essay on spider man no way home

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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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Movie Reviews

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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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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’ Review: Listen Bud, No Spoilers Here

In the latest installment of the “Spider-Man” series, Tom Holland faces the past and a very secure franchise future.

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By Manohla Dargis

The biggest villain in Marvel-wood isn’t Thanos: It’s your friendly, sometimes cranky neighborhood film critic. She’s also the puniest, and that’s OK. Her powers are irrelevant.

Marvel, with its armies of true believers and domination of both movie theaters and a click-baiting media, rendered its product line critic proof long ago. Its movies open, they crush and regenerate (repeat). Now, with “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” it has a movie that’s also review proof. Your critic can toss out adjectives — lively! amusing! corny!— but can’t say all that much about what happens.

The idea is that saying too much would, as the spoiler police insist, ruin the fun here. It wouldn’t, of course. The trailer and the advance publicity have already spilled plenty, and Marvel’s movies cater to their fans so insistently that there’s rarely room for any real surprises. So, spoiler alert: Spider-Man wins. And, once again, Tom Holland, the best of the franchise’s live-action leads, has suited up to play Peter Parker, the eternal teenager who doubles as Spider-Man. With his compact size and bright, easy smile, Holland still looks and sounds more like a kid than an adult, and he radiates the same sweet, earnest decency that has helped make Peter and Spider-Man an enduring twin act.

Peter’s boyish good nature has always been his most productive weapon, even more so than his super-ability to spin webs and swing by a thread. He’s always been a nice, cute boy with the nicest, loveliest girls, too (Kirsten Dunst, Emma Stone). But Holland is also the most persuasive of the other moist-eyed boy-men (Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield) who’ve played Spidey. His love interest is now MJ, played by Zendaya, who was paired with another of this year’s adolescent saviors in “Dune .” Her casting as MJ and her expanded role in the series continue to pay off, and Zendaya’s charisma and gift for selling emotions (and silly dialogue) helps give the new movie a soft, steady glow that centers it like a heartbeat as the story takes off in different directions.

Returning for duty is the director Jon Watts, who has proved a good fit for the material, partly because he gets that Peter is a teenager, if one who retains a curious holy-virgin quality. (Part brand extension, part celebrity roast, the script is by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers.) Peter and MJ nuzzle and lock lips, but their relationship vibes more cozy than carnal, no doubt as a concession to the younger members of the movie’s target demographic. (In one scene, Watts splits the screen to show Peter and MJ on their phones in separate bedrooms, a technique that was used to reinforce, if also teasingly to cast doubt, on the chastity of Doris Day and Rock Hudson ’s romance back in the day.)

As for the story, well, there is one, though what this “Spider-Man” movie really has is a clever setup that tightens the sprawl of Marvel’s universe with the aid of one of its MVPs, Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch). It opens with a busy bang and the revelation of Peter’s secret identity, which changes his life and instigates a series of reunions, fight sequences and emotionally charged moments. Spider-Man racks up a great deal of mileage over the course of the movie for the simple reason that, like almost every Marvel production, this one is too long and, at two and a half hours, overstays its welcome. But before that, the movie nicely snaps and pops.

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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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RETRO REVIEW: Spider-Man: No Way Home Is a Marvelous Must-See for Tom Holland & Spidey Fans

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Spider-Man: No Way Home opens exactly where the previous movie, Spider-Man: Far From Home, ended. Specifically, the mid-credits sequence where Peter Parker (Tom Holland) was publicly unmasked. Now exposed to public scorn and forced to make his loved ones forget who he is, this threequel unpacks the webslinger's cinematic legacy and introduces a volatile multiverse. Spider-Man: No Way Home is a master stroke that echoes the invention of Avengers: Endgame and allows Holland to step up, aided by his brothers in Sony-sized spandex, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. Unfortunately, with three times the responsibility comes three times the villainy. Cue the arrival of five fearsome foes who hunt down the three Spider-Men across the movie.

With a roll call of acting royalty including Willem Dafoe (Norman Osborn aka The Green Goblin), Alfred Molina (Doctor Otto Octavius aka Doc Ock) and Jamie Foxx (Max Dillon aka Electro) on screen, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) had every intention of making a landmark movie like no other with Holland's third solo outing. That this marks the moment Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) makes his first post-Netflix appearance on MCU soil is also important, because it’s a crossover fans never thought would or could happen. After the cancelation of Daredevil on Netflix, which featured some of the best casting in superhero history, this moment is almost worth the admission price on its own. However, Spider-Man: No Way Home never made it to a billion-dollar box office off the back of one cameo, so the question is what else does it have to offer?

Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield & Tom Holland Are an Unstoppable Force

Marvel's three spider-men made fan's wildest dreams a reality.

No Way Home's Legendary Guest Stars Helped Shape the Epic Spider-Man Team-Up

Spider-Man: No Way Home screenwriter Chris McKenna reveals how the film's guest stars had significant input on their characters’ storylines.

Honestly, audiences were only ever there to watch Spider-Man: No Way Home for that team-up. Then and now, fans hunkered down in cinemas to see Holland, Garfield, and Maguire slip back into character and make the movie really rock. Some were understandably worried that the third part of Holland's MCU series would be an overhyped disappointment that only relied on nostalgia. Thankfully, the movie exceeded all expectations, as all three Peter Parkers instantly gelled and seemed to revel in this rarest of opportunities.

It may take some time to pay off, but there is no doubt that having the back-up of two seasoned actors and previous Spider-Men onboard helped Holland up his game. With two Oscar nominations for Hacksaw Ridge and Tick, Tick, Boom under his belt since he last slipped into spandex, Garfield eagerly embraced his inner Spider-Man again, giving this threequel some extra juice. Maguire also pulled off his return with ease, relishing in the camaraderie of other actors across multiple scenes. Giving these actors an opportunity to interact created a unique dynamic where they forged a brotherly bond and built a cinematic bridge between different generations of Spider-Man movies. Spider-Man: No Way Home's multiversal crossover wasn't just a savvy storytelling technique that bumped up its box office numbers, but a recognition of a shared legacy between the stars and movie-goers as well.

In retrospect, Maguire remains the most impressive Spider-Man since his legacy as the first cinematic wall-crawler adds perspective. Two decades on, with the most iconic villains in his back catalog, Maguire clearly saw this as a chance to remind audiences how good he could be. Looking back, Garfield might have lacked the same level of onscreen villainy, but no one had more of a point to prove, even with two Oscar nominations in his rearview mirror.

Having been rudely re-cast without a conversation after The Amazing Spider-Man 2's lukewarm performance that was in no way Garfield's fault, being invited back must have felt like a serious case of karma and an opportunity for closure. On the evidence of his turn in Spider-Man: No Way Home , Garfield clearly had some unfinished business with Peter. In fact, this film might be the reason both Garfield and Maguire are rumored to be back for spin-off films in a separate Sony universe. But as amazing as it was to see Maguire and Garfield reprise their roles, Holland is still the Spider-Man who pushed this film to its billion-dollar box office take and will undoubtedly get audiences back in cinemas, both for this movie and his highly-anticipated MCU return in Phase 6.

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Only two of the movie’s six villains left a lasting impact on peter parker’s life.

Every Spider-Man Movie Villain Teased in No Way Home - and Why They're Back

The Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer confirms Alfred Molina's Doc Ock for the movie while also teasing several other familiar super-villains.

Not only did the MCU stack the deck with three generational Spider-Men, but for Holland’s next outing as Peter, they upped the ante in other ways. In particular, bringing back iconic villains for a battle royale that the MCU web-slinger could never hope to survive on his own. Not only that, their arrival hit him and audiences like a sledgehammer, testing the hero's mettle and that of his soulmates in spandex. Cue the returns of The Green Goblin and Doc Ock from Sam Raimi's original Spider-Man trilogy. Both conflicted men pulled into Peter’s world on a cosmic whim looking for payback with their respective Spider-Man, this might be the most inspired move writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers pulled off, since both Osborn and Octavious challenged this MCU Peter in different but integral ways.

For Dafoe, an opportunity to come back and play a different side of Osborn and the Green Goblin was a no-brainer. Switching seamlessly between personas and eliciting both empathy and apathy all the while, Dafoe went for broke in bringing this legendary supervillain back from the dead. Having been pulled in from a different dimension, his disarming puppy dog persona sidesteps expectations. At least that was before the Goblin resurfaced and systematically tore Peter's life apart piece by piece, leaving the young hero holding his beloved Aunt May’s bloodied body. This savage attack edged Spider-Man: No Way Home into darkness and compromised the MCU Peter, fuelling a bloody vendetta and almost pushing him to breaking point.

On the flipside was Doc Ock, who started out as a mentor and friend to his Peter in Spider-Man 2 . Having suffered a similar fate to Osborn (namely dying shortly after snapping out of his super villainy), he was also a man out of time filled with rage looking for an outlet. Molina may play second fiddle to Dafoe, but there is no denying his acting abilities as he conveys Doc Ock's irrational anger or his levels of humility when he experiences this movie's most powerful cathartic moment. Seeing Doc Ock reconnect with his Peter after all these years adds both an unexpected degree of pathos and heartfelt nostalgic to this franchise for diehard fans.

Unfortunately, Spider-Man: No Way Home failed to offer the other villains the same courtesy or screentime. Rhy Ifans (The Lizard from The Amazing Spider-Man ) was given little to do and ended up feeling like an afterthought rather than a genuine threat. Thomas Haden Church suffered a similar fate as Flint Marko (aka the Sandman) from Spider-Man 3 . Jamie Foxx returns as Max Dillon (Electro from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ) and clearly had some fun, but he still ended up feeling like a third wheel. The fact that a drunk Eddie Brock's and Venom's (Tom Hardy) goofy cameo in the mid-credits scene is better remembered than anything The Lizard, Sandman and Electro did says it all. Thankfully, with the emotional one-two sucker punch of a truly heroic sacrifice made by the MCU's Peter in its final minutes, Spider-Man: No Way Home more than makes up for these shortcomings.

Spider-Man: No Way Home Is a Defining Moment for Tom Holland & the MCU

Tom holland hits another home run in his third solo spider-man movie.

Why Spider-Man: No Way Home Still Holds Up - After All the Hype

Spider-Man: No Way Home was a smash hit thanks to the months of speculation about returning characters. But the film is about more than just cameos.

These days, Spider-Man: No Way Home is often unfairly and reductively dismissed for having too many camoes and prioritizing the MCU multiverse. This might have been the movie that prominently featured Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and re-introduced Daredevil, but it's also one of the strongest entries in Phase 4. Released in 2021 between Eternals and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness , Spider-Man: No Way Home remains an impressive movie and piece of superhero storytelling. The combination of top tier villainy, interdimensional Spider-Men, and Peter's gut-wrenching losses deliver one of the most satisfying finales since Avengers: Endgame . The case could even be made for it being one of the best Spider-Man movies to date.

Holland may be taking a break from the big screen by portraying Romeo in the latest stage adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet , but his career and future with Marvel are assured. Having been the best thing in all three movies, which already had some serious talent involved, Holland redefined Spider-Man for a new generation and made the beloved hero his own. He did this not only by reintroducing younger audiences to his cinematic contemporaries in Maguire and Garfield, but by making sure that his MCU record remains unblemished.

For those still hesitating about that trip to the multiplex for Spider-Man: No Way Home , let these words of wisdom allay any further fears. The MCU's Spider-Man remains one of the most crucial elements for the MCU going forward. Whispers of his involvement in Avengers: Secret Wars are rife and right now, the MCU could do with a win. Who knows, maybe Spider-Man will find his way back home after all.

Spider-Man: No Way Home is now available to own physically and digitally. The movie will return to cinemas for a limited time.

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.

• Tom Holland, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield make the movie.
• Willem Dafoe and Alfred Molina deliver the goods.
• Writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers have crafted a landmark movie
• Electro, Sandman and The Lizard are short changed.

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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 Ending Explained - What Is the Future of Tom Holland's Peter Parker?

When spider-man wins, peter parker loses..

Warning: This article contains full spoilers for Spider-Man: No Way Home! If you're just curious whether the sequel has any post-credits scenes, the answer is yes. As with most MCU movies, there's a mid-credits scene and an end-credits scene, both of which tease major developments to come for Marvel Studios.

Spider-Man: No Way Home is a real treasure trove for Spidey fans, bringing back a number of fan-favorite heroes and villains and capping off Peter Parker's MCU journey so far. A lot has changed for our Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, and not necessarily for the better.

Did the finale of No Way Home leave you scratching your head? Are you confused as to how Peter's restored secret identity works or whether Spider-Man is still an Avenger? Let's break down exactly what happened and why Spider-Man's MCU future will be very different from what we've seen up until now.

No Way Home Ending Explained: How Does Doctor Strange's Spell Work?

No Way Home ends on a pretty bleak note for an MCU movie. Having successfully dealt with the invading multiverse villains and bid farewell to Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's Spider-Men, Spidey successfully enlists Doctor Strange's help in making the world forget his secret identity. However, there's a pivotal catch. The world remembers Spider-Man, but no one seems to have any memory of Peter Parker. That includes his two closest friends, Ned and MJ.

This worldwide mind-wipe is reminiscent of how Marvel Comics restored Spidey's secret identity in the aftermath of 2006's Civil War comic. In that case, Doctor Strange, Mister Fantastic and Iron Man collaborated on a hybrid magical spell/technological machine that made everyone in the world forget who's under the mask. But the key difference is that, in the comics, no one was made to forget Peter's existence, just that he foolishly outed himself as a superhero at an internationally televised press conference.

But in the MCU it seems Peter Parker has basically become a nonentity. Peter even reneges on his promise to reintroduce himself to Ned and MJ, deciding his friends are better off no longer being caught up in Spider-Man's drama. He's now entirely alone in the world, which is a pretty depressing way to end a superhero movie, if we're being frank.

The question that will no doubt be explored in future Spider-Man movies is what Peter does with this "gift." Does he devote himself fully to becoming Spider-Man? Does he try to rebuild his private life, even having lost Aunt May and becoming a stranger to Ned and MJ? Is this where other iconic supporting characters like Harry Osborn and Gwen Stacy will come into play? Is there still a place for Ned, MJ, Flash Thompson and Peter's other lost friends? We'll find out in Spider-Man 4.

Is Spider-Man Still an Avenger?

If the entire world has forgotten Peter Parker's existence, what does that mean for his connections to the Avengers (or whatever shell of the team even exists post-Endgame)? Based on what we know of the effects of Strange's spell, the world still remembers Spider-Man's past exploits. The Avengers will remember fighting alongside Spidey in Infinity War and Endgame, but they no longer remember who was underneath the mask.

8 Amazing Spider-Man Team-Ups

Essentially, Spider-Man's history as an Avenger remains intact, but the team would have no way of contacting him in the event of another emergency. The ball is entirely in Peter's court as to whether he still wants to serve alongside Earth's Mightiest Heroes. That may play into his future MCU character arc. Does he try to go it alone, or does he open himself up to new allies again?

This outcome may even be a case of Sony and Disney hedging their bets regarding Spider-Man's cinematic future. Spidey nearly exited the MCU after the release of Far From Home, and at one point No Way Home almost followed a completely different plot as a result. The two companies are clearly on much better terms now, but this ending could theoretically have been used to justify Spider-Man's sudden disappearance from the larger MCU. Let's just hope that never becomes necessary.

