Way Home bring back Peter's wild science brain. From mid-dimension mathematics through to developing cures for not one, but five different ailments, Peter grounds himself in science in a world that feels more magic than reality half the time. Science gives him something to hold onto.

-- Steph Panecasio, Sydney

'Educational'

No Way Home turned out to be an incredibly educational movie. It taught me several things. The golden ratio is a unique mathematical relationship that can be found in the natural world. Tobey Maguire is 46 (and still in incredible Spidey form). And, unequivocally, Andrew Garfield is the best Spider-Man ever and The Amazing Spider-Man 3 needs to happen. Please look up #MakeTASM3 for more information.

-- Jennifer Bisset, Sydney

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Spider-Man: No Way Home  Is Aggressively Mediocre

The one good idea that the Tom Holland–starring Spider-Man films had was a simple, obvious one: They really did make Peter Parker a kid. Tobey Maguire had been 27 at the time of his first turn as the high-school-age superhero, while Andrew Garfield had been 29. It’s not so much that those actors were too old for the material; it’s that the material could never fully utilize the character’s youth and inexperience because we as humans have a visceral resistance to watching people who clearly aren’t kids making childish decisions. Holland, by contrast, was 21 when Spider-Man: Homecoming premiered in 2017, and he looked even younger. As a result, the filmmakers for this latest Spidey cycle, including director Jon Watts and screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, have been able to sell us on some of Peter’s dodgier choices. They’ve also managed to mine the age gap between him and other characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe for humor as well as one meme-worthy moment of genuine pathos. (“Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so good.”)

But in most other respects, Watts’s Spider-Man films have been black holes of imagination. (The first entry featured a huge set piece at the Washington Monument — an inspired idea on paper — and did absolutely nothing interesting with it. The setting might as well have been an office building in suburban Atlanta. It probably was at some point.) This is a particular shame when it comes to Spider-Man, since previous attempts at the character, even at their worst, have often been visually spectacular. It does take a unique brand of corporate cynicism to drain any and all grandeur from the sight of Spidey swinging through the canyons of Manhattan; trapping the most cinematic of all superheroes in nondescript swirls of CGI sludge feels like its own act of villainy.

In other respects, too, these movies’ Spider shtick is starting to get old. They continue to treat Peter Parker as a child, and the ultrabuff, grown-up Holland now looks increasingly out of place. The new film begins with Peter Parker unmasked and publicly castigated and shamed for killing the previous entry’s villain, Mysterio. Among the real-life consequences of Parker’s cancellation is MIT’s rejection of his and his friends MJ (Zendaya) and Ned’s (Jacob Batalon) college applications. Determined to fix this problem, Parker goes to Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and asks him — I am not making this up — to cast a spell making the rest of the world forget that Peter Parker is Spider-Man so that his friends can get into the college of their choice. And Doctor Strange — again, I am not making this up — agrees to do so. Holland is a fine actor, but I’m not sure any actor could survive the sheer idiocy of this character’s decisions here. Peter might be a teenager, but I don’t recall him ever being this stupid, either in the comics or the movies. Anyway, hocus-pocus, things go wrong, portal into other dimensions, flashing lights, blah, blah, blah. The magic goes awry, and Potter Peter finds himself face-to-face with a whole new set of problems. It’s all so pro forma that even Cumberbatch’s Strange, called on to convey rage at how his young colleague’s dumb request has prompted him to tear a hole in the fabric of the universe, merely musters some mild annoyance.

The initial big revelations of the new film have already been shown in trailers, so I’ll discuss those first. When Strange’s magic opens a gateway to different realities, once-dead villains from previous Spidey movies suddenly return, including Spider-Man ’s Norman Osborn, a.k.a. the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), Spider-Man 2 ’s Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina), and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ’s Electro (Jamie Foxx). Again, a potentially promising idea. And judging from the cheers these veteran bad guys’ mere emergence got at my screening, perhaps it was of secondary importance that they be given, you know, something interesting to do . But aside from Dafoe, who once again gets to have some modest fun with his character’s divided self, there’s not much going on here. Why bring back an actor like Molina, who brought so much heartbreak and sneering rage to Doc Ock in Spider-Man 2 , only to give him no sense of inner life or any good lines? The same goes for Foxx’s Electro, whose transformation from oddball engineer to blustery supervillain in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was one of that (admittedly dreadful) film’s few highlights. Here, he’s just a tired wisecrack machine. That the action scenes involving these characters are so insipid just adds insult to injury: Watching Doctor Octopus dutifully toss weightless, computer-generated concrete pipes at our hero, it’s hard not to think back on Sam Raimi’s eye-poppingly imaginative action sequences in Spider-Man 2 featuring these same two characters and maybe even shed a tear for what has been lost.

It’s not just the action and the magic that flop. Even the film’s more intimate moments fall flat. One early domestic comedy scene involving Peter, MJ, Aunt May (Marisa Tomei, mostly wasted here), and Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) has the camera whip-panning and roaming the spaces of their apartment in a pastiche of handheld indie filmmaking, but none of the humor feels organic or earned or even all that funny. It doesn’t build or make any emotional sense. Like almost everything else in the movie, it’s just another put-on. Making Peter more of a child does allow you to play up his sincerity and naïveté, which should ideally be a breath of fresh air in a universe filled with cynical, world-weary superheroes. But for all their alleged earnestness, these last three Spider-Man films have never had any kind of identity to call their own.

And now for the heavy spoilers, which I’m not supposed to talk about … but forgive me, it’s impossible to discuss this picture’s highs and lows without doing so. So, fair warning. Seriously.

Here, I’ll even give you an extra paragraph break to click away before finding out what happens next in the movie. (Even if it’s destined to become common knowledge within a few days.)

As the infinitely superior Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse already taught us, opening up doors to the metaverse means that you might also discover other iterations of Spider-Man. So sure enough, Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire return to the franchise that once helped make them stars, and the three Peters Parker now work together to try and handle this cavalcade of villains. And a film that was already engorged with fan service positively erupts with it.

That’s not such a bad thing, at least at first. It’s certainly nice to see Maguire again, and Garfield is a genuine delight. The latter’s previous turn as Spidey was a wildly uneven one. His slightly hapless, rom-com variation on Peter Parker made the first outing quite fun, but by the second entry, he had become twitchy, whiny, annoying. Here, almost as if he’s been given a second chance (a running theme in the film), he gets the goofiness just right. A scene where the denizens of this world ask Garfield’s Parker to prove he has Spider powers offers a charming bit of slapstick, and his uncertainty and insecurity pop up at opportune moments during the big climax. But this also reveals a bigger problem. Because as we watch Garfield act literal circles around everybody else, we are reminded of how lifeless and wanting the rest of the picture is. It’s like getting a new pair of glasses and realizing that your world has been a blur for the past few months. Except that whenever Garfield is off the screen, you’re forced to put your old glasses back on, which just makes everything look that much worse.

The Tom Holland Spider-Man films have been so eager to please that one does feel like a bit of a crank criticizing them. Nobody should enjoy kicking puppies. At the same time, along with the oft-rebooted Batman , Spider-Man is the one superhero franchise for which we do have proofs of concept for different approaches. And while the previous Holland films have been mediocre in modest ways, No Way Home feels downright aggressive in its mediocrity, bringing back better actors from better movies and calling back to an endlessly inventive and moving masterpiece like Spider-Verse . Is it an attempt to try and gain residual luster from associating with better work? Or is it something more cynical, an attempt to bring that better work under the big tent of its blandness? If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that No Way Home was trying to make us forget that a better Spider-Man movie is possible.

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• Entertainment

Spider-Man: No Way Home swings big on two decades of fan payoff

 a big, satisfying, and occasionally messy conclusion.

By Chaim Gartenberg

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Spider-Man: No Way Home is a film meant to do a lot of things. It’s the third film in the Jon Watts-directed MCU trilogy of Spider-Man films, concluding a storyline for Tom Holland’s incarnation of Peter Parker. It’s a direct sequel to Spider-Man: Far From Home , picking up where the cliffhanger credit scene of the 2019 film left off. It’s the continuation of the overarching Marvel Cinematic Universe and its “Phase Four” story arc. And it’s a tribute to the past 20 years of Spider-Man movies. 

That’s a lot of balls to juggle. And the fact that No Way Home succeeds in pulling off as many of them as it does is impressive, especially when it comes to the fan service — but much like Peter Parker, this movie can’t have everything.

Spoiler warning: this review will reference basic plot details of the movie as revealed in the existing Spider-Man: No Way Home trailers, in addition to spoilers for Spider-Man: Far From Home.

If you want to go in fully unaware, skip this review for now.

Spider-Man: No Way Home picks up right where its predecessor, Far From Home , left off. Peter Parker’s secret identity as Spider-Man has been revealed to the world through one last trick of Mysterio, and now everyone blames the webslinger for the villain’s rampage through London. 

No Way Home doesn’t let Peter get off easy here, at least for the first third of the film, which eschews heroics for grinding down the costumed hero. Half the world hates Peter and thinks he murdered Mysterio. He’s got no idea how to pay for college. (As an aside, given that it’s the third time this plot point has come up in an MCU project this year: did none of the Avengers get paid? Come on, Tony.) Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) is forced to move after her apartment is besieged by reporters and protestors. And his best friend, Ned (Jacob Batalon) and his girlfriend, MJ (Zendaya), get soundly rejected from every college they apply to just for being associated with Peter. 

No Way Home doesn’t let Peter get off easy

So in an effort to protect his loved ones, Peter goes to his fellow Avenger Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and asks him to magic away the problem. Naturally, things go awry. The spell cracks open the multiverse and spills out villains from Sony’s previous five Spider-Man movies spanning almost two decades: Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe, reprising his role from Spider-Man ), Doc Ock (Alfred Molina, Spider-Man 2 ), Sandman (Thomas Hayden Church, Spider-Man 3 ), Lizard (Rhys Ifan, The Amazing Spider-Man ), and Electro (Jamie Foxx, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ). Each bad guy has been snatched up from their moment right before their web-slinging comeuppance and given a fresh chance for revenge on (another) Spider-Man, who has to find them and send them back from whence they came. 

No Way Home revels in bringing back these characters. Each villain gets his moment in the sun (some briefer than others), and long-time Spider-Man fans will get a thrill of getting to see Doc Ock smash his way through a highway of cars, a devilishly grinning Green Goblin cackling his way from scene to scene, or Jamie Foxx’s Electro not having to be a blue CGI Doctor Manhattan knock off. Dafoe leads the charge, bouncing between his feral and friendly personalities without missing a beat in the intervening 19 years, while Molina’s tortured scientist struggles to control his out-of-control creation. The core cast of Watts’ trilogy is also back. Holland’s take on Peter is his best yet: still fresh-faced and quipping his way through fights while dealing with the increasing weight of actually having to be Spider-Man. MJ and Ned are more divorced from the action, although Aunt May gets the spotlight in some of the film’s quieter moments to great effect. 

