Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Jon Watts
Starring: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Benedict
Cumberbatch, Jacob Batalon, Jon Favreau, Marisa Tomei
There were two moments in Spider-Man: No Way Home that
provoked cheers from my screening's audience. They weren't thrilling action
beats or well delivered one-liners. Rather they were simply moments in which
certain people showed up. Is this what the modern blockbuster has been
reduced to in the name of fan service, an expensive version of the Fonz
making his entrance through the Cunninghams' kitchen door?
When I were a wee lad, myself and my young peers would get excited by
seeing things on screen we had never seen before: a speeder bike chase,
Marty McFly's hoverboard, a rollercoaster ride through a temple of doom, a
terminator morphing into liquid metal. Now it seems the audience for
mainstream Hollywood wants the exact opposite of innovation; instead they
crave familiarity and reminders of the past. How depressing.
Taking its cues from the 1983 Doctor Who special
The Five Doctors, Spider-Man: No Way Home gathers characters from both the
beloved Sam Raimi directed trilogy of the 2000s and
the unfairly maligned 'Amazing' couplet of the 2010s
for something of a Spider-Man edition of
This is Your Life (fans of the '70s TV show will have to make
do with a blink and you'll miss it cameo). What it all ultimately amounts to
is an intellectual property circle jerk.
Picking up from the end of
the previous Spidey instalment, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) has been publicly outed as the man
behind the mask. With much of the public taking the side of his nemesis
Mysterio, Parker is in hot water and so calls on Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to help him out. Ripping off the much disparaged ending of
Superman The Movie, Dr. Strange casts a spell that will erase the memory of everyone on the
planet regarding Spidey's true identity. Thanks to several interruptions by
Parker, who wants to ensure his girlfriend Mary Jane (Zendaya)
retains her memory, the spell is miscast and Strange accidentally opens the
"Multiverse". This leads to villains from other alternate universes (i.e.
previous iterations of the franchise) popping into the world.
I won't identify who exactly makes an appearance as I don't want a
torch-wielding mob after me, but let's just say the surprises aren't really
surprises to anyone with internet access. The old baddies that do appear
serve to remind us how much more iconic they were compared to the villains
faced by Holland's Spidey, and the movie seems particularly enamoured of the
Raimi trilogy, constantly telling us how much more interesting its
characters and their relationships were compared to the latest iteration. On
the other hand, the vintage villains are oddly neutered and don't pose much
of a threat against the tech-savvy modern day Peter Parker. It's a bit like
bringing the great Real Madrid team of the 1950s into 2021 and seeing them
run off the park by a much fitter, if not as technically gifted championship
side.
As such, it takes an awful long time for the movie to decide what exactly
might be the threat faced by Parker this time out. Much of the running time
sees the film patting itself on the back for pulling off the no doubt
complicated contract wrangling involved in bringing all these characters
together. "Isn't it great that we got all your favourite characters together
in one movie?" the film keeps asking. "Well, that's all well and good," we
reply, "but how about doing something interesting with them?"
The movie misses out on some blatant opportunities with this conceit.
Nobody mentions how J Jonah Jameson is played by the same actor (JK Simmons) in both the Raimi and current versions. Any fun that might have been had
by two versions of Mary Jane sparring over Parker is equally squandered.
Instead we get a lot of scenes of characters talking about the good old
days. Spider-Man: No Way Home is like a clips show without the
clips.
What made
the first Holland-starring Spider-Man movie
fun was how it focussed on its teen characters and was essentially a high
school comedy with a scrap bolted onto its climax. The dynamic between
Holland's Parker and Zendaya's MJ has proven this version's strong suit, so
it's disappointing that the pair are separated for most of
No Way Home's running time. If it was its intimacy and relatively low stakes that made
that first Holland outing work, No Way Home makes the mistake
of the Joel Schumacher Batman movies, filling the screen with so many
characters that none of them get a chance to make any real impact.
I opened this review with a Happy Days analogy, so I'll close
it in similar fashion - No Way Home is the moment this version
of Spider-Man jumps the shark.