Spider-Man's New Status Quo

Whether you view this giant mind-wipe as a happy or depressing ending to the current Spider-Man trilogy, it's clear No Way Home is setting up a new status quo for Holland's Peter Parker going forward. The MCU seems to be veering in a more comic book-inspired direction here.

Previously, Holland's Spider-Man has always stood out for being different from the classical Spidey. He's never really been the struggling, blue-collar hero who hides his double life from Aunt May and pays the bills with photos of Spider-Man. This version has instead been portrayed as the heir apparent to Tony Stark, with plenty of high-tech tools and the support of powerful allies in the Avengers. But by choosing anonymity, Peter has basically abandoned that destiny in favor of going it alone.

Future Spider-Man movies in the MCU may start to draw more heavily from the classic Amazing Spider-Man stories of the '70s and '80s, a time when Peter was juggling his superhero adventures, his college career and his chaotic romantic life. We may see more of that classic Spidey supporting cast finally be introduced, including Gwen Stacy and Harry Osborn.

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Every Upcoming Movie and TV Show

The same goes for Spider-Man's villains. It's unclear how many of those characters are available to Marvel Studios and what's permitted under the current terms of the agreement between Marvel and Sony, but we have to imagine the MCU will eventually get its own versions of characters like Norman Osborn and Otto Octavius. And don't forget, we still don't know who bought Avengers Tower from Tony back in Spider-Man: Homecoming. There's always a chance the fan theory about Osborn being the new owner could pan out in future Spider-Man sequels. (Though Norman must be keeping a low profile if he exists in the MCU, as Willem Dafoe's version of him says there's no Oscorp in this universe.)

This shift toward a more traditional status quo is embodied in the scene where Peter stitches together a new costume. This suit is decidedly low-tech compared to his various Stark-designed costumes, and it has a brighter, more comic-book faithful color scheme. After all those years spent dreaming of making it to the superhero big leagues, Spidey is now content to focus on his little corner of the MCU. We'll see if that lasts.

Does Spider-Man: No Way Home Have a Post Credits Scene?

No Way Home contains both a mid-credits and post-credits scene (well, not really a scene, but we'll get to that in a second), and the former in particular offers a very intriguing tease for the future of the franchise. That scene basically acts as the sequel to Venom: Let There Be Carnage's stinger , touching base with Tom Hardy's Eddie Brock and the Venom symbiote as they continue to hide out in Mexico -- the MCU's Mexico, that is, where they were transported to last we saw them. After marveling at the number of superhumans present in this alternate universe, Eddie is dragged back to his home universe along with the other Spider-Man villains, apparently the result of Strange's spell zapping everyone home.

The twist, though, is that part of the symbiote is left behind. This seems to hint at an ongoing role for Venom in the MCU, whether or not Hardy continues to voice this symbiote offshoot. We may see Peter stumble across the symbiote fragment in a future sequel, setting the stage for the MCU's take on the Black Costume Saga. Check back with IGN soon for a more detailed look at this scene and its implications for the franchise.

The post-credits sequence, meanwhile, is actually a sizzle reel/teaser for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. This footage offers a glimpse of the major players in the film, including Benedict Cumberbatch's Stephen Strange, Chiwetel Ejiofor's Karl Mordo, Elizabeth Olsen's Wanda Maximoff, Xochitl Gomez's Miss America Chavez and Benedict Wong's Wong.

The big reveal in this footage is that at least one other version of Doctor Strange will appear. This character appears to be Strange Supreme, who originally appeared in Marvel's What If...?: Season 1. This version of Strange transformed himself into an unholy fusion of man and demon in order to amass enough power to save his version of Christine Palmer. Instead, Strange Supreme wound up destroying his entire universe. He may well be the main villain of the new movie, and will likely see Wanda as a magical tool worth exploiting.

IGN has a deeper breakdown of the Doctor Strange teaser and why the animated series What If...? has just become essential viewing .

For more on No Way Home, be sure to check out IGN's review of the Spider-Man sequel , dig in on our 10 biggest No Way Home WTF questions , catch up on what Spider-Man: No Way Home's mid-credits scene means for Venom , and learn more about how Sony considered keeping the multiverse elements a secret .

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter .

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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 trul... Read all 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. 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.

• Chris McKenna
• Erik Sommers
• Tom Holland
• Benedict Cumberbatch
• 6.1K User reviews
• 439 Critic reviews
• 71 Metascore
• 35 wins & 71 nominations total

• Peter Parker …

• Doctor Strange

• Happy Hogan

• Max Dillon …

• Norman Osborn …

• Dr. Otto Octavius …

• Flash Thompson

• Betty Brant

• Agent Cleary

• MIT Assistant Vice Chancellor

• Coach Wilson

• Mr. Harrington
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Benedict Cumberbatch admitted to not reading the full script, wanting to surprise himself with the final product.
• Goofs (at around 13 mins) When Peter goes back to his high school and walks up the stairs, there is a mural behind him. Part of the mural contains a chemical structure, however, one of the carbons has five bonds. This is impossible as carbons cannot exceed four bonds.

Matt Murdock : You may have dodged your legal troubles but things will get much worse. There's still the court of public opinion.

[Matt catches a brick thrown through the window]

Peter Parker : How did you just do that?

Matt Murdock : I'm a really good lawyer.

• Crazy credits SPOILER: There is a scene in the closing credits: Eddie Brock and Venom from the Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters are talking with a bartender. When the multiverse is restored, Brock and Venom are re-transported back to their universe, leaving a bit of symbiote behind.
• an introduction by Holland, Maguire, and Garfield
• additional scenes of Parker and May being interrogated by the Department of Damage Control
• the scene with Holland's brother Harry as a thief that was cut from the original release
• additional scenes of Parker at school; Brant interviewing Parker, his teachers, and his classmates
• Daily Bugle reports of Parker's first day back at school and the arrivals of Dillon and Marko
• additional scenes in the basement of the New York Sanctum
• a scene featuring May, Parker, and the villains in an elevator while on the way to Hogan's apartment
• an additional scene with Murdock and Hogan
• additional scenes of the three Parkers
• new post-credits scene of showing how Peter Parker has been erased from history in a new edition of "Betty's Corner with Betty Brant" begins playing that recaps their high school years with all the footage and pictures missing Peter.
• Connections Edited from Spider-Man 3 (2007)
• Soundtracks I Zimbra Written by David Byrne and Brian Eno Performed by Talking Heads Courtesy of Sire Records By arrangement with Warner Music Group Film & TV Licensing

User reviews 6.1K

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• May 12, 2022
• How long is Spider-Man: No Way Home? Powered by Alexa
• Does James Franco make an appearance as New Goblin?
• Will Michael Keaton return as Vulture?
• How are they doing the filming during COVID pandemic?
• December 17, 2021 (United States)
• United States
• Official site
• Serenity Now
• Columbia Pictures
• Pascal Pictures
• Marvel Studios
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $200,000,000 (estimated)
• $814,866,759
• $260,138,569
• Dec 19, 2021
• $1,922,598,800

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 28 minutes
• Dolby Atmos
• Dolby Digital
• Dolby Surround 7.1
• IMAX 6-Track

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• Every Single Detail of the <i>Spider-Man: No Way Home</i> Trailer, Explained

Every Single Detail of the Spider-Man: No Way Home Trailer, Explained

T he ominously titled Spider-Man: No Way Home is proving to be the most anticipated Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movie since Avengers: Endgame . The first trailer has set the Internet aflame, thanks to some familiar faces from previous Spider-Man films.

No Way Home is likely the last time we’ll see Spider-Man in the MCU since Sony’s contract to lend the character to Marvel Studios for three solo films is coming to an end. But he’ll go out with a bang: the movie will throw Tom Holland ‘s Spider-Man into the multiverse where he will meet characters from previous Spider-Man franchises—specifically the Sony versions starring Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, respectively.

While Maguire and Garfield aren’t technically confirmed cast members, we’re probably getting a live-action version of the Spider-Man pointing meme . We do know that Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus from Spider-Man 2 , Jamie Foxx’s Electro from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Matt Murdoch from the Netflix TV show Daredevil will all appear in No Way Home. The first trailer also revealed for the first time that we’ll get to see versions of the Green Goblin, Sandman and Lizard. And there are a few hints that we may finally get a live-action rendering of a beloved version of Spidey from the comics, Miles Morales.

We do know that Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) will play a pivotal role in the film. When a Spidey villain reveals Spider-Man’s secret identity, Peter Parker pleads with Strange to use magic to reverse the revelation. Things go predictably awry from there.

Here’s everything you need to know about the first trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home and how it fits into the MCU’s growing multiverse.

Read More: Why We’ll Never Stop Getting New Spider-Man Movies

We see the fallout from Spider-Man’s identity reveal in Spider-Man: Far From Home

The last time we saw Holland’s Spidey , he was in big trouble. At the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home , Jake Gyllenhaal’s villainous Mysterio created a fake video to make it seem as if Peter Parker murdered Mysterio in cold blood. (As an aside, Mysterio gained Peter’s trust by claiming that he was a superhero who arrived on earth from a parallel universe, and then joked with his henchmen about how gullible Peter was for believing the parallel universe nonsense. That past burn may mean that Peter is slow to accept the whole multiverse concept in No Way Home .)

In the final scene of Far From Home , the vindictive journalist J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons, reprising his role from the Sam Raimi movies—more on that later) publishes the Mysterio video and reveals that Peter Parker is Spider-Man.

Spider-Man: No Way Home looks to pick up the action seconds after the end of Far From Home . Peter tries to swing away from crowds with his love interest MJ (Zendaya) in his arms. Kids in school snap his photo. Protestors call Peter a “Devil in Disguise.” The police bring Peter, his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) and Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) in for questioning about Mysterio’s death.

This dramatic reaction on the part of New York City seems rather harsh considering how normal citizens in the MCU idolize heroes like Iron Man (who revealed his secret identity in the very first Iron Man movie). But in the comics and the other Spidey films, New Yorkers have always been a bit suspicious and scared of Spider-Man, thanks in large part to J. Jonah Jameson’s anti-Spidey propaganda at the Daily Bugle . And now that Mysterio has framed Spider-Man for his murder, the public perceives Peter as a vigilante.

Unlike Tony Stark or even Stephen Strange, Peter is just a kid. He can’t hide away from the public in his mansion or the Sanctum Sanctorum. Thus, Peter turns to Doctor Strange for help.

Read More: Breaking Down the Spider-Man: Far From Home End-Credits Scenes

Is Matt Murdoch, a.k.a. Daredevil, Peter Parker’s lawyer?

We briefly see a man drop a load of papers in front of Peter. This could be a cop confronting him with (fake) evidence that Peter killed Mysterio. Or this could be Peter’s lawyer. (Stark Industries would, presumably, have some sort of legal defense fund set up for this very situation.)

We know that Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdoch from the Netflix Daredevil TV show is set to appear in the film. Fans think this may be him. The mystery man is sporting Matt’s signature white shirt and black tie getup. On a grander scale, this could mean that Netflix’s Marvel TV shows, which never really tied into the MCU films, are, in fact, canon.

A “careful what you wish for” plot line pulled from the comics

In the trailer, Peter Parker asks Doctor Strange to make the world forget Peter’s secret identity. Wong (Benedict Wong) warns Doctor Strange not to attempt the magic to make this happen, but Strange does so anyway. Strange was reckless in the Doctor Strange film, but taking such a big risk seems uncharacteristic after the events of Infinity War. But perhaps he hasn’t learned his lesson. Or, worse still, this is a different sorcerer masquerading as Doctor Strange.

Regardless of his motivation, while Strange is casting his spell, Peter has second thoughts. If MJ, for instance, forgets his secret identity, their bond will disappear. Peter’s backtracking messes up the spell and seemingly breaks open the multiverse.

The conceit for No Way Home pulls heavily from the notorious Civil War storyline in the comics in which Peter reveals his secret identity. Peter eventually realizes he made a mistake and put his loved ones at risk. His Aunt May is shot, and in the One More Day storyline, Peter turns to Doctor Strange to help save her. Doctor Strange isn’t able to save May’s life, so Peter makes a deal with the literal devil, Mephisto. In exchange for Aunt May’s life, he has to give up his marriage to MJ, and Mephisto erases MJ’s memory of Peter.

Read More: The Definitive Ranking of Every Single Spider-Man Movie

A quick primer on the concept of the multiverse

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse was the first popular movie to introduce the idea of a superhero multiverse into the mainstream consciousness. The Oscar-winning animated film centered on Miles Morales, a Black-Puerto Rican teen growing up in Brooklyn. Miles not only gains Spidey powers but is caught up in the combustion of a dangerous machine that makes parallel universes collide. That accident ushers Spider-People (or, well, Spider-beings) from parallel universes—including Peter Parker, Gwen Stacey’s Spider-Woman, and a pig named Spider-Ham—into Miles’ Brooklyn.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was a hit and got movie fans comfortable with the concept of the parallel timelines and multiple versions of superheroes living in different universes. While Spider-verse is not a part of the MCU (it was made by Sony), Marvel Studios has since embraced the concept of a multiverse in its live action properties.

Read More: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Is Filled With Spider-People. Here’s Who They Are

The multiverse wouldn’t be possible without Loki

(Major spoilers for the show Loki in this section)

Marvel Studios introduced the multiverse into its movies and TV shows with the series Loki this summer. In it, the beloved Thor villain (played by Tom Hiddleston) tries to escape to a parallel universe and is stopped by the Time Variance Authority (TVA). The TVA is basically a group of space-time cops responsible for pruning any timelines that branch off the main timeline, creating parallel universes.

The show crucially establishes the concept of “variants,” different versions of the same character existing in multiple universes. Loki, for example, falls in love with a female variant of himself who goes by Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino). After watching Loki , it’s easy to see how Tobey Maguire Spider-Man and Tom Holland Spider-Man could both exist in the same movie franchise.

By the end of Loki , Loki and Sylvie discover an incredibly intelligent man named Kang the Conquerer (Jonathan Majors) has been behind the TVA and maintaining one single universe. Kang warns them that other Kang variants are even more evil, and if they kill him, they’ll just create many parallel universes with many versions of Kang in them. Sylvie chooses to kill Kang anyway, thus creating many branching timelines. (A different version of Kang, also played by Majors, is set to appear in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania .)

Why is this important for Spider-Man? Well, had Doctor Strange created parallel timelines before Loki and Sylvie messed with the universe, the TVA would have just shown up and destroyed the branching timelines. Now, however, chaos reigns and variants can meet one another.

Read More: Here’s What the Loki Finale Means for the Future of Marvel Movies

We may finally see a live-action Miles Morales

In a brief shot in the trailer, we see Peter wearing a black and gold Spidey suit running through F.E.A.S.T., a homeless shelter from the excellent Spider-Man video game . In that game, Aunt May works at the homeless shelter, as does Miles Morales.

Maybe it’s a stretch to say that the inclusion of F.E.A.S.T. in the trailer suggests we’ll get to see Miles. But this isn’t the first time that the MCU has hinted Miles is coming to the MCU. In the first Holland Spider-Man movie, Spider-Man: Homecoming , Spider-Man meets Miles’ uncle, Aaron Davis, a.k.a. the Prowler, played by Donald Glover. Aaron name checks his young nephew to Peter. Maybe that version of Miles will get Spidey powers. Or perhaps Peter meets an alternate-universe Miles.