It’s all extremely fun but harkens back to the same issue all of Holland’s films have had: the smorgasbord of bad guys are once again other character’s foes that Peter just happens to be dealing with, much in the same way that Homecoming and Far From Home had him cleaning up Tony Stark’s messes. Peter’s Inception -esque mirror dimension duel with Doctor Strange almost has more weight than some of the villain fights — at least there, Peter knows his opponent’s name. 

In fact, nearly all of the film’s biggest emotional beats rely on viewer’s knowledge of the previous five Spider-movies, attempting to tie a bow on each villain’s story in addition to offering closure for the characters in the Tom Holland trilogy that No Way Home ostensibly is intended to wrap up. There’s a lot going on. 

Pure payoff for two decades of Spider-Man films

Still, once No Way Home hits its stride, it’s hard to care too much about any of that. Characters and cameos abound in scenes that feel engineered to have fans cheering in theaters. There are big reveals, catchphrases are dutifully recited, and the last hour is basically just pure payoff for two decades of Spider-Man films, handled with a surprising amount of humor and heart despite some darker swings halfway through. Whether you’re a fan of the Sam Raimi, the Marc Webb, or the Jon Watts movies, No Way Home does its best to please. (Although you’ll definitely get the most mileage if you’ve seen all seven preceding Spider-Man flicks, of course.) It’s all very satisfying for fans, though at times it can feel like the movie is as much about the competing studio interests of Sony and Disney as it is about Spidey himself.

And, as is practically Marvel tradition, No Way Home doesn’t let its characters rest, slamming the reset button and sowing the seeds for future sequels, with the now-traditional post-credit scenes setting up more adventures for Spider-Man and Doctor Strange. 

Still, Holland’s incarnation of the character is said to be sticking around for another few movies, and No Way Home ’s ending hints at shedding some of Peter’s accrued MCU baggage for a friendlier, more neighborly Spider-Man. So it’s at least possible that future entries will finally let the character soar through the city on his own strengths, instead of just standing on specters of movies past.

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A review of 'spider-man: no way home' with as few spoilers as possible.

Bob Mondello

Marvel's latest superhero film, Spider-Man: No Way Home finds its hero battling foes he thought he'd already vanquished.

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Spider-Man: No Way Home review: Welcome to the multiverse

Oh, what a tangled meta-web he weaves.

In 2018, a movie called Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse floated the idea that there could be an infinity of Spideys: an Afro-Latino teen from Brooklyn or a small Japanese girl, one all in monochrome and another made of ham. It went on to win an Oscar, a BAFTA, and a Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature, and spawned a pile of sequels and spinoffs.

Meanwhile, either in some other dimension or just down the hall, the other Spider-Man carried on, confined in this mortal coil (or at least for three films now) to the body of Tom Holland . But if moviegoers have learned anything in the last two decades at the multiplex it's that no Peter Parker is fixed forever, and in Spider-Man: No Way Home (in theaters Friday) the glue that puts the uni- in universe has come unstuck.

That's less breezy to do without the magic wand of animation, and No Way Home struggles early on to put the pieces in place and find its storyline. At the end of 2019's Far From Home , Holland's Peter was "unmasked" by Jake Gyllenhaal' s malevolent Mysterio — railroaded for crimes he hadn't committed and recast as a dangerous teenage menace in the public's mind. He'd like to shrug it off, but the reveal has also cast a pall on the people that love him: His Aunt May ( Marisa Tomei ), his loyal girlfriend M.J. ( Zendaya ) and best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon), even his cheerful bachelor-uncle benefactor, Happy ( Jon Favreau ).

If they've all become outcasts because of him — even MIT decides it doesn't want to see M.J. and Ned on its incoming-freshman rolls — how can he get their good names back? An irritable wizard several Manhattan zip codes away might know; and in fact Doctor Strange ( Benedict Cumberbatch , very much enjoying his snits) does have a few thoughts on how to fix it, including a forgetting spell that can, he promises, wipe Peter's slate clean. But a mid-spell intervention comes with side effects, and suddenly, portals are spitting out MCU ghosts like pinwheel sparklers on the 4th of July, long-dead villains and heroes emerging from the studio backlots that time forgot: 2014, 2007, even 2002. (It's no secret from the trailer at least that the resurrected-enemies list includes Jamie Foxx 's Electro, Alfred Molina 's Doctor Octopus, and Willem Dafoe 's Green Goblin).

Along with Holland, director Jon Watts is on his third installment, and the tone he brings to the franchise remains a kind of goofy, self-referential high-school sweetness; his previous two were like updated John Hughes movies that just happened to have agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. The first chunk of No Way Home feels noticeably less cohesive than the ones before it, a hectic collision of convenient plot points and winky one-liners pinging off every available surface while the script scrambles to find its footing. (A major part of Peter's appeal has always been that he's a kind, guileless kid, the most human superhero — though this script makes a strong case that great power should be no 17-year-old's responsibility.)

The way that the movie eventually manages to bridge all those multiplicities and pull them into focus feels both obvious and ingenious, though pretty much everything that happens after the 40-minute mark is a spoiler that early title cards and even a recorded pre-show entreaty from the cast beg you not to share. At just under two and a half hours, that leaves a lot on the table. So it's safer maybe just to say that what seems at first like pure fan service turns out to be some of the best and by far the most meta stuff Marvel has done, tender and funny and a little bit devastating. (There were audible sobs in the theater at an industry screening.) It's also Holland's last time in the suit (unless it isn't ); if and when Peter finds his way home, maybe this bigger, broader Spider-Verse will find a new way — or a new form altogether — to take him there. Grade: B+

Related content:

• Spider-Man producer says a new trilogy with Tom Holland is in the works after No Way Home
• Tom Holland opens up about Spider-Man: No Way Home and facing off against Alfred Molina
• New Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer swings headfirst into the multiverse

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‘spider-man: no way home’: film review.

Tom Holland’s webslinger fights a bunch of familiar faces in Jon Watts’ third outing as Spider-director.

By John DeFore

John DeFore

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The heroes who went clobberin’ through the pages of Marvel Comics in the 1980s were still relative kids when the mythology over at rival publisher DC started creaking under its own weight. Superman and Batman had started fighting crime in the late ’30s, for Pete’s sake, and the many iterations of their stories, not to mention those of less revered characters, had piled up in confusing or contradictory ways. The solution was a series called Crisis on Infinite Earths , envisioning a collision of alternate realities in which some characters died, others had their stories straightened out, and many (though far from all) overly literal fanboys were allowed to stop fretting if next month’s adventure contradicted one they read 15 years ago.

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That influential series solved some obvious problems. By contrast, one might wonder what issues are being fixed in Jon Watts’ Spider-Man: No Way Home , where Spidey and Doctor Strange open a rift between parallel dimensions, forcing Tom Holland ’s Spider-Man to face villains who starred in movies opposite Tobey Maguire’s and Andrew Garfield’s versions of the character.

Spider-Man: No Way Home

Release date: December 17 Cast: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jacob Batalon, Jon Favreau, Marisa Tomei Director: Jon Watts Screenwriters: Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers

Was the problem “there’s not enough fan service in Marvel movies”? Certainly, this outing is a textbook example of that phenomenon, in which little moments of pandering (be the moments loving or cynical) make inside jokes, throw in gratuitous cameos, or bring intergalactic bounty hunters back to life because there just aren’t enough Star Wars products out there yet for Disney to sell.

Some of the fan service plays fairly well here; some is unsubtle enough you expect an actor to look into the camera and wink at you after delivering his line. But in the end, No Way Home does use its multiversal mayhem to address the only real problem with the Holland-era web-slinger: the Iron Man-ification of the character, in which his already amazing powers keep getting overshadowed by the gadgets given to him by billionaire jerk-hero Tony Stark. This is the least fun of the Watts/Holland pictures by a wide margin (intentionally so, to some extent), but it’s a hell of a lot better than the last Spidey threequel, Sam Raimi’s overstuffed and ill-conceived Spider-Man 3 .

The story begins with the scene that closed the last film: Spidey is perched outside Penn Station when J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons) exposes his secret identity. Soon, the whole world knows it’s Peter Parker under that mask, and hordes believe Jameson’s bizarre claim that Spider-Man is a war criminal. (This iteration of Daily Bugle editor Jameson is obviously modeled on real-life idiocy-promoter Alex Jones; but as is often the case these days, intended satire pales in comparison to the stupidity of the real thing.)

Life gets hard for our hero and his pals Ned (Jacob Batalon) and MJ ( Zendaya ), who have to deal with constant media attention and uncomfortable scenes at school. Somehow (just don’t question it), this notoriety even prevents the three brainiacs from getting into any of the colleges they apply to. So Peter Parker heads to Greenwich Village, hoping Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) can cast a spell and make his identity a secret again.

Several moments of poor judgment later, Strange has had to quash his own out-of-control magic, which threatens to summon to our planet every person, on every alternate Earth out there, who knows the name Peter Parker. But the cat’s partly out of the bag, and any viewer who has seen a trailer knows at least some of the characters who are coming to play — first, and most enjoyably, Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus.

As the old villains reappear, we’re reminded that practically every one of them is a good soul gone wrong — some made monstrous by the same kind of dumb luck that made Peter a hero. So when Strange prepares to send them back to their own timelines (where, we may recall, most of them perish spectacularly), Peter balks. Urged on by his fiercely moral Aunt May (Marisa Tomei, the only woman in the multiverse who can get away with the godawful outfits these movies give her), he insists on trying to heal the villains before sending them home. Arguments between Avengers being what they are, Spidey and Strange duke it out in a magical realm where the scenery goes all Inception- y on them, then Spidey steals a magic doodad and sets off to cure the bad guys.

Rather than spoil any of the surprises the plot may have in store, let’s talk about the elephant in the room: Who thought it was a great idea to tackle this material so soon after practically the same thing happened in 2018’s animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse ? That rollicking, eye-popping adventure was so fresh, funny and exciting that No Way Home can really only look stodgy in comparison, relying on the novelty of faces we haven’t seen in a while and building up to the kind of operatic emotional moments the previous Watts films tended to avoid.

Yes, Peter suffers here, losing so much he’s at risk of also losing the spirit that has made Holland’s Peter Parker so winning onscreen since swinging into Captain America: Civil War . At moments, the anguish feels like the paint-by-numbers routine of superhero franchise-building: more of the same, despite the unusual circumstances.

But there’s a lightness to the movie’s final scene that makes one hopeful. What if all this colliding-multiverse stuff freed Peter from attachments, not only to his former incarnations, but to some of his more grandiose present-tense buddies as well? Would it be so bad if he were allowed to be a “friendly neighborhood Spider-Man” for a while, with no obligation to fight aliens and giant monsters every other year? Let Doctor Strange explore the mystic depths for a while, and let Spidey swing.