Read More: Spider-Man: Miles Morales Could’ve Tackled Police Reform Head-On. Instead, the Cops Are Almost Entirely Gone

Doctor Octopus is back

The greatest Spider-Man movie villain ever is back on the big screen. Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus emerges on a highway and says, “Hello, Peter.” Either Doc Ock is greeting Holland’s Peter as if he knows him or he’s actually saying hello to Maguire’s Peter, and the trailer is just holding back that reveal.

The last time we saw Doctor Octopus, the character drowned in the Hudson. Molina has hinted that the character gets transported from a parallel universe to this movie before his death.

The Green Goblin is back, too

We don’t see the Green Goblin in the trailer but we do see a teaser for him: a pumpkin bomb, the Green Goblin’s favorite weapon, tossed among a cluster of cars. It looks like the same setting where Peter encounters Doc Ock. It’s unclear if Willem Dafoe, who played Green Goblin in the Maguire Spider-Man movies, is returning as the character, or if we’re getting another variant of the villain played by another actor. But we do hear a Green Goblin cackle that sounds an awful lot like Dafoe.

And so is Electro

We get a brief shot of an electric bolt flashing above some police cars, which seems to indicate the return of Foxx’s Electro. Notably, this electricity is yellow (like it is in the comics) rather than blue (like it is in the Amazing Spider-Man 2 ). That could be just an aesthetic change, or it could mean this is a totally different Electro than the one we’ve seen before. Fans would likely embrace a less timid version of the character than the one Foxx portrayed in the 2014 film. After all, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was not particularly well received and ultimately ended the Garfield Spider-Man franchise.

And so is Sandman

Another villain tease! We see sand swirling up from the ground, a telltale sign that bad guy Sandman (who appeared in Spider-Man 3 ) will also return for this film. Last we saw Sandman in the Maguire Spider-Man movies, he apologized to Peter and blew away. So it’s unclear what version of Sandman we’ll get.

And so is the Lizard

Lizard, the villain from Amazing Spider-Man, is also making a comeback. It’s difficult to see in this screenshot, but we see Holland’s Peter briefly turn around and get scared by Lizard in the trailer.

We’re probably getting the Sinister Six

That’s five villains. One more and we’d have The Sinister Six, a team of super-villains that join forces in order to try to kill Spider-Man. They show up frequently in the comics and, recently, in the aforementioned Spider-Man video game. It’s possible that a villain from the first Holland movie, Spider-Man: Homecoming , could join this team, be that Michael Keaton’s Vulture or Michael Mando’s Scorpion.

Remember, Scorpion confronted Vulture about Spider-Man’s identity in an end-credits scene for Homecoming . Now that Scorpion knows who the webslinger is, he’ll likely want to go after him. Vulture, too, has reason to hate Spider-Man for landing him behind bars and separating him from his family.

Where are the other Spider-Men?

We don’t actually get to see any other Spider-people in the trailer. They may be holding those reveals back for future trailers or for the movie itself.

But we do get some allusions to past movies. For example, the moment at the beginning of the trailer between Holland’s Peter and Zendaya’s MJ on the roof is reminiscent of the scene where Maguire’s Peter and Kirsten Dunst’s MJ lie together in a web in the early Spider-Man films. In another shot, Peter and MJ stand atop the Queensborough bridge, which is a pivotal location in the original Spider-Man . These shots are likely intentional reminders of the Spidey films that came before and how Peter’s life parallels those of other Peters in other universes.

Are we finally getting a glimpse of the Fantastic Four or X-Men?

This may be an easter egg or just pure desperation on the part of fans to see Wolverine, but Doctor Strange’s mug in one shot says “Oh For Fox Sake” on it. This could be a throwaway prop or it may be nodding at Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox, which gave Disney the rights to the X-Men and Fantastic Four characters .

The parallel universes plot is the perfect way to usher the X-Men and Fantastic Four into the MCU. After all, everyone would ask where the heck all those heroes were during the fight against Thanos if they were to just come out of hiding now. There’s already a lot going on in No Way Home , so I doubt we’ll get a glimpse of Reed Richards or Raven in this movie, but a fan can dream.

Does Spider-Man: No Way Home connect to Morbius or Venom ?

Yes and no. After the Garfield Spider-Man movies failed to make quite the splash that the Maguire movies had, Sony turned to Disney for help producing a new set of Spidey films. Spider-Man: Homecoming , Spider-Man: Far From Home and Spider-Man: No Way Home were all co-produced by Sony and Disney.

However their three-picture contract ends with Spider-Man: No Way Home . (Indeed, the deal almost fell apart before No Way Home ever saw the light of day.) Sony fully intends on building out an entire Spider-verse without Disney and has begun producing film series for some of Spidey’s greatest villains, including Venom and Morbius . A Venom sequel and Morbius are both due out in the next year.

These villains do exist in Spider-Man’s world: Keaton’s Vulture, the main villain in Homecoming, appears in the Morbius trailer.

What happens to Spider-Man after No Way Home ?

The title of the film does not bode well for Peter’s future in the MCU. Sony wants its own cinematic universe to compete with Marvel’s and continuing to lend Disney its most popular character undermines that goal.

But Sony will definitely want to keep the character, or some iteration of him, around for future movies. In the meantime, Venom: Let There Be Carnage , Morbius and a Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse sequel are all on their way to theaters to build out the Spider-Man multiverse.

What happens to Doctor Strange after No Way Home?

The upcoming movie Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness will be helmed by Sam Raimi, the beloved director of all three Maguire Spider-Man movies, so the plot of that film will likely be directly tied to No Way Home . Marvel has confirmed that Wanda Maximoff, a.k.a. Scarlett Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) will also star in that film, though it’s unclear if she’ll play a hero or a villain. The end of WandaVision suggests she could turn good or evil.

If someone has to piece the multiverse back together, it’ll likely be Strange or Wanda or both, considering they are the only two magic users and two of the strongest Avengers. Whether No Way Home ends with a happy resolution or with the multiverse in chaos, all signs point toward Doctor Strange playing a major role in the next phase of the MCU.

Read More: Here’s What’s Next for the Marvel Cinematic Universe

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‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Deep Dive Analysis

Mal and Joanna discuss Spider-Man as a character and his many iterations, overall plot points, their thoughts and predictions for future installments

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A note up top: This episode contains content that details the entire MCU. Proceed with caution!

Your friendly, neighborhood Ringer-Verse gang is here to break down the latest in the Spider-Man series , Spider-Man: No Way Home . The duo discuss Spider-Man as a character and his many iterations, overall plot points, their thoughts and predictions for future installments, and more.

Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Associate Producer: Lani Renaldo Social: Jomi Adeniran Additional Production: Steve Ahlman, TD St. Matthew-Daniel, and Arjuna Ramgopal

Subscribe: Spotify / Apple Podcasts

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‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ is a lesson in restorative justice

This article contains spoilers for “Spider-Man: No Way Home.”

I went into “Spider-Man: No Way Home” thinking it was going to be another feel-good film about one of my favorite characters to come out of Marvel’s long list of heroes. But I was happily surprised to find that the film had a deeper plot that was underscored by themes of restorative justice, or the idea that those who do wrong need healing just the same as their victims. These themes are incredibly relevant to the real-life discussion of how American society views incarcerated people as “villains” and unworthy of redemption. 

Instead of the typical scenario where the hero of the story must defeat the villain to save the day, we’re presented with a plot that requires the hero, Peter Parker, to forgive — forcing the hero to show empathy to the villain in order to do so. 

As people grapple with another spike in COVID infections, we can’t forget empathy for a vulnerable population of folks whose deaths are preventable: the incarcerated. We can easily save them by setting them free and providing resources that address why they’re incarcerated in the first place. The prison abolition movement is rooted in this mission and actively working to make it a reality. But prisoners aren’t a priority in a country that willingly casts them aside rather than invest in their freedom.  

Previous Coverage

Villains from earlier Spider-Man trilogies — led by Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield — pour into the universe of the latest Spider-Man, played by Tom Holland. As a result, Holland’s Spider-Man is tasked with sending villains like Doctor Octopus and Electro back to their respective universes, but the solution to the conflict is more complex.

Peter realizes he has a choice (thanks to his wise Aunt May): Send the villains back to their respective universes to meet their end or try to convince them to abandon their evil ways before returning home. To see the hero of a Marvel movie offered this choice is a huge victory for prison abolitionists, showing that their vision of a world without prisons is permeating American culture in a positive way. 

Dr. Strange is resistant to the idea of helping the villains and argues that their fate is fixed, insinuating that they deserve to die for the havoc they’ve wreaked. Strange’s argument is strikingly similar to real-life carceral thinking and reminiscent of how proponents of our own prison industrial complex view criminals as inherently violent and favor capital punishment . As prison abolitionists point out, this limited mindset overlooks the many factors that drive someone to commit a crime or, in this case, resort to villainy. 

The overarching message in “No Way Home” is that everyone deserves a second chance — even the villains we all know and, in some cases, love to hate. In the real world, some view the two million people in prisons, jails, juvenile correction facilities and immigrant detention centers as villains of their own making, which helps explain why the U.S. has the highest amount of incarcerated people worldwide. Every year, 600,000 people are sentenced to prison and 83 percent of federal criminal defendants are found guilty. 

Re-entry programs give formerly incarcerated folks the second chance they need to overcome the complex challenges they face when they are released to break the cycle of incarceration. Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles provides former gang members and the formerly incarcerated with resources to reintegrate, such as employment, tattoo removals and mental health services. The Center for Women in Transition in St. Louis provides formerly incarcerated women with transitional housing, case management and other resources to rebuild lives after prison. These organizations and others like them are supported by the Second Chance Act , a fund that awards grants to groups working to reduce rates of recidivism nationwide. 

To see the hero of a Marvel movie offered this choice is a huge victory for prison abolitionists, showing that their vision of a world without prisons is permeating American culture in a positive way. 

In a similar (albeit superhero) fashion, the three Spider-Men join forces to “cure” the villains rather than defeat them in a final battle that takes place at the Statue of Liberty — a monument that symbolizes the film’s theme of restorative justice and second chances. After all, for earlier immigrant generations, the statue was a beacon of hope, representing the possibility of a second chance or the start of a new life. Of course, America isn’t so welcoming of immigrants today. Not only has the path to naturalization narrowed over the past few decades, but there are currently more than 22,000 migrants in ICE detention centers — despite most having no criminal record. What’s more, nearly two million migrants were arrested at the U.S-Mexico border this year, alone. The opportunity the statue once stood for has been tarnished — something the filmmakers are clearly aware of, as they allow it to serve as a backdrop to the final act.

As the film comes to a close, the Spider-Men “cure” most of the villains by addressing the trauma that led them to acquire their menacing abilities. Doctor Octopus was relieved of the relentless voices in his head after Holland’s Peter injected him with a device that stopped his tentacles from infecting his brain. Sandman, Electro and Lizard — who were disfigured by the traumatic accidents that gave them their abilities — were given antidotes by the other Spider-Men, reverting them back to their human forms. 

Meanwhile, Dr. Strange — who’s more concerned with keeping the multiverse from collapsing than learning about restorative justice — prepares to close the many portals that Peter opened. In the commotion, the three Spider-Men are blindsided by the Green Goblin who they have yet to cure. Norman Osborne has long stood as a metaphor for the criminalization of mental illness, but until this film, the source of his demons had not been explored — no doubt due, in part, to our general lack of understanding of mental health as a society. 

After all, the U.S. has a history of punishing the mentally ill rather than treating them. Before the first psychiatric hospital was established in 1773 , Americans were incarcerated just for being mentally ill . That legacy carries on today where, in most states , the majority of people with mental illnesses are in prisons rather than psychiatric hospitals equipped to meet their unique needs. Incarceration has only ever kept people from getting the help they need to lead better lives.

Scenes from “No Way Home ” shed light on Osborne’s mental health, showing symptoms that mirror borderline personality disorder or schizophrenia. After encountering Holland’s Peter for the first time, Osborne is seen covering his ears in an alley to silence the voices inside his head. In a scene with Aunt May, he talks about how he becomes someone else when he puts on his mask. In the final battle, he switches from Osborne to the Goblin, wanting nothing more than to make people suffer the way he does. After watching the Goblin kill his Aunt May and wound Maguire’s Spider-Man, Holland’s Spider-Man struggles to be empathetic at first. But he honors Aunt May’s dying wish for him to finish what he started — by curing Osborne of his alter ego that killed the only living family member Peter had left.

The movie ends with Holland accomplishing what he set out to do. The villains, along with the Garfield and Maguire Spider-Men, are all sent back to their universes. We can assume they made better choices after being given the tools they needed to change their narratives. 

What’s most compelling, however, is that Holland’s Peter also — knowingly or not — seeks out his own second chance. In the last film, “Far from Home,” Mysterio outs Peter and frames him as his killer. In the eyes of many, the hero became the villain. Consequently, in “No Way Home,” Peter wants Dr. Strange to wipe his slate clean so he can walk through life as if he was never outed. His wish is granted in the end when Dr. Strange recasts the spell that went wrong to make everyone forget who Peter Parker is and what he was accused of.

In the real world, that’s a fantasy that many incarcerated folks want, too, but can ultimately never have under a system that punishes them even after they’ve served time. Convicted felons struggle against laws that make it near impossible to reintegrate into society without being defined by their record. People with criminal records are half as likely to get a job compared to those without one. States have been slow to enact Clean Slate Initiative laws that allow ex-offenders to get their records expunged or sealed once they’re released from prison. They might be free from their cells but they aren’t free to vote, apply for social benefits or even serve on a jury after they’re released. 

Holland’s Spider-Man insists throughout the film that the vitriol aimed at him was because people didn’t know the whole story — namely that Mysterio was actually a villain. People who look like Peter Parker, a white man, are given the benefit of the doubt far more often than people of color in the criminal justice system. Nevertheless, Peter’s frustration with the public’s perception of him aligns with that of marginalized people in our own world who are affected by racial bias during every step of the system , from profiling to sentencing.

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Despite having the opportunity to see through the eyes of the oppressed, Peter still didn’t know what stories the villains carried with them — stories that were crucial to him changing his views and unlearning a carceral mindset. After all, villains are easier to hate when you only see the horrible acts they commit. But it gets harder when you’re introduced to their backstories that are often tragic and riddled with abuse and neglect. The same can be said for the incarcerated. 

In order to save the day, Peter had to give those he once saw as villains the very thing he was seeking for himself: a second chance. The minute viewers like me realize this, we’re also able to see the power we have to do the same in our everyday lives — and with great power comes great responsibility.

We can choose what kind of hero we’re going to be the same way Peter did in “No Way Home.” Recognizing the flaws of our punitive carceral system, through the lens of Spider-Man or otherwise, can be a stepping stone to getting involved in the actual struggle to change the system and build a world without prisons. It all starts with acknowledging that the people we throw into cells every single day are just that: people.

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Raven Yamamoto

Raven Yamamoto is a journalist and fellow in the Uprising Fellowship at Just Media.

Indeed our reponses to serious mental illnesses continues to be less than medical.

Harold A Maio

Nice review and my thoughts exactly. Congrats to the script writers for their excellent work!

The complete idea was to humanely treat those already here BUT close the border.

How the police stand to benefit from abolition

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I Hated ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home.’ But the Academy Should Absolutely Nominate It for Best Picture (Column)

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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Yes, I hated “ Spider-Man: No Way Home .” It’s a movie that I’m a total annoying curmudgeonly naysayer about. So even though my antipathy isn’t the topic of this column, why hide it? Go ahead, throw tomatoes at me. But understand that I’m actually on your side.

I hated the film for two reasons. The way the multiverse concept plays out is, in my opinion, a half-baked and unsatisfying mess. “No Way Home” has none of the head-spinning flair and three-dimensional-chess logic that was so hypnotic in “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” the bedazzling 2018 animated landmark that is one of the all-time highlights of the superhero genre. That movie was no small influence on this one, but it’s like seeing filet mignon turned into processed, additive-filled hamburger. That said, the only reason “No Way Home” even bothered with the multiverse concept is that it’s the only way the filmmakers could figure out to shoehorn all three of the actors who’ve played Spider-Man — Tobey Maguire , Andrew Garfield , and Tom Holland — into one movie.

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As a storytelling premise, this one makes close to no sense. It’s as if the new “Batman” film had found a way for Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, Christian Bale, and Ben Affleck to all show up as Bruce Wayne. (I can hear some of you going, “Awesome!”) But as a marketing hook it’s off the hook. “No Way Home” is basically a sideshow attraction (“Step right up! See all the Spider-Men in one movie!”) staged as a bloated “Saturday Night Live” sketch. Sure, the three performers are having a party (and Andrew Garfield is a more ebullient actor now than he was when he glummed his way through his original two “Spider-Man” films), but the picture is “meta” in the way that a clever advertisement is meta. It turns the audience into part of the selling.

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That said, the whole reason I’m going on about this is precisely to say: Who cares what I think? Audiences adore “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” Critics, with a very few exceptions, adore “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” The whole world adores “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” So if you really think I’m wrong (and just about everyone does), what on earth is stopping everyone from demanding that “Spider-Man: No Way Home” becomes one of this year’s Oscar nominees for best picture? On what planet would anyone argue that it shouldn’t be?

Ah yes, the ancient logic of middlebrow Oscar snobbery. In the past, the members of the Motion Picture Academy have considered superhero movies to be entertainment, not art, and the Oscars are supposed to be about art. We’ve been through this debate several tedious times, most spectacularly in 2008, when “The Dark Knight,” the greatest superhero movie ever made, couldn’t finagle a best picture nomination.

For the record, here are a few of the timeless masterpieces that were nominated in its stead: “The Reader,” “Frost/Nixon,” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” “The Dark Knight” is 10 times the work of art that any of those movies are, and the idea that it wasn’t nominated because Academy voters look down their noses at comic-book films should, by now, be a relic of last-century thinking. Besides, it’s not as if the line of honoring fantasy blockbusters has never been crossed. The original “Star Wars” was nominated. All three of the “Lord of the Rings” films were nominated (and “The Return of the King” won). “Black Panther” was nominated.

Now, though, there’s a larger reason to nominate “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” The Oscars are on life support, or at least they’re heading there. They need mainstream cred; going forward, it’s nothing less than the oxygen that’s going to allow them to survive.

Whenever this argument gets made, it’s presented in strictly utilitarian, box-office-begets-ratings terms. If you want an Academy Awards telecast that wins more eyeballs than it loses, you’re going to have to nominate some of the movies that win eyeballs. I don’t disagree with that argument, and in a sense it’s the one I’m making. But this isn’t simply about numbers. It’s about a perception that drives the numbers. Sure, if “No Way Home” gets nominated, a swath of its vast fan base might tune into the Oscars that wouldn’t have otherwise. But what I’m really talking about is the essential idea that movies are, and always have been, a populist art form. If that dimension of cinema isn’t respected, something has gone wrong.

Awards shows are struggling because they don’t serve the same function in the culture they once did. You used to watch the Oscars to get a heady shot of glamour — to see what the stars were wearing, and how they presented themselves as personalities. Now you can see that anytime (the red carpet is a media installation that never ends), and the distinction between “star” and “up-and-coming star” and “who’s that?” gets fuzzier every day.

But, of course, the biggest hurdle the Oscars face, especially in the time of a pandemic accompanied by a streaming revolution, is that the films that tend to be nominated are winning a smaller and smaller slice of the audience. This year, let’s imagine that the nominees include “Belfast,” “The Power of the Dog,” “Licorice Pizza,” “The Lost Daughter,” and “The Tragedy of Macbeth.” I’m sorry, and this reflects no judgment on the quality of any of those films, but that reads as a roster straight out of the too-smart-for-school megaplex. It’s doubtful that any of those films will ever qualify as a crossover hit. I know, I know: Netflix is doing its usual metrics magic to create the aura of buzzy success. But “The Power of the Dog” and the other big-ticket Netflix contender, “Don’t Look Up,” exist in a streaming gray zone somewhere between “Look how many people watched at least part of it at home!” and “Does that mean it’s the same as a theatrical hit?”

I’m not saying don’t nominate those films. I’m saying that if those are the only films nominated, it’s going to be another year of the Oscars’ slow-motion implosion. I led this column talking about my dislike of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” because that’s my honest feeling about the film, but also to make the point that the Oscars can, and should, reflect something larger than the critical ego. When I look back over decades of Oscar ceremonies, I will often recall, quite fondly, the competition between this and that movie, neither one of which came within miles of making my own 10 Best list. But that’s okay. It’s the Oscars! It’s not the Nobel Peace Prize. This year, would it really be such an unspeakable vulgarity for the Oscar slate to include “Spider-Man: No Way Home”? Not as a token mainstream gesture but because it’s a film that honestly meant something to the larger public. Why has this become such an insane idea? What’s actually insane is leaving a movie like that one out of the mix. If the Oscars want a future, it would be a shrewd strategy for them to not inflict the death of a thousand cuts on themselves by using the dagger of elitism.

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Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield on the making of 'SPIDER-MAN NO WAY HOME'

Coming feburary 28th, 'spider-man no way home: the official movie special' features interviews with maguire, garfield as well as tom holland, zendaya, and benedict cumberbatch.

One of the biggest sources of mayhem in the Marvel Cinematic Universe Multiverse was when all three Spider-Mans came together in Spider-Man: No Way Home ,  and all the Peter Parkers faced a multitude of villains from across the Multiverse. Now, coming February 28th, Titan Books brings  Spider-Man No Way Home: The Official Movie Special  to fans to go deep into the making of the epic film.

This deluxe collector’s volume features interviews with Tom Holland (Spider-Man/Peter Parker), Zendaya (MJ), Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Strange), and returning Spider-Men Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield along with behind-the-scenes interviews with the teams responsible for the movie’s stunts, costumes, and ground-breaking visual effects.

Pre-Order  Spider-Man No Way Home: The Official Movie Special  at Amazon or wherever books are sold. 

You can get as sneak peek of the book here with this exclusive excerpt of interviews with Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield about making Spider-Man: No Way Home !

TOBEY MAGUIRE: SPIDER-MAN

When Tobey Maguire first played Spider-Man back in 2002, the Marvel Cinematic Universe didn’t even exist. Now his ground-breaking incarnation of the web-slinger is back as part of the multi-verse shattering Spider-Man: No Way Home .

The original 2002 Spider-Man had a big influence on the Super Hero films that followed…

I want to comment on the history of the genre. For me as a kid, I was watching Super Hero movies. In my experience there are plenty of terrific films and performers who take it seriously. It was maybe more erratic, and it kind of got more cohesive in time.

I’ve heard people talk about how our Sam Raimi movies were some kind of influential turning point in these movies, which is really sweet and feels like an honor. And not to take away from all the great work that everybody did there, but for me, I have so much love and respect for what came before. I just wanted to acknowledge that!

How did you feel when you got the call about this movie?

When they called initially, I was like finally ! [Laughs] I got the call and was immediately open about coming to do this. Not without nerves – you know, “What will this look like and what will the experience be?” But to get to show up with beautiful, talented, creative people and play together? It’s just like, “Yes!” It’s fun and exciting.

I love these films and I love all of the different series. If these guys called me and said, “Would you show up tonight to hang out and goof around?” or “Would you show up to do this movie or read a scene or do a Spider-Man thing?”, it would be a “yes!” Because why wouldn’t I want to do that?

How did it feel to put on the Spider-Man suit again?

The suit can definitely be a challenge at time when you’ve got to get into the full thing. But then, once you’re comfortable, there is something fun about it. As an actor, it helps when you get in your costume. You begin to feel it more and embody it more… You start to feel pretty at home pretty swiftly.

ANDREW GARFIELD: SPIDER-MAN

Back in 2012, The Amazing Spider-Man saw Andrew Garfield don the costume in an energetic reboot, which was followed by a sequel in 2014. The actor thought he was finished with the role – until he heard the wild pitch for No Way Home . He opens up about auditioning, working with his fellow Spider-Men, and what it’s really like to wear the Spider-Man suit.

How was your original audition?

When I got a chance to audition, I thought, “How cool would it be to fulfil some weird version of a childhood dream?” So, of course, I auditioned and didn’t really think much of it in terms of [if] I would get it or not. They asked me to do a screen test, and I suddenly thought, “This could happen. This could be a thing that will change my life.” Obviously, that created conflict in the sense of, “Do I want to be that recognizable? Do I want to take on this responsibility?” But then, of course, I did want to! So I decided to screen test and throw my hat in the ring.

I was really nervous at that point, because I was like, “I really would like to do this!” And when you want to do something and may not get to do it, then suddenly everything becomes very intense. You have to just take big risks and leave it to the gods.

Because I was so nervous and wanted it so much, I figured out a way of doing the screen test. I gave myself an acting adjustment, I suppose, which was: you’re a 15-year-old and you’re making a Spider-Man short film with mates. All the crew are friends. There’s no pressure. You get to make it up as you go along, and it’s about the joy of being this character. I was able to trick my ego to be occupied in a corner. I convinced the part of me that puts pressure on myself that it wasn’t needed and that we were just gonna go and have a laugh. I think that meant I was able to show up fully and be really present and have a good time. I worked hard at it, but then it was just about throwing it away and seeing what happened.

How did you find working with you fellow Spider-Men, Tom Holland and Tobey Maguire?

I think myself, Tom, and Tobey came into this going, “Well, how’s this gonna go?” I’d had lovely interactions with Tom and Tobey previously; not big hangouts, but really sweet moments at parties or events – or as sweet and deep as those things can go, which is not very! But I got a really good vibe from Tom and a really good vibe from Tobey. So I was excited to get to know these guys more and to see what we could create together.

We all came with our own history and with our own relationship to the character in our own films. I think what really was wonderful, and how it unfolded very early on, was Tobey and I felt very aligned and very clear about what our intentions were for being there. Ultimately, it was to serve Tom as an actor and, as characters, serving Tom’s Peter Parker. I think from that place, everything flowed. It enabled Tobey and me to have a bit more fun maybe than we would’ve had if we were the ones fully carrying the story.

Pre-Order  Spider-Man No Way Home: The Official Movie Special  at Amazon or wherever books are sold and r ead the full interviews, plus interviews with Tom Holland, Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch, Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina, and the teams responsible for the movie’s stunts, costumes, and ground-breaking visual effects, in ' Spider-Man No Way Home: The Official Movie Special'. 

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Spider-Man: No Way Home

Where to watch.

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

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Behind the scenes of the biggest effects in ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’

‘No Way Home’s’ VFX supervisor on crafting the Mirrorverse, orchestrating 3 different Spideys, and whether they could access any old 3D models from the past films (hint: no).

With Spider-Man: No Way Home , not only was production visual effects supervisor Kelly Port tasked with overseeing a dazzling array of complex VFX sequences—moments like the Mirrorverse, a freeway battle between Spider-Man and Doc Ock, a fight atop the Statue of Liberty involving several super-heroes, and many more—Port also had to navigate the fact that of course a number of beloved characters previously crafted with the aid of visual effects would be returning to the screen in some form or another.

In this interview with befores & afters , Port, who was supported by visual effects producer Julia Neighly and a bevy of VFX studios, including Digital Domain, Imageworks, Framestore, Luma Pictures, Crafty Apes, Cinesite, Folks VFX, Mr. X, SSVFX, MARZ, Secret Lab, Perception and more, talks about how the VFX teams made those returns and elaborate sequences possible.

b&a: First up, I wanted to say I really loved the transitions between live action actors and CG swinging digi-doubles, especially at the beginning where Peter and MJ are swinging around trying to get away from the spotlight. Was there anything new you felt you were doing there with those kinds of shots?

Kelly Port : Well, it’s really just attention to the detail of it all. For example, when they first come out of the manhole cover and walk and then kind of run and then jump, normally, we would need a digi-double when we can’t use the live action anymore. But in order to blend seamlessly into that CG digi-double for both MJ and Peter, sometimes we would need to get into the live action part of it earlier. So, they’re actually digi-doubles quite a bit sooner, I think, than you would think. We’ll have to change their cadence a little bit before the jump up to get the right weight. We are actually changing some of the animation leading up into it.

b&a: On these big films, of course, the lead actors and often the secondary actors are scanned and photographed and textured for stunt doubles and also close-up work. What was your methodology here?

Kelly Port : We scanned everything and everybody, high-resolution, proxy-resolution, props, actors, background extras. Because we had a scanning booth on set, we just took advantage of it throughout the course of the production. We ended up processing a lot, but we scanned literally everything.

b&a: Obviously, someone like Tom Holland, he’s there without his mask and with mask sometimes. Does that mean you’d scan him in normal clothing, and then on-set suit as well?

Kelly Port : Yeah, we did. That’s another thing we could take advantage of; we would scan him and get high-resolution textures, polarized, non-polarized, you name it, in every single iteration of that costume, too. So with and without mask. We also scanned stunt doubles, because oftentimes you need to body track them and they have a slightly different body. So, if we’re tracking somebody who’s a stunt performer, we would need to swap out the Spidey for that guy’s scan, just to track it better. If it was using a slightly different body, it wouldn’t track.

b&a: One of the scenes I wanted to ask you about is the bridge attack with Doc Ock. I just thought that was a brilliant example, I assume, of shooting so much on some kind of backlot or set in Georgia and then implementing a New York environment. Tell me first about the planning for that sequence.

Kelly Port : Digital Domain was tasked with doing that sequence, which was a few hundred VFX shots. Also, the Digital Domain previs team did the previs for the whole movie, which was really cool, led by Matt McClurg. They just did such a great job. There’s so many cool iterations of that sequence that will never see the light of day. It was way longer. At one point in its longest iteration, it was 15 minutes long.

We shot in Atlanta at Trilith Studios, which was called Pinewood Atlanta. It was a backlot pad that was made specifically for us. We had 40-foot bluescreens on three sides of that pad, a little bit of roadway with the exit where the assistant vice chancellor was exiting and where most of the action took place. We’d redress the set for when Spidey first lands on a sign, and then he jumps off the sign and tumbles and he is looking for her. He goes through some traffic before he gets to her, so we would redress that same section for up until he gets to where she is. And then that became our main action set piece. But beyond that little piece of road section, Digital Domain built an entire, fully-CG digital environment around that that would include all the other surrounding bridges, the other side of the bridge that they’re on, all the city of Brooklyn and all the area around it, the river, and all the trees, the fall foliage. It just looked great.

b&a: When you were shooting that, what sort of rigs and other things helped? There’s some crazy stuff that happens with that, apart from just Doc Ock throwing cars around. There’s cars over the edge and with actors in them.