Full credits

Distributor: Sony Pictures Releasing Production companIes: Columbia Pictures, Marvel Studios, Pascal Pictures Cast: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jacob Batalon, Jon Favreau, Marisa Tomei Director: Jon Watts Screenwriters: Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers Producers: Kevin Feige, Amy Pascal Executive Producers: Louis D'Esposito, Victoria Alonso, JoAnn Perritano, Rachel O’Connor, Avi Arad, Matt Tolmach Director of photography: Mauro Fiore Production designer: Darren Gilford Costume designer: Sanja Milkovic Hays Editors: Jeffrey Ford, Leigh Folsom Boyd Composer: Michael Giacchino Casting directors: Sarah Finn, Chris Zaragoza

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• Consequence

Spider-Man: No Way Home Review: A Daring Narrative Feat With a Lot to Say About the Web-Slinger

Avoid spoilers if you can. Seriously

Directed by

• Tom Holland, Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jacob Batalon, Jon Favreau, Marisa Tomei
• Columbia Pictures

The Pitch: It’s very very hard to make specific references to much of what happens in Spider-Man: No Way Home without spoilers. But at one point, while discussing the memory spell that Doctor Strange ( Benedict Cumberbatch ) has agreed to perform for Peter Parker ( Tom Holland ), Peter voices his concern over his beloved MJ ( Zendaya ) forgetting that he’s Spider-Man.

Doctor Strange then points out that if MJ is only Peter’s girlfriend because he’s Spider-Man, then what does that say about their relationship? It’s perhaps the smartest thing Doctor Strange says in the entire movie, and evaluating No Way Home leads to a similar dilemma.

What director Jon Watts and writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers have done with this film is an unprecedented piece of corporate-produced art. But attempting to write about it without blowing some of the bigger reveals highlights this question: Separated from the most exciting/controversial/unexpected moments in play, and without the element of surprise, does No Way Home hold up as a good story well told? The answer is yes to a degree…but it could have gone further.

Bring Me Pictures of Spider-Man! If you haven’t recently seen Holland’s previous Spider-Man outing, Far From Home , you might want to go revisit it, as the action of No Way Home picks pretty much immediately after the surprise outing of Peter as Spidey by J. Jonah Jamison ( J.K. Simmons , whose new interpretation of the character veers immediately into full-tilt Alex Jones territory here).

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‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Review: Hero Wrestles with Place in Universe in Emotional, Unsteady Sequel

Kate erbland, editorial director.

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There’s little question that diving deep into the psyches of superheroes can render some dark finds (hell, Batman has turned that into a signature move over the course of numerous film franchises and television series, and that’s just one bat-eared dude), but the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s treatment of the state of young Spider-Man’s ( Tom Holland ) soul has continually added fresh dimension to an ever-expanding franchise. Spidey has always been an emotional dude — baseline biographical bits like “is just a teen when that damn spider bites him” and “is orphan” help that along with ease — but Holland’s appealingly wide-eyed superhero has spent a number of movies grounding wild action in a human frame. Being a superhero is both hard and lots of fun, and few MCU heroes have been able to quite so ably strike that balance in the midst of world-destroying action sequences.

Not so with this Peter Parker. The most believable on-screen Spidey — which is not to say that Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield didn’t bring their own special sauce to their individual Spider-Man franchises, cough cough — Holland’s take on the webslinger has always felt like the most human, the most real, the most “holy wow, I’m a superhero!” version of this beloved character. Which also means we’ve seen this Peter Parker in some pretty tough spots — his bond with Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man is some of the most darling stuff to pop up in the MCU, obviously its end was tear-streaked — and that we’re inevitably going to end up in some deep, dark places.

And that’s not where Jon Watts ‘ satisfying, emotional, and occasionally unsteady “ Spider-Man: No Way Home ” begins. The third film in the franchise picks up immediately after 2019’s “Spider-Man: Far from Home,” and finds Holland at his grinning Peter Parker best: in love with a girl (Zendaya, continually a scene-stealer as the sarcastic MJ). Yeah, yeah, yeah, “Far from Home” might have ended with the death of a secret baddie (Jake Gyllenhaal, who appears in flashback footage) and forced Peter to really start grappling with his place in the world, but it also wrapped up with Peter and MJ both together and totally honest with each other. What could possibly go wrong now that the girl he loves knows who he is?

How about the whole world knowing who he is? As hinted at during the end of “Far from Home,” Peter’s identity is almost immediately disclosed at the start of “No Way Home” — big thanks to returning franchise star J.K. Simmons, who brings new life into a very current incarnation of loud-mouthed journalist J. Jonah Jameson, who he last played in the Tobey Maguire-starring Spidey films — turning his entire existence upside down in the process. And yet Watts somehow manages to keep this revelation feeling light, as Peter, MJ, Ned (Jacob Batalon), Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), and Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) soon band together to keep Peter’s life feeling, well, sort of normal. There’s even a scene in which he heads back to high school for his senior year, and an early focus on ensuring the Midtown High trio all get into college. (College! The stakes are college ! In a superhero movie!)

For far too long, the fate of the entire universe has dangled in the balance during Marvel’s many cinematic outings, and while “No Way Home” goes so far as to add in  multiverses  and the possibility that the very “fabric of reality” will forever tear, there’s still something charmingly small-scale about this film. It’s  personal , and that’s a theme and an idea that is only further hammered home as the film zips through its first act, starts to slow down in its second, and completely nails the whole damn thing by its eye-popping final forty minutes.

Rumors about not just the content, but the actual  cast  of the film have long abounded, and while we won’t confirm or deny anything here, suffice it to say that the film is filled with both familiar faces and surprising additions. The real trick, however, is that even bits that might, in a lesser film, feel like stunt-casting here exist in true service to the story. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has rarely balked at throwing in a winking cameo whenever the chance arises, but “No Way Home” is the rare MCU film to actually make them count, baking them straight into the story at hand.

So, back to the college thing: Peter is dismayed to discover that his newly-ousted superhero personality is something of a liability, particularly as J. Jonah Jameson, a rumor-spewing internet talking head who has (sadly) many real world parallels, is hellbent on making people think that Spidey is the bad guy. All that attention isn’t so great for a trio of eggheads who want to get into MIT, and when Peter, MJ, and Ned are all rejected explicitly because of their Spidey-tivities, Peter comes up with a genius plan: he’ll just get Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to cast some kind of spell to make people forget that he’s Spider-Man.

But Peter is indeed still a kid, and an impulsive one at that, and even when he gets the sorcerer to agree to the wish, his last-minute caveats (wait, did he say he wants  everyone  to forget? no, not  everyone! ) screw so badly with the spell that the whole thing has to be shut down. But magic is a weird thing, and so is the multiverse, and the nutty power cooked up by Doctor Strange works itself out in wacky, scary, and (sorry) strange new ways. Let’s put it this way: even with the spell cut short, ensuring that no one has forgotten that Peter is Spider-Man, its reach is wide enough to ensnare a special class of people, the kind of people who know few things as well as they know that Peter is Spider-Man.

Soon, Peter’s universe is overwhelmed with new friends and foes, including a few who have long been hinted at in marketing and interviews (hello, Jamie Foxx and Alfred Molina, reprising roles as signature baddies from those other Spider-Man series), and a few pleasant surprises. And while that franchise-spanning combination has been what’s kept so many fans thrilled about what “No Way Home” might hold, things start to stall out a bit when Peter and his pals attempt to wrangle up the many ( many ) baddies he and his pals need to battle. Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers’ script spends far too long dwelling on the machinations of people and plans we already know, throwing in some awkward misdirection and simply delaying the inevitable. The pacing suffers, and that wonderful lightness that kicked off the film soon swings between something still wackier and the kind of deep despair this particular Peter has already endured.

Similarly, the film’s many fighting sequences run the gamut, starting off with an overpass-set battle in broad daylight that’s awe-inspiring and a jaunt through the Mirror Universe with Doctor Strange that out-“Matrix”es “The Matrix,” before dipping into a messy series of battles — so very many of them set at night — that are bland and dark, even when Foxx’s Electro is there to literally light the place up. At least it all leads to the film’s final act, a truly joyful (and often funny and wise and emotional) tour de force that will delight fans, both new and old, of the varied adventures of their Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. Somehow both self-reflexive (sometimes, even self-mocking) and deadly earnest, these final sections combine so much of what makes Spider-Man special, across movies and times and places and even universes .

It also lays the groundwork for more adventures to come, even if the very past itself will look very different by the time the credits roll. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is not always willing to get  really  risky — particularly in standalone features that will undoubtedly impact the rest of the slate — but “No Way Home” isn’t scared of throwing down an entirely new gauntlet, with a truly reverential eye to the past, and hoping for a new future worth fighting for. The road to the closing moments of “No Way Home” — both warm-hearted and heartbreaking — might have hit a few bumps, but the darkness is worth it. After all, when was the last time the third film in a franchise got audiences truly thrilled for what comes next? Maybe there is no way home, but Holland, Watts, and company make a case for something else, something even better.

Sony will release “Spider-Man: No Way Home” in theaters on Friday, December 17.

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Spider-Man: No Way Home Movie Analysis Essay Sample

The roar from the crowd was deafening on opening night of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” as audiences tried to fathom what we were seeing. Cheers, profanities, and gasps filled the air, along with the muted sounds of tears rolling down cheeks. Marvel superfans and casual viewers alike sat stunned in their seats while the movie continued on with its impressive effects, heartbreaking plot points, and altogether excitement at every turn.

We can’t talk about this movie without addressing the return of Spider-Man veterans Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, who were incorporated into the movie quite seamlessly. Despite continued denial of their involvement, both actors reappeared on screen, and not just for small cameos. They built a lovely relationship with Peter Parker – that is, Tom Holland’s version – and became mentors to him, aiding in both his physical and emotional battles. Maguire and Garfield’s characters also developed a mutual respect and camaraderie with each other, even sharing a few good quips. The three’s dynamic was well done in that it was heartwarming without being overly cliche. They bonded over their shared pain and humored the audience with references to their respective movies.

I could easily see that the people behind this project knew what fans wanted. Along with the aforementioned moments, the particular parallel between Garfield’s portrayal of Peter being unable to save girlfriend Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) in 2014’s “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” and rescuing MJ in “No Way Home” was not lost on viewers. We gasped and cried along with this Spider-Man as he realized he had succeeded where he once failed.

Along with these heroes came villains Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), Electro (Jamie Foxx), Lizard (Rhys Ifans), Doc Ock (Alfred Molina), and Sandman (Thomas Haden Church), all of whom were plucked from moments before their respective deaths in their universes and transported to ours. Though there were evidently a lot of characters and opportunities packed into the film, the pacing was good and everything was adequately spaced so that audiences were always captivated without being overwhelmed. One villain who stuck out to me was the Green Goblin. Willem Dafoe topped his original 2002 performance, delivering a frighteningly unhinged Norman Osborn that laughed in the face of death and seamlessly switched between personalities.

Something especially impressive regarding “No Way Home” was the visual effects. The way they were able to combine the mind-bending imagery of “Dr. Strange” with the traditional fight sequences we’d expect from a Spider-Man film, as well as the looks of each individual villain’s powers was astounding. The VFX team truly deserves so much credit for managing to adapt these 2000s and 2010s practical effects to the 2021 screen without making them look out of place within the newer technology, nor striving too far away from their original designs.