Kelly Port : Dan Sudick and his special effects team built a few specialized rigs. One was for when the assistant vice chancellor was inside the car, it would be able to tilt down 90 degrees, that is, go from flat to 90 degrees. And so when you see her expression, well, she was not a fan of that rig. I felt bad for her! But that was authentic fear in her. She was quite high up and it just basically tilted straight down.

We then put the environment in around her. Also, even though it was a live action car with her in it, we had to replace a lot of that exterior surface on the car to get all the proper reflections. One of my favorite shots is when Spidey swings down, upside down and then he turns around towards camera to see Ock, and I just love all the reflections in there and of that whole environment. And then of course, there’s those big, big explosions that Sudick is great with, like when Goblin throws the bombs. Those were some really big explosions that were fun to watch on set.

b&a: I feel like that’s quite bold to do real fiery and dirty explosions just on a bluescreen set like. I mean, I know that Dan has done a lot of that work before, but just as a compositing challenge for the VFX team. But I’m guessing, Kelly, you just head straight into this stuff, and just having it for real gives you the best results straight away.

Kelly Port : I couldn’t agree more. My rule of thumb is, if there’s any way possible to shoot something for real, something physical, then we do. We made an Iron Spider bust from chest to head and shoulders, which was just so, so helpful to get those bright pings for reference. We shot this outdoors, and so it was all about, how does this read on an Alexa camera if we were to actually shoot it Otherwise, you just don’t know. You just guess. And just actually having that there, having physical cars there, too, will help inform our digital cars.

Having a practical Iron Spider bust will help inform our fully-animated CG version. We also had pieces of Doc Ock’s claws and tentacles that we would bring out as reference. Anything physical would be super, super helpful. It’s the same thing with the explosions. I love the idea of tying physical elements into the digital world. It just always, always makes them look more believable.

b&a: When you had to do Doc Ock shots, I’m curious about the approach there. How were you filming Alfred Molina when he was live action, hovering, effectively?

Kelly Port : We had a couple different rigs. The one that we probably used the most was a platform rig. It was like a crane on a pivot, which meant he could rise or fall. It would enable him to be much freer with his upper body versus any wire work. He had that big coat on, too, so any kind of wire work where he would have to wear a big harness and it would pull the coat, we could tell almost right away that that really wasn’t going to work as well.

The platform would work great for some of the shots where you just had to deal with above the waist kind of framing. For the wider shots, where we used that, we would have to replace his legs of course because they would be dangling.

Essentially, we would use what we could from the live action. Most of the time, it would just be his head, though, but we’d try to keep his performance. If we had to roto-mate his performance, we did so. But especially if he’s moving quite a bit or there’s an explosion next to him or something like that, we’d have to add cloth simulation and things like that to get him into that world better.

b&a: For Spider-Man 2, when we see Doc Ock, that was such a breakthrough for Imageworks in terms of digital humans back then. Obviously this film has Doc Ock, and the past Spider-Men—was there any asset retrieval that could occur?

Kelly Port : Absolutely not [laughs]. None of those digital assets, as far as we were able to find, just simply don’t exist anymore. They’ve vanished from the world, I think. But we did have physical assets that we were able to access and I think were really helpful, like a portion of Doc Ock’s claw and tentacles. We actually based our tentacles and claws on those. We were able to take those out of the physical archive and do a tonne of great reference photos for those.

VFX Futures: VFX supervisor Scott Stokdyk looks back on the digital human breakthroughs in ‘Spider-Man 2’

And then we scanned the Goblin’s costume. It wasn’t in very good shape, but we scanned that and modified that a little bit. But none, really, were digital assets that we could retrieve because they just don’t exist. A lot of that wouldn’t have been very useful anyway because systems that were used then, in terms of look development or shaders, they would all be different by now, anyway.

b&a: When it came time to feature Tobey and Andrew and Tom’s Spider-Men together in scenes, I’m really curious about whether you did feel there needed to be very different looks to their suits to match their films, but also different behaviors and movement, like particular poses or anything? I felt like there were and it was really nice to see those subtle differences.

Kelly Port : Well, we did. And in fact, the suits are different. In the end battle, there’s a lot of passing and things like that. Editorially, we did everything we could to just make sure that it was as clear as possible, whether through handovers, meaning you saw more than one Spidey in a frame handing something off and tossing something to somebody else, so that you know who’s who for the most part, in addition to what the different suits look like.

And, as you mentioned, stylistically, they each have their own kind of iconic poses. This is especially the case where after the sandstorm and regrouping, you get that amazing theme music where even the scores are intertwined. You get some of the Danny Elfman stuff in there, and it’s really, really cool, because each have their own themes.

When all three jumping onto the top of the statue head, backlit by the moon, you get those iconic poses as well in the air. We just took great pains to even get their running styles and the gaits and their iconic poses in the air and their swinging styles, things like that. We had a few animators, both at Imageworks and DD and I think a few other places, where a lot of those artists and animators had worked on those previous films, so it was fun to get their firsthand experience on that, too. We had animators animating Doc Ock walking who had done the original Doc Ock walking. So that was cool. Imageworks handled that end-sequence on the Statue of Liberty, with Cinesite doing the shield fight with Green Goblin.

b&a: Even the suits themselves, did they match the suits from those Tobey films and Andrew films?

Kelly Port : Well, we based our digital suits on what our costume department made. And I think for the most part, they based them on the original suits. However, there could be a little bit of variation in them. The fact that Tobey and Andrew came from a slightly later timeline, they’re older, so time has passed, and they’ve lived their lives and probably have changed their suits or augmented them a little bit.

b&a: I really liked Sandman in this film. There was something nice about the throw-back, but something new as well. How was he achieved?

Kelly Port : There were two parts to him, where he’s more humanoid and talking, and when he is in the sanctum. Digital Domain did a lot of that work. And then Luma did the sequence that we called the power line corridor, which is where Sandman is first introduced. And Electro is also introduced and they have that little battle before they all meet and then get sent to the sanctum. I have to say, if you’re able to see that in extended dynamic range, for both that sequence and the end battle, it really looks cool in that higher dynamic range. That electricity just pops.

Then Imageworks, for the end battle, they did the much bigger Sandman with big FX sims. There were a lot of big sims in the end battle, not only with Sandman, but for the shield falling and crashing through all the scaffolding and millions and millions of pieces all interacting with each other, the crane falling through Sandman’s head and all that good stuff. I remember when we were first interviewing companies, there’s a little bit of collective post-traumatic stress disorder with anyone who had previously worked on Sandman. And so I knew that going in, I had a feeling this was going to be challenging both technically and creatively, just to get that character looking right and behaving right. But I think we were successful in the end. I think it looked pretty cool.

b&a: Did you have the benefit of the actor for any facial cap for Sandman?

Kelly Port : Well, we had his voice. We weren’t able to get a lot of visuals on him, but we were able to get his voice for sure and we got scans and textures and things like that.

b&a: For that Mirrorverse sequence, I wanted to ask you about going from script or early concept to ‘how you’re going to shoot’.

Kelly Port : That sequence went through quite a few ideas and just different iterations as well. And again, a huge thanks to Matt McClurg and his team because they came up with a lot of those cool, fun ideas, those little action beats. Initially, it was mostly just a city and Dr. Strange/mirrorverse kind of New York, bending buildings, things like that. But we did want to try something new and fresh for that. Framestore did the visual effects for this scene.

Now, basically, this whole chase is meant to be Strange putting obstacles in Peter’s way. And Peter, being smart and adaptable, is just adapting to everything that he’s throwing at him. So Strange is continually getting frustrated and trying to do all sorts of weird and different things. You know, ‘Okay, now I’m going to turn the whole world upside down. Okay, if you’re sticking to buildings, I’m going to make it the Grand Canyon.’ And so we came up with this idea of doing some kind of a hybrid city/Grand Canyon, which ended up looking really cool, too.

And then you get into playing a lot with different portals. Because he’s basically throwing his arsenal of magic at Peter, and Peter’s, in a fun way, adapting to it all. So you get portals upon portals, and you end up in this ‘mirrors reflecting each other’ kind of situation where we would say, ‘Well, what would happen if that is the case?’

There was definitely a little bit of head scratching going on—‘So, what if you’re looking through a portal, how would…etc etc.’ You have to really figure out the physics of it all. If he webs that way into a portal but then there’s another portal here and then he would web his own foot. But how would he hold onto it, exactly? Well, if there’s enough mass, because it’s an infinite number of Spider-Men and webs, then maybe there’s just so much mass that even though they’re theoretically just hanging in the air, but there’s so much mass because it’s an infinite number of them. Sure. It’s, like, we can make sense of that.

b&a: What did the actors see on any kind of bluescreen set for this? Did they see the previs?

Kelly Port : Well, yes and no. When we shot most of it, it was a totally different thing. They saw ‘something’, but it wasn’t what ended up being there. When they’re in the canyon, they were on the train, so built a little top of a train, and that was it. They were on a little top of a train surrounded by bluescreens.

b&a: Well, there was just so much to talk about in the film. Congratulations again. I really enjoyed it. I can’t wait to watch it again.

Kelly Port : Fantastic. Good to see you, Ian.

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issue #16 – the art of flying

issue #15 – miniatures

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“Spider-Man: No Way Home” and “Don’t Look Up” share more than massive popularity. The box-office and Netflix-viewership-dominating releases, respectively, are each packed with big actors and tonal gymnastics, from constant comedy to world-shattering drama.

Finding a crowd-pleasing balance of elements is the job of film editors, those folks who don’t just determine a movie’s pacing but often decide what is emphasized, how and when.

“Don’t Look Up” director Adam McKay went to Hank Corwin — previously nominated for editing McKay’s “Vice” and “The Big Short” — to make sense of his wide-ranging sociopolitical satire about a comet aiming to destroy Earth.

For his third “Spider-Man” film, which in the emerging Marvel Multiverse style incorporates villains and heroes from two earlier Sony Webslinger iterations, director Jon Watts tapped veteran “Avengers” montage man Jeffrey Ford and a previous collaborator, “Spider-Man: Far From Home” editor Leigh Folsom Boyd, to keep all of the story’s interdimensional mayhem and multiple Spideys straight.

Both films’ apparent chaos demanded precision cutting. It was crucial for the early “Spider-Man” sequence where Tom Holland’s Peter Parker keeps interrupting Benedict Cumberbatch’s Dr. Strange while he’s casting a spell, thus disrupting several universes.

“There’s a balance of the comedy, his world turning upside down in that moment and then coming back to the reality of what just happened,” Boyd tells The Envelope. “There is definitely a challenge to make it cohesive, so that the audience understands this is a jumping-off point for what comes after in the film. The language in that had to be very specific, so what follows makes sense.”

“The spell goes wrong, characters [from earlier Spider-film series] start dropping in,” adds Ford, who divided editing consecutive groupings of scenes with Boyd to enhance overall flow. “That’s something that we worked really hard on pacing. The audience gets a sense of apparent velocity of how many introductions are occurring and they can anticipate the next one. It’s sort of a wave.”

Corwin also had a formidable roster of supers — stars, that is — to allot screen time in “Don’t Look Up’s” SAG Award-nominated cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Timothée Chalamet, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Ariana Grande and Tyler Perry among them.

“Especially when you have people with this much horsepower, it’s easy to get blinded by their luminescence,” acknowledges Corwin, who mixed anamorphic 35 mm film, vintage Ikegami vidcam, cellphone footage and other media for the film.

Avoiding star-blindness required a focus change during the editing process. The initial strategy of lengthy character inquiry was replaced with a funnier, more observational and faster-paced approach. An Oval Office scene, in which DiCaprio and Lawrence’s alarmed scientists try to get Streep’s calculating president and her chief of staff son (Hill) to take the impending extinction-level event seriously, reveals personalities with quick cuts between fashion choices, attitude poses and snarky interplay.

But as the situation deteriorates, Corwin changes his shot choices to evoke gravitas, while also adding depth to DiCaprio’s scientist.

“When Leonardo goes into his TV rant, I deliberately got in almost claustrophobically tight,” he says. “Not only were you right there with Leonardo, you felt his plight acutely. From that point on, the movie pretty much slowed down. It became much quieter and more intimate, with almost no jokes. What did Bertolt Brecht say? ‘He who laughs has not yet heard the bad news.’”

Comic relief is endemic to the MCU, and while its editors strove to keep “No Way Home’s” core drama — Holland/Parker’s traumatic transformation from boy to man, coupled with his concern for friends MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon) — prominent, they also knew humor would enhance the self-reflexive film’s money moment.

“The comedic conceit involves Ned’s grandmother,” Ford says about when former Spider-Men Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield first appear. “It’s a really pivotal scene, but the interesting thing about it is that you’d expect it to play in a very specific way, then you introduce this new character who has no understanding of what’s going on. It was hard to balance because the scene takes twists from totally absurdist comedy to absolute total drama, back to craziness to more heartfelt emotion — I mean, it is taking left turns like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Don’t Look Up” goes similarly all over the place, which is a pretty good trick for a film shot under COVID restrictions. Corwin added scope with montages of worldwide impact and nature inserts, not so much to underscore the story’s climate change metaphor, but to represent irreducible truth in a scenario steeped in the misinformation of our age.

Unruly as it looks, each shot was carefully considered; even the glimpse of crew members that McKay has defended online had purpose.

“I loved it!” Corwin says, when he found the skateboard party “goof.” “Maybe this was pretentious of me, but if this movie lasts 50 years, I wanted to show a time capsule of people wearing masks and visors and gloves. Having that frame being really messy was exactly what I wanted. So don’t take it from McKay, take it from the editor: I did that very deliberately.”

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An unnecessarily long essay on "Spider-Man" in No Way Home

Or, a more spoilery title: a ridiculously long and hastily-written essay on the character work of "Spider-Man" in No Way Home, specifically the balancing of three different, yet familiar versions of the same character.

Where do I even begin? It was all so perfectly done that I'm still amazed. There were so many chances to mess it up, but you could truly tell that the filmmakers are huge Spider-Man fans themselves. There's so much unspoken meaning behind the ways they use each Spidey, which I will go into shortly. All of the following is a mix of my own thoughts and a lot of the general opinion shared by the fanbase, gleaned from hours of reading post-watch.

Spider-Man Introductions

I was speculating and slightly worried that they might come save him while he was getting fucked up at the apartment. In retrospect, that would've been awful. That beatdown and that defeat/loss is essential. Not only would that have been a shitty Deus ex machina, it would've ruined what they were trying to do. However it's done, whatever details are switched up, Spider-Man's defining moment is when he loses the figure who fulfills that "guardian" role in his life. He feels like it's his fault, and he's filled with murderous rage towards the person who was responsible (as good-hearted as he is, comics Peter is easily angered and resentful). In he end, that moment teaches him about responsibility and he goes from being a kid with superpowers to a true hero.

Briefly related: as much as I liked the first two MCU Spider-Man movies, I always felt like something was missing. I knew Tom Holland had what it took, but NWH made me realize that until now he hasn't been THE Spider-Man. I know people get sick of the same origin stories being done to death, but this was just a great example of taking that same story and bringing something new to it. Uncle Ben's death will always be iconic, but it was ballsy to do it this way and they pulled it off perfectly.