The storyline itself was well-written, incorporating a multitude of other characters while still focusing on Tom Holland’s Peter and his life, with the normal college admissions, friendships, and relationships that come with being a high school senior. The ending rounded out his character well, leaving room for more movies revolving around his new life and the introduction of new characters while also providing a nice closing point for this trilogy.

A downfall of this movie packing so much into its two-and-a-half-hour run time was that the writers were forced to sideline Dr. Strange for much of the film. While I agree that with him there would have been too many levels of conflict in the second half, it is unrealistic for a character of his skill to be rendered incapable how he was.

Another critique of the film is the sequencing of scenes, which at times gave viewers emotional whiplash. For instance, Aunt May’s death scene was followed immediately by Garfield and Maguire’s entrances. While this kept the pacing on track to include everything audiences wanted, it was a large emotional jump from despair and a sorrowful deja vu moment for audiences to inane excitement and applause.

None of this is to say that “Spider-Man: No Way Home” is a bad movie or underdelivered in any aspect – it was all audiences hoped for and more, an “Endgame”-level film with enough surprises to keep even those who have done deep dives into the leaks on the edge of their seats.

If Garfield and Maguire’s appearances weren’t enough, the film includes a cameo by Charlie Cox’s Daredevil, who had not been confirmed as part of the MCU since his show came out, as well as other characters in the post credit scenes. The first featured Eddie Brock and Venom, a continuation of them being teased in the post credit scene of “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” from October earlier this year. It was a humorous scene, but a bit disappointing. While I’m glad the Venom symbiote was left in this universe for Peter or someone else to find, I would’ve loved for Eddie to stay in the MCU and interact with other characters. However, the “Venom” franchise is one that doesn’t take themselves too seriously so it did not come completely unexpected.

The second scene, a full teaser for “Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” exceeded expectations. With the return of Baron Mordo of the first “Dr. Strange” film and Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, as well as a mysterious Dr. Strange doppelganger (a possible connection to the “What If…?” animated series) and young hero America Chavez’s first on-screen appearance, fans left the theater with much to speculate about. 

Overall, this film soared above viewer expectations and delivered a visually pleasing film full of twists and history-making scenes alongside a heart wrenching storyline that left viewers stunned. “Spider-Man: No Way Home” is a must-see for Marvel fans or anyone looking for an interesting, emotional, and jam-packed movie. While nothing will beat the excitement of watching it for the first time in theaters, I’d gladly rewatch “No Way Home” again and again.

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‘No Way Home’ is a joyous valentine to Spider-Man movies and their fans

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The plot of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” is set in motion by a threatened bout of collective amnesia, which is fitting because I could barely remember anything that happened in the last of these movies. That’s odd, because I definitely saw it. ( I’m pretty sure I reviewed it. ) Fortunately, like most installments of endless cinematic franchises, this latest Spidey adventure seldom stops explaining itself or referencing its predecessors (more on that in a bit). Within moments you are helpfully reminded of how 2019’s “Spider-Man: Far From Home” ended, with that belligerent hack journalist J. Jonah Jameson (Spidey mainstay J.K. Simmons) exposing the famous webslinger’s true identity to the entire world. And most thoughtlessly of all, he didn’t even think to preface it with a spoiler warning.

The people at Sony Pictures, by contrast, have taken their usual care to warn journalists not to spill the secrets of “No Way Home,” expecting us to behave with more scrupulousness and care than some of their own marketing materials. I’ll proceed as cautiously as I can, with the caveat that your spoiler sense may tingle differently from my spoiler sense.

If you’re that concerned about plot details, I implore you: Put down this review and read something else. Read the sports section. Read a Thackeray novel. (Do not read Twitter.) And yeah, sure, see the movie first if you must. If “West Side Story” hasn’t already sated your appetite for impetuous teenagers leaping acrobatically around New York, this one might do the trick.

‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ tried to hide its lineup of villains. One leak upended a Marvel-ous strategy

The cast and creatives of Sony’s ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ discuss spoilers, returning villains and the Marvel multiverse at the film’s premiere.

Dec. 14, 2021

Or you could just plunge ahead and read on, especially if, like me, you harbor some skepticism about the way studios use the promise of jaw-dropping, game-changing twists to preempt criticism and sell material that’s actually fairly predictable at its core. Really, given the months of speculative hype that have preceded “No Way Home,” the most surprising thing about it is how … unsurprisingly much of it plays out.

If you’ve had your ear even remotely to the ground, you know what’s up: Due to unprecedented ruptures in the multiverse, characters from the first two Spider-Man series make appearances in this one. To discuss who those characters are and what they do would apparently be a crime on par with leaking the nuclear codes, so let’s just swing around them, Spidey-like, as gracefully as possible.

The narrative pretext for all these series-blending shenanigans is charming enough, in a low-stakes teen-movie kind of way. Due to an accompanying whiff of scandal, being outed as Spider-Man hasn’t exactly done wonders for Peter Parker (the excellent Tom Holland). Nor has it boosted the reputations of his girlfriend, MJ (Zendaya), and his best friend, Ned (Jacob Batalon), whose associations with Peter have gotten them rejected from MIT. With bricks flying through the window of the Queens apartment he shares with his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei, winning as ever), Peter calls on his old friend Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), asking him to cast a spell that will cause the entire world to forget that he’s Spider-Man. Much digitally confected spectacle and human error ensue, and rather than erasing the world’s memory, Doctor Strange winds up accidentally jogging ours.

And so a caper becomes a point of convergence, a nearly 2½-hour reunion special. Amid a jumble of clashing timelines and multiplying meta-paradoxes plotted out by screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers (who also wrote “Far From Home”), the familiar faces include a handful of villains from the Tobey Maguire-starring, Sam Raimi-directed trilogy of “Spider-Man” (2002), “Spider-Man 2” (2004) and “Spider-Man 3” (2007), as well as the less fondly remembered Andrew Garfield-starring, Marc Webb-directed duo of “The Amazing Spider-Man” (2012) and “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” (2014).

I doubt anyone will be shocked when Willem Dafoe’s snarling Green Goblin arrives, or when Alfred Molina’s metal-tentacled Doc Ock turns up, daring Spider-Man to beat him to a bloody poulpe. My own surprise was entirely genuine when Jamie Foxx resurfaced as Electro, a super-baddie I had completely forgotten about from the misleadingly titled “Amazing Spider-Man 2.”

As I was saying: amnesia. But “No Way Home,” directed by Jon Watts (who also steered “Far From Home” and 2017’s “Spider-Man: Homecoming”), does strive to pull off something memorable, and largely succeeds. It’s rare to see such surreally elaborate narrative gymnastics arise from what is basically a long-running game of corporate tug-of-war. The Spidey custody battle that has ensnared Sony, Disney and Marvel Studios over the years is too tedious to rehash here, but there is something admittedly disarming about the solution that “No Way Home” hits upon. Without saying too much — OK, without saying anything at all — three parallel Spider-Man universes that once were forced to stand apart now get to belatedly salute each other, in a warm, even reconciliatory spirit.

This exercise — call it the Spidey Variations — may be fan service on a maximalist scale. And it doesn’t have quite the delirious invention of “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” the 2018 animated feature that made the most of its multiverse-collapsing conceit. Still, it’s nice to feel a persistent human touch amid the otherwise mechanical sound and fury of “No Way Home,” especially during its wobbly, draggy midsection. Bridges rumble and scaffolding crumbles; the Statue of Liberty really should file for hazard pay. Comic relief arrives on cue (hello, Jon Favreau); tragedy strikes without warning. It’s a Spider-Man movie, in other words, and also a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie.

But while the action ultimately turns as murky as in any Avengers epic, the smug, depersonalized air that often mars those glorified cinematic frat parties is notably absent. And for all “No Way Home’s” vertiginous heights and precipitous drops, few things here shake you more fully than the anguished closeups of Holland, in which Peter’s genetically modified strength — and his all-too-human vulnerability — are on tear-soaked, grime-smudged display.

Holland was only 19 when he landed this role (he made his scene-stealing first appearance in 2016’s “Captain America: Civil War”). And while his Peter has always seemed younger than predecessors Maguire and Garfield, what united the three of them was a fundamental sweetness, an immutable sense of decency. The movies weren’t always great or even particularly good, but the actors kept you watching. Maguire put the most distinctive stamp on the character, his awkward, wide-eyed charm aided by the freshness and pop energy of Raimi’s direction. Garfield had a rougher time of it, being the standout element of a rudderless middle-child cycle that felt more commercially motivated than any of its brethren, and that’s saying a lot.

Holland’s task hasn’t been much easier. Like his predecessors, he’s an enormously likable screen presence, which has been crucial to making this third go-round with Spider-Man feel like more than just another retread. That’s no small thing, since every Spidey cycle must essentially trace the same arc, hit the same beats and rites of passage: the loneliness and isolation of superheroism, the all-too-relatable challenges of teenagerdom, the bittersweet ache of young love, the pain of sudden, irreversible loss. When someone here intones, “With great power comes great responsibility,” it’s with a wry awareness of how often those words have been spoken before, and how often they’ll likely be spoken again. The poignant (and ultimately spoiler-proof) achievement of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” is that, for the moment at least, it leaves you considering that prospect with more affection than fatigue.

Here’s what we can tell you about ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’

Arguably the year’s most anticipated movie had its world premiere on Monday, and fans are likely to rejoice at what’s in store.

Dec. 13, 2021

‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’

Rating: PG-13, for sequences of action/violence, some language and brief suggestive comments Running time: 2 hours, 28 minutes Playing: Starts Dec. 17 in general release

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Justin Chang was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2016 to 2024. He won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in criticism for work published in 2023. Chang is the author of the book “FilmCraft: Editing” and serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

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‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ First Reactions and Reviews Hail MCU’s Latest as ‘Extremely Emotional’ Franchise-Best

By J. Kim Murphy

J. Kim Murphy

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The Los Angeles premiere of Sony’s “ Spider-Man: No Way Home ” has officially wrapped and the first reactions to the MCU’s latest entry are out in the wild. Official reviews and social media responses are beginning to pour in, with many offering euphoric praise for the multiverse mash-up featuring Tom Holland’s friendly neighborhood superhero.

Director Jon Watts returns for “No Way Home” after directing previous “Spider-Man” entries “Homecoming” and “Far From Home.” The newest installment picks up after Spider-Man’s identity as Peter Parker has been revealed to the world. Peter turns to Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), who casts a spell to make the world forget that he’s the web-slinger, but the enchantment goes awry and breaks open the multiverse. The MCU is invaded by “Spider-Man” villains from alternate realities, including Dr. Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina), Electro (Jamie Foxx) and the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe). Zendaya, Jacob Batalon, Marisa Tomei, Jon Favreau and J.K. Simmons also return for this new “Spider-Man” entry.

“Spider-Man: No Way Home” will be released exclusively in theaters on Friday.

Popular on Variety

Variety  chief film critic Peter Debruge called the blockbuster “a clever meta-adventure” adding that “audiences who’ve tuned out [of the ‘Spider-Man’ films] along the way will be rewarded for giving this one a shot.”

Reviewing the film for IGN , Amelia Emberwing hailed the film as a “perfect harmony of a Saturday morning cartoon and the deep drama that we’ve come to expect from these epics,” citing the blockbuster’s performances as one of the key reasons for its success.

The Playlist’s Rodrigo Perez was less enthusiastic, calling the film a “very regressive, fan-service-y ‘Spider-Man’ legacy-sequel that’s overly nostalgic for its heydays.” Comparing the film to the similarly multiverse-focused “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” the critic wrote that the film is “nowhere near as successful or inventive.”

Nick Schager offered a positive review in The Daily Beast , deeming it “the MCU’s best Spidey movie by a mile.”

On social media, Variety awards editor Clayton Davis erred on the side of caution with regards to spoilers, offering a humorously non-descriptive response that still expressed his praise.

#SpiderManNoWayHome has a beginning, middle and an end. I like those three elements. Tom Holland and Zendaya are good at making me believe they are those characters. The special effects look real. I liked the fights. I had a lot of fun. This is how I review Marvel movies now. pic.twitter.com/AZrOiX7Cnt — Clayton Davis (@ByClaytonDavis) December 14, 2021

Fandango’s Erik Davis deemed “No Way Home” the best live-action “Spider-Man” picture to date.

I can confidently say #SpiderManNoWayHome is THE BEST live-action Spider-Man movie. A thrilling & emotional end to the “Homecoming” trilogy, but also a smart, fun & exciting tribute to 20 years of Spider-Man movies. Both hilarious & heartbreaking, I honestly loved every second. pic.twitter.com/8xpqbTNgfz — Erik Davis (@ErikDavis) December 14, 2021

Gizmodo’s Germain Lussier called the film “immensely satisfying,” adding the caveat that the middle gets a little bogged down with setting up so many characters.

Spider-Man: No Way Home is immensely satisfying. You'll cry happy tears, sad tears, and cheer in the theater. The middle gets a little clunky cause there are so many characters but the third act is so dynamic, fun and powerful, it more than makes up for it. #SpiderManNoWayHome pic.twitter.com/klthYwtmCg — Germain Lussier (@GermainLussier) December 14, 2021

Decider’s Alex Zalben stated that the film works because it remains centered on Holland’s Peter Parker, even while spinning lots of fan service plates.

#SpiderManNoWayHome shockingly works by keeping focused on Tom Holland's Spider-Man, front and center. It's still packed with fan service and pays off nearly 20 years of movies; but most of all it's funny, fun, and often extremely emotional. Stay spoiler free as long as possible. — Alex Zalben (@azalben) December 14, 2021

See more reactions below:

If any movie this year was engineered from top to bottom to be seen in a theater with an audience, it is #SpiderManNoWayHome . It’s many pleasures are magnified exponentially by how much joy it brings strangers sitting nearby. — Adam B. Vary (@adambvary) December 14, 2021

Spider-Man: No Way Home didn't meet my expectations, it EXCEEDED them. This movie is worth every excruciating moment we had to wait! The visuals, the score, the heart, the story, the villains…. talk about an EPIC creation. Tears, chills, happiness… #SpiderManNoWayHome pic.twitter.com/44FcO7IrtF — Tessa Smith – Mama's Geeky (@MamasGeeky) December 14, 2021

Spider-Man: No Way Home is one of the best superhero movies of all time. It just continuously proves, over and over again, why Peter Parker is the greatest fictional character, ever. pic.twitter.com/2VCcIxfZ1J — Hector Navarro (@Hectorisfunny) December 14, 2021

Spider-Man: No Way Home is the best Marvel movie of all time. #SpiderManNoWayHome perfectly pays tribute to the legacy of Spider-Man and finds that perfect balance of humor, action, heart, and nostalgia. Fans of the web-slinger will absolutely lose their minds when they see this. pic.twitter.com/mYZ7emhkY1 — Scott Menzel (@ScottDMenzel) December 14, 2021

#SpiderManNoWayHome is simply amazing. Every scene w/ Willem Dafoe is GREAT. A love letter to the fans. I don’t even want to say anything else. I love Homecoming, but this may be my favorite of the trilogy. Can’t wait to see it again. 🕷❤️ pic.twitter.com/GBia3SlCqs — Kirsten (@KirstenAcuna) December 14, 2021

No Way Home is fucking great. Endgame levels of "Wow they nailed it." — jason c. (@netw3rk) December 14, 2021

#SpiderMan #NoWayHome starts off wobbly under a mountain of exposition/overcrowding but eventually rounds into form. The multiverse elements provide great fan service constructed to serve a greater thematic arc. A natural emotional step from FFH & conclusion to first trilogy. pic.twitter.com/sB8AjQdU0q — Brandon Katz ☕️ (@Great_Katzby) December 14, 2021

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‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ review: Marvel’s mad mash-up in the multiverse

**Light spoilers below**

H istorically, Spider-Man series don’t have much longevity. Sam Raimi’s noughties take had two soaring instalments, before hitting a wall with its third. Marc Webb only managed two, neither fulfilling their potential. Jon Watts is now on his third. He’s not only setting out to prove he can hit three in a row but trying to tie all the Spider-Man movies together, effectively making this the capper on one 20-year saga. It’s an insane mission, yet in all the most important ways he succeeds triumphantly.

• Read more: The 20 best films of 2021

It’s only been two years since Far From Home , but there’s been a lot going on, so to catch up: the dying hurrah of villain Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal), who the public thought was a hero, was to tell the world Spider-Man (Tom Holland) murdered him and then reveal Spidey’s true identity. No Way Home begins with Peter, still just 17, the most famous kid on the planet, being investigated for murder and wishing he could go back to simpler times. He knows a man who can do that, so he swings off to visit Doctor Strange ( Benedict Cumberbatch ), who casts a spell to make the world forget Peter Parker. That spell goes very, very wrong. Instead of making the world forget Peter, it makes everybody in every reality fixate on this Peter Parker. In short order, villains from every Spider-Man universe are leaking through the fabric of reality to kill Peter. So you have the villains from Raimi’s and Webb’s movies invading Watts’. Welcome to the multiverse.

The wild ambition of that idea brings both joys and awkward difficulties. Let’s do the downsides first. Using villains from all the films means you’re not just treated to the good ones but lumbered with the ones you may not even remember. Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina) and Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe) were so vivid in Sam Raimi’s films that they arrive with the weight of solid backstory and clear personality. The others are wisps by comparison. Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) from Raimi’s dreadful third outing, and Electro (Jamie Foxx) and Lizard (Rhys Ifans) from Marc Webb’s messy efforts, were underwritten in their own films and it’s too much to ask that their brief screen time here can flesh them out into fulfilling characters. The film tries some Suicide Squad -ish comedy with them but little of it lands because there’s not much personality to play with. The villain performances range from gleefully pantomime (Dafoe and Molina) to phoned-in (Jamie Foxx does not even attempt to reprise his characterisation from Amazing Spider-Man 2 , instead rebooting the character as ‘a man like Jamie Foxx’).

And yet, we start with the bad because the good far outweighs it. For one, the audacious spectacle of putting all these baddies in one film is thrilling, even before they’ve done anything. They could sit and relay the complexities of their contract negotiations and it would still hold some excitement. The real triumph is in how Watts and writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers use this opportunity. It’s not lazy fan service, Easter eggs from films past served up for cheap cheers. The gimmick is used to really get into what it means to be Spider-Man. A comic book villain is always a cracked mirror version of the hero. No Way Home reflects Peter back at himself in so many ways that he can’t avoid reckoning with what he sees.

While Strange wants to return the villains to their universes and inevitable death, Peter thinks he can rehabilitate them before they return. He can’t bring himself to effectively kill people he’s never met. This is always Spider-Man’s lot. He thinks everyone can be saved. This is a film about the MCU ’s most upbeat hero realising that’s not true. Tom Holland’s boyscout-ish Parker faces up to the reality that being Spider-Man means failing, facing tragedy, and learning to come back swinging. Spider-Man’s greatest power is eternal optimism in the face of inevitable tragedy.

Recommended

Holland has always been a great Spider-Man but he ascends to a new level here. All the ‘aw gosh gee willikers’ stuff he still does charmingly, but this time he has to do some hefty emotional lifting. The weight of two decades of Spider-Man movies are on his wiry shoulders and he carries it manfully. To go into detail about how the film explores the soul of Peter Parker would give away secrets – although knowing ‘spoilers’ should in no way ruin your enjoyment of the story, such is a the quality of the character writing – but suffice to say that in terms of getting to the heart of the character, No Way Home is the ultimate Spider-Man film. There are moments here that make you want to cheer and weep simultaneously. It’s not the most visually spectacular, it’s not the funniest, but it’s the most emotionally rich. For Spider-Man fans who’ve stuck with the character through the soaring highs and the sticky lows, this is your reward. And it makes it all worth it.

• Director: Jon Watts
• Starring: Tom Holland, Zendaya, J.K. Simmons
• Release date: December 15
• Related Topics
• Marvel Cinematic Universe

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Spider-Man: No Way Home review – a fun, more-is-more return to the multiverse

Tom Holland’s third outing as the puppyish web-slinger is endearing and chock-full of eye-popping spectacle

T he greatest hits approach to this climactic episode of Tom Holland ’s incarnation as the web-slinger delivers an overflowing, funnel-web cornucopia of treats for Spider-fans. But amid numerous references to Spideys past, the key influence is the one that is most likely to shape the future of the franchise, 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse . While that thrillingly inventive animation remains the standout film from the Spider-canon – it’s a sleek, conceptually elegant thing compared to No Way Home ’s cluttered, more-is-more approach – here, director Jon Watts harnesses the idea of the “multiverse” (an infinite number of parallel universes, each with their own Spider-Man) and satisfyingly puts it to work in the service of a live-action version of the spider saga. It’s all very meta and self-referential; screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers hoover up memorable lines from past movies and serve them with a flourish and an exaggerated wink to the audience. It’s also a good deal of fun.

The story starts immediately after the events at the conclusion of 2019’s Spider-Man: Far from Home ; the dying Mysterio has leaked the identity of the boy beneath the lycra. And thanks to social media-stoked suspicion and conspiracy theories, Peter Parker’s name is mud. He seeks out the help of Doctor Strange , and discovers that although Benedict Cumberbatch’s character may be able to perform magic, sarcasm remains his superpower. Meanwhile, Parker’s appeal continues to be his endearing, puppyish enthusiasm. And for all the Avengers: Endgame -style onslaught of effects and action here, it’s Spidey’s sweetness that is the USP.