Now if you recall from TASM2, the whole theme of Peter's arc in that movie was his struggle to be a symbol of hope. He couldn't bring hope to the people who needed it from him the most, and in the end, he lost it all. He continues on being Spider-Man, but the crux of his character arc is that he failed. In NWH, he says that he became rageful and stopped pulling his punches – he had no hope anymore. Which is what makes what happens next so freaking perfect: now, and only now, when MCU Peter is at the lowest point of his life, and he has lost all the hope he had of saving these people, who shows up? The version of himself – who, last time we saw him, couldn't inspire that hope no matter how hard he tried – shows up at the most hopeless part of the movie. And suddenly we have a little faith again: not all is lost. When I re-watched NWH through the lens of understanding the story and not just spending the whole time waiting to see if the rumors were true, it became clear how deliberate the decision was to have Andrew show up first: he's finally become that symbol of hope that he failed to be before.

Tobey’s entrance is different in a lot of ways. Andrew's is fast-paced, and he's confused but curious. But Tobey walks through that portal almost as if he was waiting for it to open. He's cool and confident, and doesn't even need the suit to convey the sense that this IS Peter Parker. He immediately lets it know he knows what's going on and he's here to help. While the TASM series ended prematurely, the original Spider-Man trilogy told a full story with some sense of closure. The Peter that comes through the second portal is a fully seasoned, veteran Spider-Man, with years of experience behind him, who’s endured the same trials that Andrew and Tom are still going through now. It's telling that Andrew is introduced first and foremost as Spider-Man, while Tobey comes in as Peter Parker. Not only do I think it's a slightly cheeky reference to the fact that many fans agree Andrew = best Spidey and Tobey = best Peter, but story-wise it also shows that he's finally reconciled those two sides of his life. For him, Peter and Spider-Man are one in the same, whether he's wearing the suit or not. I also love how they meet each other first before they meet our Peter. For long-time Spider-Man fans, it's so cathartic to see the original two iterations of our hero on screen together for the first time.

Three Peter Parkers

When they do meet MCU Peter, they all meet as Peter Parker, not Spider-Man. Peter feels like he's failed as Spider-Man. What he needs right now is to talk to the only person in the multiverse who can understand what he's going through, and that's Peter(s) himself. The whole sequence was just... quintessential Spider-Man. To highlight my favorite moments:

Initially, they try to relate to him, but he tells them they can't possibly understand what he's feeling. They definitely understand every bit, but they respectfully stay silent BECAUSE they do.

The talk about the moment. Again, it's the moment because that's makes Spidey who he is, just like the Waynes' death makes Batman who he is. They both tell him how they dealt with it, and how no matter what, anger and revenge never did anything but make everything worse.

The key moment, when Tom starts telling them how May said great power brings great responsibility, and Tobey finishes it for him. Tobey even looks at Andrew as if asking "you too?" and Andrew silently nods. Tom doesn't understand, and they explain: "Uncle Ben said it..." "...the day he died." Not only is this the first MCU reference to Uncle Ben, it's the point at which it sinks in for all of them that there's something bigger at work here. It's ALMOST fourth wall-breaking in showing just how monumentally important that moment is to the story of Spider-Man as a whole.

Everything that follows is just pure awesomeness. The lab scene shows off their chemistry, while still managing to insert bits of character development here and there, like Andrew and Tobey's little talk about finding love. Also, Tom still contemplating how he's going to face the Goblin again, and Tobey reminding him that they need to cure them all because that's what they do. This scene showcases Peter's scientific intelligence, which all Spider-Man movies up to now have had problems with doing. The only additional thing I might have liked would have been some friendly competitive banter about who had the best suit, but the bits with Tobey's organic webbing and their shock was everything.

The goodness just continues with the pre-fight talk on the Statue of Liberty. All they're doing is talking, but I honestly could have watched another forty-five minutes of it. They're just geeking out over themselves, talking about their different experiences. The "MY BACK" reference. Andrew insists he's not teasing Tobey about his organic webs, while Tom asks if it comes out of other places, like the teenager he still is. Andrew feeling like he sucks compared to them and Tobey assuring Andrew that he's "amazing ;)" honestly just feels like an end to the whole "Tobey > Andrew" debate.

The fight itself - pure bliss. The choreography, the action, the intensity, it’s all there. Andrew and Tobey immediately fall back into familiar dynamics with their old villains. Even their swinging/fighting styles haven’t changed. Of course, any good fight scene also tells a story. At first, they don't know how to work together, which makes sense because Spider-Man in general isn't known for being a team player. He might be an Avenger, but the Spider-Man has always been his own solo hero. But it's Tom who gets them to come together and once they do it is GLORIOUS. I barely even have to talk about that triple swinging shot. It will be engrained in our heads forever. But one thing I do want to mention is that the way they build up to it elevates it from a moment of fan service to a real moment of camaraderie between them that feels earned . With a lesser screenwriter, Tom would be alone and on the verge of losing the final battle, with Tobey/Andrew arriving at the last moment in an "Endgame portals"-esque rip-off that would all amount to a glorified cameo. It still probably would've been cool, but not nearly as fulfilling as it ended up being. They did it just right, making the first full shot of all three Spider-Men together a well-deserved culmination of twenty years of "build-up." (Notice how up until that point, there hadn't yet been a full shot of the three of them fully suited and masked up.)

The second half of the fight gives closure to a lot of past Spider-Man storylines:

Peter getting a chance to get through to Max, who ruined himself in his attempts to become someone who was no longer a "nobody." He really did look up to Spider-Man, who he saw as THE guy to be, and in the end we realize that he never stopped.

Peter and Doc Ock reuniting on friendly terms. I don't see this as undermining Otto's sacrifice from Spider-Man 2. It was always my opinion that ultimately, he was an overly-ambitious scientist who suffered the consequences and paid the price. But he was under the influence of his own machine and never deserved to die. NWH honors his redemption and gives him the second chance he never got before. He and Peter are happy to see each other. The "How are you?" "Trying to do better" bit is a great nod to their interaction in Spider-Man 2.

How can I not mention Peter saving MJ from falling to her death? Andrew's acting is phenomenal, and his expression says it all. Peter has rehearsed that moment in his head countless times, and this time he was ready. It's his own personal redemption, as well as him saving MCU Peter from the years of misery he went through. It's also extra fitting, since MJ initially didn't trust him, didn't even consider him to be the "real" Peter, and he ends up being the one to save her life.

Tobey stopping Tom from killing Norman. I had a thought that if you consider ALL the Spider-Man movies as one long saga like the Infinity saga, with NWH being this story's "Endgame," then it just feels fitting that the Green Goblin was the first and last villain to round it all off. Both times he "won" in a way, by changing Peter's life forever. This scene brings it full circle from the 2002 film. I'm sure that Norman's death has haunted Peter since the night it happened, knowing that Norman was buried deep under his "darker half," yet never knowing if there was a chance to save him. At the same time, he saves MCU Peter from going down the same dark path that he too has struggled to avoid time and time again. I know people wish there was a little more interaction between Norman and Tobey, but Tobey's smile when he sees that his old foe is "just Norman" again is enough for me. Sometimes less is more.

Overall, they brilliantly managed to incorporate Tobey and Andrew in a way that genuinely contributed to the story, as well as their own stories, instead of having them show up purely as fanservice. The best fanservice is the kind that actually reminds you why you're fans of these stories in the first place, instead of just showing a familiar face to please the audience. For that half-hour, it was no longer just an MCU movie – it was a 2000's Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man, and an MCU Spider-Man movie all in one.

Tobey and Andrew didn't miss a beat, falling seamlessly back into their iconic roles years later. It's great because Andrew is a huge fan of the original SM trilogy and definitely looks up to Tobey, the man who played his childhood hero. I got the sense that Tobey was just proud of his two successors, who stepped into his shoes and filled that role in their own ways. Meanwhile, Tom definitely looks up to both of them, and he was probably ecstatic to work with the people who made all of this possible for him. The dynamic they went with was perfect: they were mentors, big brothers, and equals of MCU Peter all at once. The writing was fantastic too: both of their dialogue sounded just like what their versions of the character would say. They captured each of their distinct personalities just right. I would even say that they were both presented as evolutions of their old selves: Tobey as the wise, fully-fledged hero, and Andrew as an experienced Spider-Man, who still has a way to go before he reaches that level. They could rename this movie to just "Spider-Man" and I wouldn't even be mad. Truly the greatest era to be a Spider-Man fan.

Den of Geek

Spider-Man: No Way Home Easter Eggs and Marvel Universe References

We'll tell you about all the fun comic book references in Spider-Man: No Way Home when you fix this damn door!

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This article contains Spider-Man: No Way Home spoilers as well as potential spoilers for the wider MCU.

Spider-Man reaches the end of a trilogy, which in its way now feels like the culmination of a trilogy of Spider-Man sagas. In what we can best describe as the end of the “Son of Stark” era of Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, our hero goes big. Thanks to an ill-advised team-up with a wizard, heroes and villains from other continuities and past movie franchises show up, including a bizarre cameo from a drunken wild card trying to make sense of this madness.

Here are the many, many references and easter eggs sprinkled throughout Peter’s crazy, magical adventure into the multiverse, which leaves him with No Way Home .

Peter Parker

– The Marvel logo unfurls over the sound of news reports that serve as a quick recap of the events of Spider-Man: Far From Home . Is it our imagination, or do they really up the volume/linger on the tidbit about Spider-Man wanting to be the “new Iron Man,” something which, until this movie at least, did at least seem to be the trajectory they were trying to put Peter on.

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– Peter is described by J. Jonah Jameson as a “high school delinquent” which, well…there has never been a LESS “delinquent” depiction of Peter Parker in ANY medium than the way the MCU has presented him.

– Peter is now 17 and he and the rest of the Homecoming crew are all high school seniors now. It’s generally considered canon that Peter got his powers when he was 15 years old.

– Protesters use devil imagery over Peter’s face. As the movie is loosely inspired by One More Day , it only makes sense that we get some kind of devil reference. One of these days the MCU will give us some actual Mephisto moments. One of these days…

– Spider-Man briefly gets to wear the Doctor Strange cape. In the Marvel Zombies episode of What If…? , Spider-Man wore the cape prominently enough to get an action figure for it.

– If we are allowed to jump all the way to the end of the movie, the apartment Peter moves into in midtown looks an awful lot like the apartment Tobey Maguire ate cake and battled doorknobs in during the last two-thirds of his Spider-Man trilogy.

– The final suit Holland’s Peter wears when he swings through a cold and blue Christmas NYC looks like a spitting image of the original Marvel Comics Spidey costumes drawn by Steve Ditko, right down to the rich navy blue and bright red color pattern. It also resembles the “Vintage” Spider-Man costume from the PS4 game for this reason.

– Spidey swinging through a blue Christmas also feels evocative of many classic Yuletide Spidey stories that leaned into the sometimes sadder side of the holiday. Take for instance this classic Todd McFarlane cover of Spidey and MJ having a rough time before Christmas.

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– At the beginning of the movie, when Peter saves MJ from the crowd of angry folks who have been given a dose of the conspiratorial brain worms by the Daily Bugle, they briefly take refuge on top of a bridge. And as we all know, bridges and Peter’s girlfriends (well…in other universes) are not a good combination. It also works as foreshadowing for later in the movie, when MJ takes a fall from the Statue of Liberty’s scaffolding.

– It’s also worth mentioning the bridge in question is specifically the Queensboro Bridge, which is the same bridge where Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin dropped Kirsten Dunst’s MJ so many moons ago.

– When MJ is being questioned by the authorities, she’s referred to by a full name of Michelle Jones-Watson. She bristles at that, and doesn’t like to go by that name. Nevertheless, even though she’s “Michelle Jones” and not “Mary Jane” she is indeed MJ Watson.

– Peter and MJ sharing a quiet moment reading papers and making googly eyes at each other on the top of a building feels like a cinematic version to countless quiet moments in the Peter/MJ marriage before One More Day . Speaking of which…

– MJ having her memory wiped of all memories and traces of Peter Parker–as well as Ned Leeds going through the same–is a bitter repeat of the ending of the controversial 2007 comic saga by J. Michael Straczynski and Joe Quesada. In that generally despised four-part story, Peter and MJ make a deal with a literal devil (the demon Mephisto) to save Aunt May’s life by erasing their marriage and all memory of it. The movie plays it better though with at least Peter being aware of what he gave up afterward, and thus growing from the sacrifice, and both Peter and MJ making the choice to help others instead of alleviating their own sense of guilt.

– LEGO Palpatine was part of the Death Star set that Peter and Ned were putting together in Spider-Man: Homecoming . It feels like Peter keeps it within eye line as a reminder of their friendship, one that Ned has now forgotten.

– What is up with the weapons on the wall in Ned’s house and what is on the sewing machine? It looks green and gold?

– Interesting that Ned Leeds asks about other Ned Leeds in the multiverse after meeting Norman Osborn. In the comics, Ned Leeds became the Hobgoblin, completely stealing Norman’s style. At one point, Ned tells Pete that he’ll never turn into a supervillain and try to kill him…

– Ned’s laptop has a sticker of the “This is Fine” Dog. It’s taken from a 2013 webcomic called “On Fire” by KC Green. Doesn’t seem to be a reference to anything within the story, but at least it wasn’t a Dickbutt sticker.

– It’s revealed in this movie that May runs a homeless shelter called F.E.A.S.T. This is based on an idea introduced by Dan Slott to the comics in 2008, although it also feels like a more prominent nod (or lift) from the Spider-Man PS4 game where May’s volunteer work at F.E.A.S.T. is central to the game’s plot, and is a meeting ground for both heroes and villains. (May also dies at the end of that game.)

– There’s a bit where May appears to be burning sage while the villains are all in the apartment with them and that is just perfect and hilarious.

– No, your eyes do not deceive you, May is absolutely flirting with Doc Ock with her salt water/fresh water thing. May and Otto Octavius were indeed a couple for some time in the comics!

– May’s death here is, of course, a slight inversion of the old (and unseen in the MCU) Uncle Ben death, right down to May delivering the “with great power there must also come great responsibility” line. But her death, with Peter feeling responsible, is also a bit of a nod to the loathed One More Day comics story, where May is mortally wounded in an attack meant for Spidey after Peter’s identity is revealed, forcing him to make a literal deal with the devil to bring her back. Unfortunately, his deal with Doctor Strange to get his identity back in the box doesn’t bring his aunt back.

– After May dies, Peter says “I wanna tear him apart” about Norman Osborn. This could be a coincidence, but it does echo a line in Richard Donner’s Superman , where a teenage, bullied Clark Kent mentions to his father that he wants to do the same to someone giving him a hard time, before Pa Kent talks him out of it.

– May’s tombstone reads “when you help someone, you help everyone,” which is honestly a perfect balance to “with great power comes great responsibility” and something we should all take to heart.

J. Jonah Jameson and The Daily Bugle

– Even though The Daily Bugle isn’t the traditional, old-school media outlet that it is in comics and previous movies, we do finally get a VERY traditional Daily Bugle “Spider-Menace” headline.

– Jonah showing up with a camera crew to witness a battle between superheroes and supervillains, and then using the footage to paint Spidey as evil, is pretty much classic JJJ, especially since the ‘90s where it was introduced on The Animated Series that he also owned and ran a local New York news station.