• Spider-Man: No Way Home
• The Observer

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Spider-Man: No Way Home

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Rent Spider-Man: No Way Home on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

What to Know

A bigger, bolder Spider-Man sequel, No Way Home expands the franchise's scope and stakes without losing sight of its humor and heart.

Packed with action, emotion, and surprises, Spider-Man: No Way Home is franchise fan service at its finest.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Tom Holland

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Benedict Cumberbatch

Doctor Strange

Jacob Batalon

Jon Favreau

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Spider-Man: No Way Home [2021] Review – A Tale of Two Movies At Odds With Each Other

When Avengers: Infinity War (2018) unleashed the wrath of the Mad Titan Thanos upon the world after over a decade of set-up, it genuinely felt like it was the first time we were experiencing something of that magnitude. Then Kevin Feige along with his team managed to exceed our expectations from the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Avengers: Endgame (2019) by giving a fitting conclusion to the Infinity Saga. After that the franchise branched into movies and TV shows of varying qualities and scale, promising one thing in particular: the multiverse. So that the MCU won’t need to limit itself to the characters in its close-circuited world, and can extend its reach to the stories that came before the MCU was even a thing. And Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) is technically the first entry to use this limitlessness to its fullest. But does that benefit the movie? Well, let’s find out.

Directed by Jon Watts and written by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, Spider-Man: No Way Home picks up right where Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) left off with Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhaal) revealing that Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is in fact Spider-Man. Peter’s life spirals into utter chaos as he is hounded everywhere he goes as Peter and as Spider-Man. Like a not-so-subtle commentary on celebrity and paparazzi culture, Peter’s friends, MJ (Zendaya), Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon), Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau), and his aunt May Parker (Marisa Tomei) aren’t spared as well. And when Peter, MJ, and Ned’s college applications start to get rejected due to their “controversial” status, Peter decides to seek Dr Strange’s (Benedict Cumberbatch) help.

Also, Read: The Problem with Cinematic Universe

Strange tries to erase any memory that the world has about Peter being Spider-Man, but the spell goes horribly wrong. That results in a rift in the multiverse thereby making way for Norman Osborn ( Willem Dafoe ), Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina) and Flint Marko (Thomas Haden Church) from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies, and Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx) and Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans) from Marc Webb’s Spider-Man movies to wreak havoc.

As you can clearly figure it out, there are two tonally opposite movies happening there. One is Peter’s struggle to deal with this unwanted attention caused by the revelation about his identity, while also guarding his friends and family against any potential harm to their present and future. The other one is the villains from the multiverse who need to be stopped and transported back to their respective worlds, potentially to their deaths at the hands of the Spider-Man they know and hate. But that’s not the problem.

Duality in Spider-Man is pretty standard because it reflects Peter living a dual life. The problem is that in No Way Home, these two sub-stories within the overarching story tend to undermine each other a lot. And that leaves a very sour taste in your mouth. Because this is an ambitious movie and you want every single emotional note to land instead of being watered down for momentary applause. Which, in a way echoes MJ’s quote about the practice of expecting disappointment from everything and then you’ll never be disappointed.

You are within your right to counter the aforementioned statement about expectations by saying that if you have seen any of the promotional material of No Way Home, you know what you are walking into. So, why express disappointment? Because Peter’s personal struggles are executed so well that you almost don’t want the multiversal story to happen. If the grounded legal high-school-to-college drama wouldn’t have felt daunting and organic to the story, the shift to the grandness of the multiverse would’ve seemed fine. But Watts directs Holland, Zendaya, Leeds, Tomei, and the cloud of anxiety and fear over them with such finesse that you feel the need to see it through to its bitter end.

Related to Spider-Man: No Way Home: All Spider-Man Movies Ranked From Worst to Best

The sight of familiar faces sending tingles down your spine and tears down your face because it has been such a long time since you’ve seen them do seem worth it at the moment. However, when you sit with the movie for a few minutes, you begin to realise that you’re cheering and laughing right after a fatal blow to Peter’s life. The power of nostalgia might convince you that that’s alright. That said, it’s an example of bad storytelling.

The MCU movies, especially Watts’s Spider-Man films, aren’t famous for their visual storytelling. No Way Home is no different. It suffers from the usual bland cinematography and over-reliance on weight-less CGI-heavy moments. That’s not a diss on the digital artists though. Their work is quite competent. Lizard and Sandman do look wonky. Apart from that, the movie boasts of some meticulously detailed VFX. The action is quite standard with the highlight being a brutal and mostly practical fight between Spider-Man and Green Goblin.

The action set-pieces that precede and succeed it aren’t as good. Yes, the final fight sequence is full of nostalgia-inducing moments. But, as mentioned before, that’s not necessarily a good thing. Especially when you’ve to look through said nostalgia-inducing moments through impractical virtual camerawork and dark and muddy visuals. Also, the fact that those bits echo other Spider-Man action sequences, thereby reminding you how proficiently they were shot in comparison to the one you are watching, doesn’t help No Way Home at all.

Related to ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ – 10 Reasons why Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse is the greatest spider-man movie ever 

Michael Giacchino’s score is the MVP of No Way Home, to be honest. The way the man uses the theme he has composed for Holland’s Spider-Man and then mixes it with Strange’s theme, only to then wow you by blending Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman’s scores, is truly amazing. In terms of performances, there’s not a single bad apple here. Holland is Peter Parker and Spider-Man. His acting range, both physically and through his expressions, is on full display. Zendaya, Batalon, Tomei and Favreau do a great job. The writing around them isn’t the best because, like every other MCU movie, they have to joke around a lot. So, when they are not joking about the gallery, their love for Parker permeates through the screen.

Benedict Cumberbatch is awesome as ever. Although the scope of his role is limited, he manages to essay Strange’s use of his narcissism to cover up his flaws. Surprisingly enough, Molina and Dafoe get a lot of space to stretch their acting muscles. And stretch they do. Foxx as Electro is a completely different character from the one we saw in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) and he does a fine job as well. At this point, you must’ve figured out that I am leaving out a few names for the sake of spoilers. All I can say is that their performances are so heart-felt that you won’t be able to help yourself from going to Kevin Feige and begging him and the actors in question to do more movies as the characters they are essaying in No Way Home.

Despite my criticisms, Spider-Man: No Way Home is in no way a “bad” movie. This is kind of the go-to reaction towards recent MCU entries nowadays: not too bad but not too good either. And as a Spider-Man fan, it’s tough to respond to a Spider-Man film in that way. But it is what it is. No Way Home could’ve been a movie about Peter Parker finding his way back home after the definition of what he considers “home” is desecrated by the media. No Way Home could’ve been a multiverse movie with Peter trying to help the characters from different worlds to get back home. In Watts’s attempt to tackle both of them, the movie has some high highs and some low lows. Hence, overall, it’s a middling viewing experience. In all honesty, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) still continues to be the best solo outing of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) is still the best Spider-Man movie involving the multiverse.

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Loves to talk about movies, TV shows, short films, and basically anything that emerges from the world of entertainment after watching Raja Hindustani and The Lost World: Jurassic Park on the big screen within the span of one week. Occasionally talks to people, and heavily judges them on the basis of their love for Ryan Gosling, Keanu Reeves, Edgar Wright, and arguably the best TV show ever made, Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese's Dark. Opinions are incredibly subject to market risks, so engage in a debate with him after reading all scheme information and other related documents carefully.

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THE MOVIE CULTURE

‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Movie Review & Summary: A Mega Mashup of Colossal Events

Spider-Man: No Way Home is the third instalment in the MCU Spider-Man saga, directed by Jon Watts. It follows Dr. Strange and Spider-Man who try to make the world forget that Peter Parker is Spider-Man.

Spider-Man: No Way Home Cast

• Tom Holland as Peter Parker
• Zendaya as MJ
• Jacob Batalon as Ned
• Benedict Cumberbatch as Dr. Stephen Strange

Spider-Man: No Way Home Plot

Spider-Man: No Way Home revolves around Peter Parker who struggles to confront the world when everyone is aware of his identity. 

Spider-Man: No Way Home Review

Spider-Man: No Way Home is one mega mashup of colossal events which stitched the saga of this iconic superhero, through different universes, franchisees and talented actors. There’s no wonder that this was the most logical step for Marvel to go forward with, but even after all the speculation, build up, hype and god knows how many personal theories, this still very much feels like something truly out of the extraordinary.

It packs so much heart and soul, and even with all of these different Spider-Man Villains coming together, it never loses attention to the fact that the character they really need to focus on is Peter Parker (Played by Tom Holland). The movie is an exceptional attempt at pushing him back to his roots, snatching the out worldly glamour that MCU always showered the character with, and bringing back the gritty realism and humanity that the source material was always known and loved for. 

Getting into the plot of this movie is like taking a walk on an extremely fragile ice sheet, and even when this movie has officially released worldwide today, there’s so much that still can’t be talked about, not until the vast majority of the world has gotten a chance to experience it. So like the usual gimmick, I will ramble about the trailer and the colossal amount of villains it introduced from all the live-action universes.

It’s so beautiful to see antagonists like Otto Octavious, Green Goblin & Electro be back on screen with an actual depth to their character. This was a prevalent fear in my mind that their introductions were going to play out as mere cameos, but the fact that each of the villains actually goes through significant development throughout the course of the movie is so refreshing.

Spider-Man: No Way Home also takes the huge risk of bringing back some of the lesser-known villains of this universe, and I say that is a risk because of how it could have potentially brought down some of the key iconic moments. But that’s where the prioritization of the script takes a hold and Green Goblin and Dr. Octopus takes the cake in terms of screen time and arc. 

Peter Parker and his entire character in the MCU was always the embodiment of this messy teenager who upheld his moral standards while also making mistakes from time to time. But the maturity of every decision he takes this time feels like it has major consequences.

The movie has been called dark many times, but I wouldn’t nearly call it as dark as the Amazing Spider-Man series. And that honestly works so well. With each villain comes consequences which were purely the actions of Peter Parker. He wanted everyone to forget that he is Spider-Man but it’s his inability that paves way for this huge amalgam of fan service moments. 

Yes, this Spider-Man No Way Home has the most blatant fanservice moments I have seen in a long long time. It’s clearly not trying to put any of those moments in a way which feels subtle which did feel a bit forced a lotta times. But the fact that they were able to accomplish something this big, with so much scope is in itself such a big feat that a lot of these inconsistencies don’t hinder the experience at all.

From Green Goblin wooing the audience with a fan favourite dialogue, to a hilariously ridiculous and heartwarming “chiropractor” session,  I was in awe, unable to believe all that was going in front of me. It all felt like a fever dream and honestly, everyone in the audience were just glad that they are getting to experience this in their lifetime of loving and caring about the web slinger. 

To Summarise in the most non-spoilery way possible, its a grand summation of events which makes us feel rewarded for the patience and affection we poured into this character, his friends, his struggles and his morals. It is no doubt tragic and it pushes our Spider-Man back to what he always did the best, being the friendly neighbourhood superhero.