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– Of course The Daily Bugle is hawking snake-oil supplements to go with their other nonsense. Who says the MCU isn’t realistic?

– In the film’s final moments, to drive home the point that the memory of Peter Parker’s existence has been wiped from the MCU, we hear J. Jonah Jameson offer one of his famed critiques of Spidey, that “only a coward conceals his identity.” It’s a nice counterpoint to how the movie opens with him fixated on knowing who Peter actually is.

– Charlie Cox is back as Matt Murdock! This is Daredevil ’s first big screen appearance in the MCU, and it’s a very big deal indeed. It comes the same week that Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk made his official return to the MCU in Hawkeye episode 5 . The official continuity status of Marvel Netflix shows like Daredevil remains a little in question at the moment, but there’s no reason to assume they AREN’T part of the Sacred Timeline. Just maybe don’t expect some of the more gratuitously violent elements to make it to the movies or Disney+ any time soon.

– Anyway, none of that matters. How great is it to see Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock again? His “I’m a very good lawyer” crack after catching the brick being thrown through the window may not necessarily feel much like the Netflix/Frank Miller version of the character, but we can imagine something more akin to Mark Waid and Chris Samnee’s incredible run on the character making sense in the MCU proper.

– Matt Murdock has also offered to represent Peter Parker in court several times throughout the Spidey comics, although the most memorable and fleshed out variation of this occurred in the 1990s’ Spider-Man: The Animated Series cartoon where Wilson Fisk framed Peter Parker for espionage, and both Murdock and Daredevil took up his case. One imagines had No Way Home not turned into a multiverse movie that we might’ve seen more of something along these lines.

Green Goblin

– Before Willem Dafoe’s cackling Green Goblin properly returns, the production design had some fun teasing his arrival given the Halloween decorations at the diner where MJ works. For starters, there appears to be what looks like Frankenstein dolls with a green and purple color scheme behind her. Additionally, there is a silhouette of a witch flying on a broomstick, which seems like a deep cut nod to the Green Goblin’s first appearance in The Amazing Spider-Man #14 where Gobby is introduced not on a glider but on a hokey sci-fi broom.

– Folks who have never seen/heard of Green Goblin try to describe him as “a flying green elf,” which sort of covers his goofy, Raimiverse armored design, but would definitely be a more appropriate description of his comic book look.

– Norman’s rejection of the Green Goblin mask in the alley is something of a mirror to the iconic “Spider-Man No More!” imagery.

– Dafoe has a chance to repeat his Spider-Man line “I’m something of a scientist myself,” a quote that has been memed into oblivion in the ensuing years since the first film’s release 19 years ago.

– The idea of Norman having bouts of amnesia to completely separate himself from his Goblin identity is something that goes back to some of the earliest Green Goblin stories, and was also a frequent device on animated series like Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends .

– Interestingly, Oscorp doesn’t exist in the MCU. But does this mean that there’s NO Norman Osborn? That would be something of a shame if this movie robs the Marvel Cinematic Universe of the potential to use one of the best villains in comics in a future Spider-Man movie. It also would seem to eliminate Harry Osborn and that iconic rivalry from the MCU stable.

– When the reformed Doc Ock talks about curing Norman, we get a good look at Norman’s appearance from behind. His purple hood is very reminiscent of the Green Goblin’s cap in the comics, foreshadowing his true state of mind.

– While Norman Osborn never killed Aunt May in the comics, he did famously kill Gwen Stacy, as well as May Parker (Peter and MJ’s first child), although the latter was retconned out of continuity. He also kidnapped Aunt May and had an actress impersonate May and die before Peter as some kind of twisted mind game. Comics are weird.

– Meanwhile, Norman has one hell of a spinebuster! What, was he bitten by a radioactive Arn Anderson? Why wasn’t he the one wrestling Bonesaw?

Doctor Octopus

– Otto comes back infuriated about where his “machine” is and how it had the “power of the sun in the palm of my hand.” This is a reference to his nuclear fusion reactor in Spider-Man 2 and his recurring line about what it could do.

– The license plate on the car used by the MIT administrator appears to be 63-A5M3. A5M is almost certainly “Amazing Spider-Man.” Taking that a step further, A5M3 would mean Amazing Spider-Man #3…which was published in 1963. And what happened in The Amazing Spider-Man #3, you ask? Why, that was the very first appearance of Doctor Octopus, so it’s fitting that gets shouted out in his first appearance in the MCU.

– Doc Ock saying “I should have killed your little girlfriend when I had the chance” is a callback to poor possessed Otto referring derisively to MJ as “the girlfriend” after throwing a car through a window in Spider-Man 2 .

– Spider-Man takes control over Doc Ock’s body, which happened in a far darker way in the comics, giving us a run of Otto as the Superior Spider-Man .

– In one of the third act’s genuinely nicest bits, Molina’s Doc Ock and Tobey Maguire’s Peter are allowed to have a moment. The pair were close to becoming fast friends before Otto had his little mishap in the laboratory. And when Otto marvels in this movie that Peter has grown into a man and asks him how he’s doing, Peter responds, “Trying to do better.” This calls back to their first conversation 17 years ago. Yes, we’re all old.

– Jamie Foxx’s Electro is the character who by far got the biggest glow-up in this movie, and it starts from literally his first moment on screen with that cool, eerie, “charging” moment in the background. The constant jokes about his ridiculous origin story from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 are warranted (especially the bit about his fixed teeth), but perhaps a little tiresome.

– When Electro gets his new powers courtesy of Stark Technologies, yellow lightning bolts shoot in five directions from his face quite frequently, alluding to the character’s goofy, classic comic book appearance.

– Flint Marko almost behaves downright heroically a couple of times, which is, of course, in keeping with his arc in Spider-Man 3 , but in the comics, Sandman did fully reform a few times, even briefly serving as a member of the Avengers at one point.

– Sandman saying he too fell into a particle accelerator is a nice knock at the unoriginality of some comic book villains’ origins.

Doctor Strange

– Wong is now Sorcerer Supreme because Strange was snapped and was gone for five years. This is the first time it’s been outright explained, though it does cause the ending and mid-credits of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings to make a little more sense. He appears to take this job very seriously… except when he’s off doing karaoke with the cast of Shang-Chi . It certainly adds a wrinkle to the open-ended relationship with Abomination.

– We would very much like to know what went on at “the full moon party at Kamar-Taj.” And no, we’re not gonna try to sneak a Werewolf by Night reference in here. Or… are we? Did we just stumble on to the plot of that Marvel Halloween special coming to Disney+ next year?

– You can see the Sanctum Sanctorum’s address plaque of 177A right by the door, which is exactly what it is in the comics. There is a 177 Bleecker Street, but it looks nothing like the Sanctum. We’ll just assume that 177A just kind of exists between dimensions and regular folks like us can’t see it.

– Strange says that “they shot an episode of The Equalizer here in the ‘80s” about the Sanctum. The Equalizer was an action procedural that ran on CBS from 1985-1989.

– In the comic event House of M , Spider-Man lived in a reality where everyone knew his secret identity and he was married to Gwen Stacy. In the aftermath, as reality went back to normal, he begged and angrily demanded Strange to remove his traumatic memories of that whole episode. Strange refused to do so.

– It’s interesting that Doc Ock and the other multiversal villains don’t know that magic is real. While it doesn’t necessarily mean that magic DOESN’T exist in their respective universes (see J. Jonah Jameson’s “Doctor Strange” joke from Spider-Man 2 for evidence that it might), it certainly would make sense that it isn’t as mainstream/commonplace as it is in the MCU.

– Strange says “if they die, they die” about sending the villains back to their own corners of the multiverse. Dolph Lundgren’s Ivan Drago infamously said “if he dies, he dies” after killing Apollo Creed in the ring in Rocky IV . In a more Marvel-related take, it is similar to the old editorial mandate that “dead means dead,” which was meant to relay that characters could only come back from the dead if there was a really good explanation for this. Yes, lots of people brought it up to make fun of it for not being very true.

– Strange pushes Peter’s soul out of Spider-Man’s body. While this imagery originated with the Ancient One doing this to Strange in the Doctor Strange movie, it’s more reminiscent of the Ancient One knocking Bruce Banner’s soul out of the Hulk’s body in Avengers: Endgame .

– Strange’s “I have been dangling over the Grand Canyon… for TWELVE HOURS,” is a nod to when he made Loki fall through nothingness…for thirty minutes… in Thor: Ragnarok .

– There’s a lot to unpack with the Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness post-credits teaser, but that might be for when the trailer proper hits YouTube. Either way, we do see direct references to the events of WandaVision and what appears to be Strange Supreme from the animated What If…? show.

At least we’re getting some follow-up on Baron Mordo’s anti-magic quest. Took him long enough.

Tobey Maguire Spider-Man

– There are multiple jokes made at the expense of the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man having organic webshooters while the other two use mechanical devices, a la the comics. It’s amusing since the Holland and Garfield Spideys sound a lot like the baffled comic fanboys on the internet circa 2002, minus the anger.

– The Maguire Peter being the one to tell the story of Uncle Ben’s death and repeat the line “with great power comes great responsibility” is a nod to how those foundational elements of the Spidey character were most important on-screen to his version.

– Things are still “complicated” with this Peter and the Mary Jane of his world. Because heaven forbid nostalgia characters should be allowed to grow, change, and work their shit in the decades between appearances.

– The Maguire Peter telling Ned he had a best friend before “he tried to kill me and died in my arms” is a humorous, if still sad, acknowledgment of poor, poor Harry Osborn in Spider-Man 3 .

– Tobey/Peter complains of back problems, a reference to a moment where a de-powered Peter injures his back in Spider-Man 2 , but which was ALSO a joke at Tobey Maguire’s expense in that film, when a back injury he sustained on the set of Seabiscuit temporarily endangered his ability to return to the role of Peter Parker.

– Tobey’s Peter also mentions he fought a black ball of alien goo once, clearly referencing Venom from Spider-Man 3 .

– Tobey’s Spidey being the one to stop Holland’s Peter from killing Norman Osborn seems like a somber nod to the fact that he never wanted Mr. Osborn to die in the original movie.

Andrew Garfield Spider-Man

– Tobey’s Peter tells Andrew’s Peter that he is “amazing.” This… certainly doesn’t need us to explain it, does it?

– We get a little hint of what happened to Andrew Garfield’s version of Spider-Man after the tragic ending of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 , where he was unable to save Gwen Stacy from a fatal fall during an attack by his world’s Green Goblin. This Peter succumbed to rage (for at least a little while) and “stopped pulling my punches,” which means um…there might be a few less Spider-rogues in his corner of the multiverse. He does seem to learn his lesson and helps MCU Peter learn his.

– Garfield’s Peter talking to/reasoning with Electro is such a nice moment, a genuine moment of kindness from a version of Spidey who was often defined so much in opposition to Maguire (and later, Holland’s) “nice guys.” It’s also pretty funny considering The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has him refuse to try and cure Harry Osborn. It’s progress.

– Andrew’s Spidey being the one to save Zendaya’s MJ is a redemption moment for the character who is haunted still by the death of Gwen Stacy. And thanks to how well Garfield sells the scene where he talks about Gwen, it mostly works.

– Garfield referring to himself as Spider-Man “number three” seems to be a self-mocking wink at how his tenure is generally viewed as the weakest of the three actors.

– Garfield’s feeling of inadequacy is hinted when he and the whole world has a laugh at how bad Paul Giamatti’s Rhino was in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 . Which, fair enough.

– Garfield refers to his counterparts as his brothers, which is how Peter and his clones Ben Reilly and Kaine considered each other in the comics.

– Garfield awkwardly tells the Spider-Men that he loves them, which is played for laughs. To be fair, Spider-Man Noir said the same thing to his teammates in Into the Spider-Verse and he knew them for about as long.

Captain America

The bulk of this film takes place within a year of Avengers: Endgame . We see there are renovations underway on the Statue of Liberty so that she’s holding Captain America ’s shield. Of course, that all gets destroyed during the big final battle with the villains. But in Hawkeye episode 5, which apparently takes place at least a year after this film, Yelena Belova wants to visit the “new and improved Statue of Liberty” on her first visit to New York City. So it looks like they were able to repair the damage and complete the project after all!

Miles Morales

Electro’s line about how “there’s gotta be a Black Spider-Man out there somewhere” is, of course…true! And he recently starred in the best Spider-Man movie of all time with Into the Spider-Verse ! It’s only a matter of time before we get Miles in live action…

Damage Control

– It looks like the main Damage Control agent who is making Peter’s life miserable is meant to be Agent Albert Cleary, who is indeed one of the original Damage Control members from the comics.

– When Peter brings up Nick Fury, it’s pointed out that Fury has been off-world for a year. That raises some interesting questions. Why would somebody at that level know that? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of having Skrull impersonators?

M.I.T. and the Continued Influence of Iron Man

– Peter, MJ, and Ned are dying to go to M.I.T. together, and of course Tony Stark had all kinds of connections at M.I.T. But it’s also worth noting that a future MCU star who we haven’t yet met on screen, Riri Williams, is also an M.I.T. student… one who is right around their age.

– DUM-E pops up in Happy’s condo. The robo-arm, part of a set of Tony Stark helpers in the Iron Man trilogy and Spider-Man: Homecoming , has been MIA for a while. Glad to see someone is looking after at least one of Tony’s robotic children! It knocks over the LEGO Death Star on Peter’s table, a reference to Ned dropping and destroying his in shock during Homecoming (and the crew being annoyed at the many, many takes they had to do before they got it right).

– When Peter Parker returns to Midtown High, a picture of Howard Stark can be seen among the school’s collection of iconic inspo. In the top right corner you can also see Hank Pym.

Happy Hogan

– There’s a Downton Abbey DVD in Happy’s apartment, a callback to his obsession with the show as revealed in Iron Man 3 . The photo of Happy shown on the news is another callback to that movie: in a flashback to the year 2000, we discovered that Happy was seemingly so enamored with John Travolta’s Pulp Fiction character, Vincent Vega, that he’d grown his hair out and started dressing like him. Happy is understandably embarrassed by the episode.

– The idea of Peter and May being sent to a “safer place to live” that is a high-tech, Stark-tech protected penthouse comes from the Civil War -era Spider-Man comics. There, Peter willingly revealed his identity to the world, but of course had to keep May safe. It was a little swankier than Happy’s souped-up bachelor pad, but the basics are the same.

Steve Ditko

When MJ and Peter are sharing a quiet moment on a rooftop, there’s a graffiti tag that reads: “Ditko.” Steve Ditko co-created both Spider-Man and Doctor Strange and here they are sharing the screen in an MCU flick. Ditko almost certainly would have hated this (he was a weird/interesting guy), but especially because he barely ever saw a dime from all the Spidey and Strange merchandise through the years.

– The post-credits scene is a continuation of the post-credits scene from Venom: Let There Be Carnage , in which Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock was inexplicably pulled from the Sony Universe to the MCU. Here, it seems we’re meant to understand that he was pulled there by Strange’s spell, and then sent back at the same time. But… didn’t Strange say that the folks pulled through were ones who knew Peter Parker was Spider-Man? That… is not the case here.

Then again, in the Let There Be Carnage post-credits, the Venom symbiote claimed to have endless knowledge from a hivemind it can tap into. It’s possible that said hivemind might reach across realities, meaning that, for instance, it knows information privy to the Venom symbiote from Spider-Man 3 .