The Movie Culture Synopsis

I am, for the first time in a long time, genuinely excited to see where he goes from here and I can only hope Marvel does find a way to continue his adventures, especially after they have induced so much potential in this franchise by familiarizing us with a version of Spider-Man which is more mature than he ever was.

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Spider-Man No Way Home movie review: Tom Holland and a host of villains entertain in messy threequel

Spider-man no way home movie review: the film gives you bangs to the power of three for your buck, as tom holland’s peter remains as likable and eager as ever..

Spider-Man No Way Home review: With great power comes great responsibility, is the motto Peter Parker aka Spider-Man has lived by. But great power also has great consequences, and if this third instalment in the Spider-Man franchise was when you were hoping Tom Holland would grow up to that realisation, you are in for a disappointment. Yes, No Way Home is all that you have been hearing and talking about. Yes, it gives you bangs to the power of three for your buck. Yes, it is gratifying to indulge in your favourite Spider-Men films of the recent past once more. And yes, Holland’s Peter remains as likable and eager as ever.

But when the dust settles on this metaverse of multiple villains and many heroes, which Cumberbatch’s Dr Strange conjures out of some very furiously moving hands and not seemingly as engaged thoughts, it’s unclear what all that was about.

The film starts with Peter’s identity revealed to the world, and what follows in a world of mobile phones, paparazzi and The Daily Bugle – both fame and ignominy. One fallout is the rejection by MIT of not just Peter’s college application but also of friends MJ (a charming Zendaya) and Ned (a winsome Batalon). It’s this that ultimately drives Peter to ask Dr Strange to turn the clock back to the time before his identity was revealed or, if not that, to make people forget who he was.

Something goes wrong, and it must when Dr Strange keeps plucking strings of light out in the midst of a world-altering spell, at Peter’s confused bidding. Out tumble the villains Spider-Man has fought before, Dr Octopus (Alfred Molina), Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), Electro (Jamie Foxx) Sandman and the Lizard.

So far, so good. However, it is about here that the plot, already into the tricky territory of multiple universes, gets a little wobbly. Superheroes nowadays can’t just have fun and beat the bad guys. There has to be a larger purpose to their gift. What Peter chooses at this point is set to have consequences that he doesn’t really think through – or the film even lets him face.

By themselves, the creatures who step out of the parallel universes into ours are a lot more fun. Molina has the meatiest screen presence and gets his own delectable fight on a bridge, complete with dangling cars and swinging men and women. Dafoe largely snarls and gnarls, but when they do get together, the actors who personify two of the greatest Super-Men villains, remain vile but now are also much funnier.

The same is true of two other creatures who step in through a portal into our universe. The shrieks with which the cinema audience greets them say all about how much they have been missed despite the years in the middle. Holland, whose Spider-Man has always been just one of the many Avengers, holds up well when called to be one of a team. The dialogue is witty and funny, Holland, Zendaya and Batalon are believable as kids who find themselves often out of their depth, the battles are coherently staged, a mirror dimension of the world that Dr Strange builds in one such clash is just wow, Spider-Man is satisfyingly nerdy (“What’s cooler than magic? Math”), and the past is adroitly linked with the present.

However, what it says of the future is what you may be left wondering. Like power and responsibility, No Way Home is a big one for “everyone deserving second chances”. But, chances are, most of us will still remain Peter Parker than Spider-Man. Is the film ready for that?

Spider-Man No Way Home movie director: Jon Watts Spider-Man No Way Home movie cast: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Jacob Batalon, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jon Favreau, Jamie Foxx, Alfred Molina, Willem Dafoe, Marisa Tomei, J K Simmons Spider-Man No Way Home movie rating: 3.5 stars

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Grand Valley Lanthorn

Review: “Spider-Man: No Way Home” is a web of nostalgia

Courtesy / Marvel Entertainment

Zack Goodrow , Editor-in-Chief Jan 10, 2022

As one of the most popular superheroes in the world, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” was also going to be a commercial success. The film has already grossed over $1.16 billion. While a typical Spidey adventure featuring a brand-new villain would be profitable, “No Way Home” is acclaimed for its integration of several former actors in charters from previous Spider-Man series. 

The new Spider-Man film follows the typical Marvel format; dynamic action-sequences, clever one-liners and interactions between characters and villains from other series in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This formula has been extremely successful for the MCU as the franchise led into the final Avengers movie. Several years later, the blueprint has run dry and “No Way Home” brings a superb idea to revitalize it. 

Integrating the likes of Andrew Garfield, Tobey Maguire, Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina and Jamie Foxx to reprise their former roles makes this movie fresh and it’s extremely well done. “No Way Home” is a distinguished and entertaining film that is easily one of the best movies of 2021. 

The action sequences are tense, and the cinematography is stunning–particularly when the audience sees three different Spider-Man battling together for the first time. The acting is tremendous. Dafoe steals the show as Norman Osborn with his devious monologues and devious laughs. Maguire portrays an older, more mature Peter Parker in perfect fashion and Garfield portrays a young man who has learned from his mistakes and has grown past them. Every performance in this film seems true to their characters. 

The best parts of the film are seeing these diverse performances for the colossal number of actors in the movie. I found myself uninterested in the overall plot and more on what character was going to be introduced next. I was uninvolved with Peter’s (Tom Holland) relationship with MJ (Zendaya), Ned (Jacob Batalon) and Aunt May (Marisa Tomei). I was more interested in seeing Maguire finally battling Dafoe again after 19 years. 

While these parts of the movie make it satisfying to watch and be engaged in, the rest of the movie–mostly the extreme plot holes and scenarios–suffer just to justify bringing in all these former characters. 

After Peter’s identity as Spider-Man is revealed, he and his friends face their biggest challenge to date; getting accepted into MIT. After Peter, MJ and Ned are rejected because of their association with superhero antics, Peter asks Doctor Strange to do some moronic spell that will make everyone in the world forget that Peter is Spider-Man. As predicted, this spell goes terribly wrong. 

This is the center point of the story–not getting into the same college as his friends–despite the fact that Peter is literally Spider-Man, he can concoct outlandish formulas to cure villains’ powers, he’s really good at geometry and that he’s close friends with the director of Stark Industries (where he could probably get a job without having a degree). 

Another issue with this story is that only select characters from the franchise reappear. If anyone who knows that Peter Parker is Spider-Man appears, where’s the various actors who played Uncle Ben and Aunt May? Where’s Emma Stone? Where’s Michael Keaton as Vulture? Where’s Kristen Dunst as Mary Jane? Where’s Topher Grace as Venom? 

The fact that none of these characters are present shows exactly what this movie is: fan service. Scenes with returning actors from the franchise are action sequences filled with banter, and resolve some of old plotlines. It would have been exciting to see Stone back and get rescued by Garfield after he failed in their movie, “The Amazing Spider-Man 2.” Without Stone returning, this plot line will never be resolved, unlike other characters in the series. 

Peter’s immature shenanigans and uninspired decision to try to cure all these new villains is motivated by the fact that if they’re returned to their own world, it will be at the exact moment they die–yes, you read that obscene plot point correctly. This leads to the death of someone dear to Peter and an ambiguous ending to the film that leads Peter down a new path. 

With the arrival of all these other Spider-Men and villains, Holland’s Peter Parker is snapped with the character’s progression as a hero. It’s satisfying to see Maguire and Garfield after several years and see how they’ve grown as men, but that’s not the case for Holland. This is an issue with several of these newer Marvel movies as it’s hard to identify and see growth in a single character and these movies have just become an actor salad. 

“Spider-Man: No Way Home” is an entertaining film filled with excellent acting, nostalgia, magnificent action sequences and an astonishing idea to bring in former franchise characters. This is nothing that’s been done in the MCU before, despite several of these characters being portrayed in other movies. 

This film is one of the best of 2021 and one of the best in the MCU. Despite the critical acclaim and record-breaking profits, this film presents a challenge for Disney and Marvel. What are they going to do next? They’ve brought an innovative ideal to their now bland formula to make a hit. Returning to the same equation will be disappointing to fans and movie-goers after their expectations have risen. Whatever comes after “Spider-Man: No Way Home” will be the true test for the future success of the MCU.

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Apr 18, 2024

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Spider-Man: No Way Home

• With Spider-Man's identity now revealed, Peter asks Doctor Strange for help. When a spell goes wrong, dangerous foes from other worlds start to appear, forcing Peter to discover what it truly means to be Spider-Man.
• Peter Parker's secret identity is revealed to the entire world. Desperate for help, Peter turns to Doctor Strange to make the world forget that he is Spider-Man. The spell goes horribly wrong and shatters the multiverse, bringing in monstrous villains that could destroy the world.
• Picking up where Far From Home left off, Peter Parker's whole world is turned upside down when his old enemy Mysterio posthumously reveals his identity to the public. Wanting to make his identity a secret, Peter turns to Doctor Strange for help. But when Strange's spell goes haywire, Peter must go up against five deadly new enemies--the Green Goblin, Dr. Octopus, Electro, the Lizard and Sandman--all while discovering what it truly means to be Spider-Man. — Blazer346
• "With Spider-Man's identity now revealed, our friendly neighborhood web-slinger is unmasked and no longer able to separate his normal life as Peter Parker from the high stakes of being a superhero. When Peter asks for help from Doctor Strange, the stakes become even more dangerous, forcing him to discover what it truly means to be Spider-Man. — krmanirethnam
• With his identity compromised, right after the spectacular confrontation with super-hero charlatan Mysterio in Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019) , Peter Parker is now with his back to the wall. On the run and having no one to turn to for advice, desperate Peter seeks a radical and equally dangerous solution to right a wrong, utterly unaware of the grave consequences of his ill-advised decision. And, as the unfathomable Multiverse expands with a vengeance, formidable adversaries from a not-so-distant past, too, seek closure, demanding the Spider's head on a platter. But when there's no way home and nowhere to hide, who can Parker trust? — Nick Riganas
• After Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhaal) frames Peter Parker (Tom Holland) for murder and reveals his identity as Spider-Man, Parker, his girlfriend Michelle "MJ" Jones-Watson (Zendaya), best friend Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon), and Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) are interrogated by the Department of Damage Control. Quentin is hailed as an inter-dimensional warrior who sacrificed himself to protect the planet. Happy and May broke up. J. Jonah Jameson (J. K. Simmons) leads the public trial against Spider-Man and builds a negative image of him. Peter explains to DODC that Nick Fury is his witness, but he is told that Nick Fury has been off-planet for the entire year. Lawyer Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) gets Parker's charges dropped, but the group grapples with negative publicity. Since Peter's home is under 24*7 media coverage, May and Peter shift to Happy's apartment. The world is equally divided between fans and protesters of Spider-Man. Eugene (Tony Revolori) tries to cash in on the mania by claiming to be Peter's best friend and even publishes a book. After Parker, MJ, and Ned's MIT applications are rejected (the trio were also rejected at all of their backup schools. It is very clear that MJ and Ned were rejected due to their association to Peter), Parker goes to the New York Sanctum to ask Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) (A neurosurgeon who became a Master of the Mystic Arts following a career-ending car accident) for help. Strange suggests a spell that would make people forget Parker is Spider-Man (Wong (Benedict Wong) warns Strange that the spell is dangerous since it travels the border between known and unknown reality), but the spell is corrupted when Parker repeatedly requests alterations to let his loved ones (MJ, Ned and Aunt May) retain their memories. Strange contains the spell to stop it from working and makes Parker leave. Parker tries to convince an MIT administrator (Paula Newsome) to reconsider MJ and Ned's applications but is attacked by Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina) (A scientist from an alternate reality with four artificially intelligent mechanical tentacles fused to his body after an accident). Octavius rips Parker's nanotechnology from his Iron Spider suit which bonds with his mechanical tentacles and allows Parker to disable them. The MIT administrator sees the whole battle firsthand and realizes that Peter is a hero, when he overcomes all odds to save her life against Otto. She leaves promising to look into admissions for Peter and his friends. As Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe) (A scientist and the CEO of Oscorp from an alternate reality who tested an unstable strength enhancer on himself. He developed an insane split personality as a result and uses advanced Oscorp armor and equipment) arrives and attacks, Strange Teleports Parker back to the Sanctum and locks Octavius in a cell next to Curt Connors / Lizard (Rhys Ifans) (an Oscorp scientist from Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) who transformed into a large reptilian monster while trying to regrow his missing arm). Strange explains that before he was able to contain the corrupted spell it summoned some people from other universes who know Spider-Man's identity. He orders Parker, MJ, and Ned to find and capture them. Strange gives Peter a bracelet that generates a spell and transports the person whom it is aimed at, straight to a cell in the Sanctum's basement. They are able to locate and retrieve Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx) (An Oscorp electrical engineer from an alternate reality who gained electric powers after an accident involving genetically modified electric eels) and Flint Marko / Sandman (Thomas Haden) (a small-time robber from Raimi's Spider-Man 3 who received sand-like abilities following an accident). Osborn reclaims control of himself from his split Green Goblin personality. He goes to a F.E.A.S.T. (Food, Emergency, Aid, Shelter and Training) building where May comforts him before Parker retrieves him. While discussing their battles with Spider-Man, Osborn, Octavius, and Dillon realize that they were pulled from their universes just before their deaths. Strange prepares to reverse the contained spell and send the villains back to their respective universes, but Parker argues that they should first cure the villains' powers and insanity to prevent their deaths upon their return. Parker steals the spell, traps Strange in the Mirror Dimension, and, with May, takes the villains to Happy Hogan's (Jon Favreau) (The head of security for Stark Industries and former driver and bodyguard of Tony Stark, who looks after Parker) apartment. He cures Octavius, but Osborn's Goblin persona takes control and convinces the uncured villains to betray Parker. As Dillon, Marko, and Connors escape, Goblin fatally injures May. Before she dies, May tells Parker that "with great power, there must also come great responsibility". Ned discovers that he can create portals using Strange's sling ring, which he and MJ use to try to locate Parker. They instead find alternate versions of Parker from the villains' universes who were also summoned by Strange's spell and who are nicknamed "Peter-Two" (Tobey Maguire) (An alternate version of Parker who utilizes organic webbing instead of web shooters like his alternate counterparts) and "Peter-Three" (Andrew Garfield) (An alternate version of Parker who is haunted by his failure to save his deceased girlfriend, Gwen Stacy). The group finds this universe's Parker, nicknamed "Peter-One", who is ready to give up and send the villains home. The alternate Parkers share stories of losing loved ones and encourage Peter-One to fight in May's honor, and the three Parkers develop cures for the villains. The group lure Dillon, Marko, and Connors to the Statue of Liberty. Peter-One and Peter-Two cure Marko and Connors while Octavius arrives to help cure Dillon, and Ned frees Strange from the Mirror Dimension with a portal. Goblin appears and unleashes the contained spell which begins pulling more people in from other universes. Strange attempts to hold them off while an enraged Peter-One tries to kill Goblin. Peter-Two stops him, and Peter-Three helps Peter-One inject Goblin with his cure, restoring Osborn's sanity. Peter-One realizes that the only way to protect the multiverse is to erase himself from everyone's memory and requests that Strange do so, while promising MJ and Ned that he will find them again. The spell is cast, and everyone returns to their respective universes-including Eddie Brock / Venom (Tom Hardy), who leaves behind a piece of the Venom Symbiote. Two weeks later, Parker visits MJ and Ned to reintroduce himself, but decides against it. While mourning at May's grave, he has a conversation with Hogan and is inspired to carry on, making a new suit and resuming his vigilantism.

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How the Language of TV is Influencing How We See Ourselves

TikTok has spawned a curious new way of understanding ordinary life: villain arcs, main character energy and seasons.

By Kim Hew-Low

Last summer, I was struck by a video I came across on TikTok. In it, a 20-something flops faceup onto her bed. Her roots are grown out, her eyeliner is heavy and her gaze, vaguely forlorn, is intensified by a key light tinted blue. Her hand gropes around the adjacent night stand to silence her vibrating phone. Then the Netflix logo flashes, followed by a credit line: “A life written and directed by Beatrice Harrods.” A stop-motion sequence follows the passage of time: a vase of chrysanthemums, then roses; one candle, then another; an unfurling rug and the text “Season 2.” Cut back to Harrods: Her roots are touched up, and her gaze, now pointed at the camera, seems to relish being watched.

You see a lot of this on TikTok now: videos that describe ordinary life using the language of television. Scroll through, and you’ll find users charting the different “seasons” of their lives or highlighting the emergence of plot “arcs.” You may find users referring to the people in their lives as “casts” — including both passing encounters with “paid extras” and recurring appearances by “guest stars.” A friend’s unexpected appearance might be tagged “NOO! Ur not in this episode” or described, as one user had it, as the moment “when someone from Season 2 of my life somehow crosses over into Season 4.”

There is a certain permeability between art and life, and pleasure in perceiving it: We take satisfaction in recognizing our lives in onscreen plot lines, as we thrill to real-life moments that feel “just like a movie.” But TikTok’s video-based format has wildly amplified the impulse to collapse the distance between the two and imagine yourself as an onscreen character. The app’s tools make it easy for people to film and edit footage of themselves, narrating their own stories in breezy narrative beats — making life look like an episode of television. The result is a perfect ecosystem for watching and being watched, where once-passive audiences are encouraged to see themselves as the writers, directors and stars of their own motion pictures.

Perhaps there is therapeutic value in conceptualizing your life as a coherent story — one you can not only analyze but direct. One key piece of televisual jargon that has thrived online feels especially suited to this purpose. The “canon event” describes a crucial, sometimes traumatic occurrence that activates or shapes a person’s character. This kind of thinking may be related to therapy, but it has since been extrapolated wholesale into Hollywood tropes. Last year, the popularity of “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” — with its talk of critical “canon events” shaping the lives of heroes — inspired TikTok users to embrace the term. But in the transition from big to palm-size screen, the idea became a deadpan punchline, identifying not superheroic origin stories but the formative trials of ordinary youth. One video applied the term to “every teenage girl getting into her first situationship with a medium ugly guy that bears a striking resemblance to the rat from Flushed Away.”

The challenge, for a narcissist, is to realize that we are all our own protagonists.

There’s a related genre of video that encourages viewers to use the visual language of TV to romanticize their lives. This often involves footage of quotidian activities — waiting for the subway, restocking a fridge, pouring a beverage — elevated through production techniques: flattering close-ups, curated props, the amateur’s equivalent of dedicated hair, wardrobe and makeup departments. By reframing mundane activities as the well-lit choreography of a story’s protagonist, these videos render the everyday with a kind of glamour and gravity. If all the world is now a set, “main characters” like these are rewarded by the attention economy — a fact that has inspired some users to turn “main-character energy” into something like a life philosophy. One woman, in the first of 22 “episodes” dedicated to proselytizing her “seasons theory” on TikTok, described how she improved “Season 3” of her life by asking herself what Serena van der Woodsen and Carrie Bradshaw would do. (Those main characters, of “Gossip Girl” and “Sex and the City,” narrativized their own lives for a blog and a newspaper column.)

It’s one thing to “romanticize” a day of remote work, as one TikTok user did, in an attempt to “become the main character” of her life. (She sought out a cafe that called to mind Central Perk and Luke’s Diner, fictional settings from “Friends” and “Gilmore Girls.”) But in other videos, users have expressed how certain types of narcissistic, self-dramatizing behavior — habits that were eventually branded “main-character syndrome” — have impoverished their friendships. Even the remedies people suggested for this pathology were formulated within the same televisual framework. In a conversation with the comedian Catherine Cohen, who described the fixation on “main-character energy” as “deranged,” the podcaster Hannah Berner proposed: “Let’s normalize sometimes being like, This season I’m in the back.”

The challenge, for a narcissist, is to realize that we are all our own protagonists — that any delusions we harbor about being the center of the story must be squared with a shared reality in which no one is. This is, broadly speaking, one of the core developmental processes that mark maturation into adulthood. There was a time when conventional wisdom defined an ideal state of adulthood as one of having shed all illusions of one’s centrality. But the psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott challenged this notion in his 1971 book, “Playing and Reality”: People needn’t shed their illusions, he argued, only learn how to hold them in coexistence with wider reality, recognizing their own subjectivity for what it is. He suggested that, for children, playing with “transitional objects” could facilitate this process, by mediating inner and outer realities — a teddy bear, for instance, can be inanimate but simultaneously alive, a sewn-together object that also thinks and feels.

Scrolling past TikTok videos of “main characters” scrutinizing their “casts” for upcoming “seasons,” I often wonder if I am looking at a kind of transitional object. Life in the offscreen world rarely supplies its own narrative meaning; its messiness and mundanity don’t conform to the neat arcs produced by writers’ rooms. But the younger users coming of age on social media have encountered the world through an astonishing deluge of content in which life, mediated by narrative tropes, produces meaning that is legible by design. If maturation requires bridging these illusions with the formlessness of reality, then self-narrativization may be a kind of intermediary. In the same way that a child, playing with a teddy bear, learns how her imagination relates to the external world, users reconcile similar incongruities by telling the stories of their lives on TikTok. They combine the cinematic with the everyday, their centrality with their marginality, meaning with a lack thereof.

At some point I came across a video that opened, predictably, with a close-up of its young creator’s face. Seated in a mall food court, she raised a piece of sushi to her mouth but was suddenly struck by the scene around her. The camera, cast outward, flashed clips of strangers — one staring at a laptop, another pushing a shopping cart — under the text: “when ur out in public and you remember that everyone is their own main character.” In the caption, the user added: “like damn, my frontal lobe feels developed.”

Source photographs for illustration above: Grant Faint/Getty Images; Aleksandra Pikalova/Getty Images; Oliver Rossi/Getty Images; Guzel/Getty Images.

Kim Hew-Low is an Australian writer living in Brooklyn.

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