Anyway, the more important thing is that a tiny piece of the symbiote is left behind, opening the door for someone else to merge with it. Could we get a future movie where Tom Holland’s Spidey does the traditional “saga of the alien costume” beats? Or will a new character (perhaps Flash Thompson?) end up as the MCU’s Venom? And, of course, we suspect Eddie isn’t quite done trying to figure out a way to talk to Peter Parker…

– Venom tells Eddie, “You thought Lethal Protector was a shit name” which… it is. But Lethal Protector was the name of the first solo series starring Venom way back in the ‘90s.

Flash Thompson

– Flash’s super cringe-y “No Sleep ‘Til Boston” on his M.I.T. sweatshirt is a riff on The Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn.”

– Flash’s autobiography is called Flashpoint . Flashpoint was a comic issue that collected Flash’s initial few appearances as Agent Venom. Why yes, it did happen to come out while DC had an event called Flashpoint . It’s like Marvel trying to release one of those martial arts movies starring “Bruce Li.”

Miscellaneous Stuff

– Apparently one of the non-Stark bits of technology in the movie is an old Donkey Kong Jr. arcade cabinet. Granted, it’s only mentioned and not shown, but still.

– MJ’s forced/fake optimism about the New York Mets is her typical dry wit and sarcasm. But as any Mets fan will tell you, it’s basically what we tell ourselves each year. Also, don’t forget that Peter is canonically a Mets fan both in the MCU and in the comics (he’s from Queens, after all), so it’s nice that MJ is humoring him here. Also worth noting that Doctor Strange appears to be a Yankees fan (based on magnet briefly visible on the refrigerator in the basement).

– Betty Brant is almost given one of Mary Jane’s (not to be confused with this universe’s MJ) lines when she tells Peter to, “Go get ‘em, tiger,” on her broadcast about the first day of school. This, by the by, is the actual final line of dialogue, said by MJ, in Spider-Man 2 .

– Another meme re-emerging in No Way Home ? The beloved “Spider-Men pointing at each other” during the scene where Ned is trying to get Peter’s attention in the lab. We saw the meme make it to the big screen previously in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse .

– The same meme also happens during the flashy end credits sequence where two of the three Spider-Men point to each other.

– The final battle occurring around the Statue of Liberty seems to be an homage (or lift) from the Spider-Man theme park ride at Universal Studios’ Islands of Adventure in Orlando. In that ride, Spidey (and the tourists) must stop the Sinister Syndicate from stealing Lady Liberty’s torch. The five villains from the movie even match up pretty well with their ride counterparts. Both have Doc Ock and Electro, and there’s the goblin type (Hobgobilin/Green Goblin), the shapeless elemental (Hydroman/Sandman), and the bloodthirsty beast (Scream/Lizard).

– Is that an Avi Arad cameo in the coffee shop at the very end? If so, this um…controversial Spider-Man movie producer is “the original true believer” who gets a special dedication at the start of the end credits.

– The film ends with De La Soul’s “The Magic Number.” This is now three perfect end-credits songs in a row, and like using The Ramones in Homecoming , it brings back a New York group to honor Spidey’s New York roots. And honestly, more of you should be listening to De La Soul on a daily basis, or at least certainly more often than you are.

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Spider-Man: No Way Home is available to watch now on BBC iPlayer

Catch up in the spectacular Spidey sequel.

Following its release in December 2021, Spider-Man: No Way Home became the seventh-biggest movie of all time with $1.92 billion worldwide after receiving the best reviews of Holland's Spidey trilogy .

If you haven't seen it though or just fancy a rewatch, Spider-Man: No Way Home is now available to watch on BBC iPlayer for the next 29 days, following its terrestrial premiere last night (May 27) on BBC One.

Related: Best movies to watch on TV this weekend (May 24-27)

Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Far From Home both aired in this past week on BBC One, so they are also available to watch right now on BBC iPlayer if you want to make it an epic trilogy rewatch.

While No Way Home might seem like the climactic Spider-Man movie for Holland , development is currently underway on Spider-Man 4 .

We still don't know exactly when he'll swing back into cinemas, but he's keen to return as he said recently that he'll "always want to do Spider-Man films" .

However, they aren't going to rush into a new movie. "We have the best in the business working toward whatever the story might be. But until we've cracked it, we have a legacy to protect," Holland explained.

If you just can't wait that long for some big-screen Spider-Man action, all eight movies will be returning to UK cinemas this summer .

The re-releases start with Spider-Man from August 12, followed by the next movie in the series every Friday after that.

Spider-Man: No Way Home is available to watch now on BBC iPlayer.

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Movies Editor, Digital Spy  Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor.  Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies , attending genre festivals around the world.   After moving to Digital Spy , initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.  

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Screen Rant

The best quote from each spider-man movie.

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Every Spider-Man Movie, Ranked By Rewatchability

"what's wrong with me": marvel admits the dark part of spider-man's origin every movie ignores (because he'd be too unlikable), 10 deleted spider-man scenes that would have changed the mcu.

• Spider-Man's cinematic legacy boasts iconic quotes, showcasing depth beyond mere dialogue from the web-slinger himself.
• "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility" solidifies Spider-Man's core values, echoing throughout his cinematic journey.
• The Spider-Verse offers a diverse range of heroes embodying the idea that anyone can wear the mask and be a hero.

Spider-Man is one of Marvel 's most bankable properties with a cinematic legacy that has given rise to some of the best quotes in the superhero genre . While Spider-Man was no stranger to the big screen by the time Sam Raimi's trilogy was released, it was with 2002's Spider-Man that his live-action legacy began in earnest. This started Peter Parker on a trajectory as one of the most beloved superheroes in the genre, with every subsequent movie starring Spider-Man being mostly well-received by fans and critics alike.

Peter Parker is well-known for his witty banter, which is thankfully on full display in most of his cinematic outings. Nevertheless, some of the best quotes in Spider-Man movies come instead from the characters who surround him rather than the quick-witted web-slinger himself. Many of these have meanings that run far deeper than dialogue and stand as a testament to the writers who have contributed to Spider-Man's cinematic career .

A Spider-Man fan will still watch a bad Spider-Man movie dozens of times – but it helps if the movie is a masterpiece, like Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2.

10 "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility."

From spider-man (2002).

Uncle Ben's iconic line in Spider-Man has become so ingrained in pop culture that it might be the best quote of any Spider-Man movie . It exemplifies a sentiment that has carried throughout history but is particularly applicable to the inherently virtuous Spider-Man and superheroes in general. Though he ostensibly gives his advice to Peter in the wake of his fight with Flash Thompson, it hones in on the fact that power is a burden, not a privilege - something which would typify Spider-Man's story from thereon.

Since 2002, the line has been imitated several times, to varying degrees of success. While its delivery in other movies is never able to measure up to the original, Aunt May's rendition in Spider-Man: No Way Home is a close second to Cliff Robertson's Uncle Ben. The line is so character-defining for Spider-Man that it is impossible to exclude from his story, but it will likely never hit the same mark as it did in Spider-Man .

Spider-Man (2002)

*Availability in US

Not available

9 "We Have To Be Steady And Give Up The Thing We Want Most...Even Our Dreams."

From spider-man 2 (2004).

Although it is far less famous, Aunt May took the reigns from Uncle Ben in Spider-Man 2 to deliver a life lesson about hero-ing of her own. This came as part of a monologue spoken to Peter with the implication that she knew Spider-Man's secret identity , insisting, " I believe there's a hero in all of us ," as she imparts her own wisdom on doing the right thing and expressing her appreciation of heroes like Spider-Man. Peter, meanwhile, quietly acknowledges her every word, in stark contrast to his impetuous response to Uncle Ben in Spider-Man .

It's not often that a parent figure tells their dependents to give up on their dreams as part of a heartfelt life lesson. Yet this interaction is typical of the motif that pervades Maguire's tenure in the suit: the burden of being the hero he never asked to be . To hammer this home, Peter would parrot these words to his own mentor, Otto Octavius, in a bid to sway him from his destructive ambitions, cementing Peter's growth as a person and a hero.

Spider-Man 2

8 "you know, i guess one person can make a difference.", from spider-man 3 (2007).

Although Spider-Man 3 has the most meme-able lines of any Spider-Man movie - including " Gonna cry? " and " I'm gonna put some dirt in your eye ," to name a couple - one of its most poignant comes from Spider-Man's creator himself, Stan Lee, in a classic cameo appearance. His line, in reference to Spider-Man's heroics, highlights New Yorkers' appreciation for Spider-Man. This is something that the MCU's version of Spider-Man has yet to capture quite as well as the original.

The line hits extra hard in the wake of Stan Lee's death , however. Stan Lee's impact on popular culture with Marvel Comics wasn't a strictly solo venture, but his creations are responsible for helping to shape the lives of countless individuals. This was no doubt the point in having Lee deliver the line himself in Spider-Man 3 , and it stands the test of time when looking back on Spider-Man 3 from the heady heights of the MCU.

Spider-Man 3

7 "really you seriously think i'm a cop cop in a skin-tight red and blue suit", from the amazing spider-man (2012).

It is difficult to say which Spider-Man actor is the best because each one has unique strengths. For Andrew Garfield, one of these was his quick wit and quips, which weren't as prevalent in Maguire's outings. This line set the bar for the level of charisma that audiences could expect from Garfield's version of the character while also indulging in the classic Marvel movie trope: self-deprecating humor.

This scene and quote were an exciting springboard for Garfield's new take on the character. Garfield's playful charisma is on full display in his first outing in his iconic suit as he runs rings around a would-be car thief. Poking fun at their own outfits is par for the course with live-action superheroes these days, but the line is so well delivered by Garfield's Spider-Man that it still holds up today.

The Amazing Spider-Man

6 "you're wrong about us being on different paths. we're not on different paths. you're my path. and you're always gonna be my path.", from the amazing spider-man 2 (2014).

Another highlight of the Amazing Spider-Man franchise is the unparalleled chemistry between Peter Parker and Gwen Stacey. The love that poured from their scenes together - and this line in particular - may have been helped by the fact that Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone were dating in real life at the time. The chemistry is palpable and exemplified by Peter's line above , where he throws caution to the wind in favor of " following " Gwen to England despite his responsibilities at home.

This would, of course, precede one of the most iconic and tragic scenes in any Spider-Man story. This quote is agonizing in retrospect, knowing that Peter couldn't make good on his declaration after Gwen's death and his failure to save her. With that being said, the idea that Gwen would continue to be his path would be vindicated in his next cinematic outing, where he was able to save MJ and find a measure of redemption for his perceived failure with Gwen.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

5 "those people, pete, those people up there, the rich and the powerful, they do whatever they want. guys like us, like you and me... they don't care about us.", from spider-man: homecoming (2017).

The MCU's skill at creating sympathetic villains continued with Adrian Toomes, AKA the Vulture, who embodied the spirit of the everyman so often overlooked by the MCU's larger-than-life narrative. After having his big break curtailed by the Stark-funded Department of Damage Control, Toomes swung towards villainy in an ill-advised attempt at retaliation against what he perceived to be dispassionate upper echelons of Earth-616. In this context, his beef is with Stark specifically, but it is a sentiment that resonates beyond the big screen .

With Adrian Toomes last seen trapped in Sony's Spider-Man Universe, his MCU future (and a team-up with Scorpion) looks bleak.

Spider-Man: Homecoming continues to highlight how the superheroes of the MCU are far from infallible. Tony Stark, in particular, is a controversial figure despite his best efforts to improve and protect the world. Toomes' quote encapsulates the experiences of the average citizen trying to live their lives in a world replete with godlike figures housed in towers that quite literally look down on the little guy.

Spider-Man: Homecoming

4 "it's easy to fool people when they're already fooling themselves.", from spider-man: far from home (2019).

Spider-Man: Far From Home continued reflecting real-world social commentary by spotlighting the master of illusion, Mysterio, in the context of a world beleaguered by fake news. Mysterio's observation came during one of the movie's most iconic sequences, helping to make it even more memorable as he proved capable of besting Peter Parker through illusions. Like Vulture, Mysterio's line exemplified the main drive behind his villainy while delivering a prescient observation of society as a whole .

Quentin Beck may have been slightly less sympathetic than Adrian Toomes, but his sentiments were similar after his achievements were sidelined by his boss, Tony Stark. The fact that Mysterio arguably won, despite dying at the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home , highlights the power he held with his propensity for misdirection. This, in turn, makes him an even more terrifying villain, especially in the knowledge that his fake news MO is something that unscrupulous people can feasibly emulate in real life.

Spider-Man: Far From Home

3 "i love you guys.", from spider-man: no way home (2021).

Despite being designated " Peter Three ," Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker arguably delivered the best line in the best way in Spider-Man: No Way Home . His awkwardness and stand-out propensity for humor were on full display as he opened his heart to the other two Peter Parkers. Although the line was brief and to the point, it gave voice to the thoughts of all Spider-Man fans around the world witnessing three iterations of Spider-Man teaming up in a fight with their iconic rogues gallery.

Peter's insecurity is a trait present in all live-action iterations of the character, and this unorthodox moment of self-affirmation is as heartwarming as it is clumsy.

More poignant than that, however, is the notion that Peter Parker was saying it to himself. Peter's insecurity is a trait present in all live-action iterations of the character, and this unorthodox moment of self-affirmation is as heartwarming as it is clumsy. As Spider-Man: No Way Home 's incredible box office take demonstrates, Spider-Man is evidently worthy of the love that Peter Three was expressing at this moment.

Spider-Man: No Way Home

2 "anyone can wear the mask. you can wear the mask.", from spider-man: into the spider-verse (2018).

In Miles Morales' final monologue addressing the audience, he delves into his initial insecurities about being a superhero, resolving that if he can do it, anyone can. It also homages Stan Lee's initial intentions for Spider-Man. In an interview with Larry King, Lee stated that one of the best things they thought of with Spider-Man was the mask. This is because " Any kid could imagine he's Spider-Man ," no matter the color of their skin .

It also, however, highlights another prominent theme throughout Spider-Man stories, which is that heroism does not come from superpowers but from the actions and intentions of individuals. His final lines suggest that " you ," the (presumably) non-superpowered individual watching, can wear the mask and carry out acts of heroism in less ostentatious ways. This line is a testament to Sony's animated Spider-Man franchise for being so multifaceted despite being so simple.

Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse

1 "i never found the right band to join, so i started my own, with a few old friends. you want in", from spider-man: across the spider-verse (2023).

While Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse centered on Miles Morales' story, book-ended by monologs addressing the audience, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse focused more heavily on Gwen Stacey as it falls to her to deliver the opening and closing monologs. Gwen Stacey's final lines mirror those of Miles Morales as she invites the viewer to join her " band " of Spider-People. Yet this final line is a little more focused on her own story as it follows an opening in which she struggled to find her " band " in a more literal sense.

While it may not be as deep as Morales' line in Into the Spider-Verse , it provides satisfying closure to Gwen's arc in the sequel . The line is delivered as she teams up once more with the ragtag group of variants from the first movie, leading to an iconic closing shot. Aside from the satisfaction of affording Gwen the sense of belonging she has been seeking, it also highlights how exciting it is to see Spider-Man variants from across the Spider-Verse teaming up once more.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse