What Makes a Spider-Man Movie, with No Way Home

Gonna say this right off the bat, but doing a “spoiler-free” review for this thing feels wild. Like, being spoiler-free is generally pretty easy because I usually just talk about themes and arcs and ideas instead of fixed plot points. But, this movie basically spent its entire advertising campaign dancing around major subjects that have the potential to be, like, the whole plot. So, I’m going to try and not talk about those details in this article, but needless to say, I think modern spoiler culture is dumb and stupid! Consider this all a big parenthetical to the actual post, but there’s a difference between “wanting to go into a movie blind” and “if we know anything about the plot it is ruined!” If knowing a spoiler actively makes the movie worse, it wasn’t that good of a movie to begin with. Luckily, that’s not the case here!

More imagery like this please

That aside, let’s talk about Spider-Man.

As I said in my last article, I spent the beginning of this movie going through every Spider-Man movie – meaning the Raimi trilogy, Garfield’s two movies, and Holland’s two movies, as well as Into the Spider-Verse. I didn’t count Civil War, Infinity War, or Endgame in that list because I simply do not have the time or will to watch 2.5-hour movies for the five minutes of Spider-Man in each of them. The Russos will simply have to make shorter movies if they expect me to do that. It was a fun time, many of these movies I hadn’t watched in five years or more. For the most part, I was pleasantly surprised! Only one of those really feels like a bad movie, the rest are all in a spectrum of good to great.

Willem DeFoe hard carries this movie and it's a joy to behold.

I engaged in this whole affair because I was curious, what was it that made a good Spider-Man movie? A lot of people are very opinionated about our friendly neighbourhood web-head, but I personally didn’t have a lot to weigh in on. I remember thinking Dock Ock was cool as a kid, but that was about as far as my childhood nostalgia for the character went. Were the Raimi movies actually untouchable or were people just blinded by their bias? Was Andrew Garfield’s run as bad as people said it was? And why did people seem to think Far From Home was such a disaster? I still don’t have an answer for the last one! Hot take, but Far From Home is fun and pretty good! Sue me. It’s not the best but it’s definitely not the worst.

I think the first, and most obvious facet of a good Spider-Man movie, is the division between Peter Parker and Spider-Man. What is the relationship that Peter has with his alter-ego? This sort of conversation has sadly died down with how public all the identities in the MCU are, but I remember it used to be a huge debate as to which identity was the mask, “Batman” or “Bruce Wayne.” Is Superman naturally Superman, Clark Kent, or somewhere in-between as Kal-El? For Spider-Man this has become a huge part in how these movies are perceived; who’s a better Peter? Who’s a better Spider-Man? And does the movie properly portray the struggles of both?

It's kind of wild how dramatically they've changed Zendaya's MJ? She feels like a wildly different character than in Homecoming.

Peter, importantly, needs to be an everyman. The whole appeal of the character is its accessibility; here’s this normal guy who had a pretty normal incident that leads to supernatural results. At his best, Peter is a guy who pays rent, who has a life, and is also a superhero. Into the Spider-Verse widely broadens this to a fuller applicability; anyone can put on the mask. Anyone can be Spider-Man. He’s not rich like Batman, and he’s not terribly well-trained like Daredevil or part of some government project like Black Widow. In fact, the efforts to make him like one of these characters have been almost universally disliked. The biggest criticism of the MCU Spider-Man has been his ties to Tony Stark, circumventing a lot of the struggles with poverty that make Peter so relatable. The Amazing Spider-Man movies tried some weird angle where Peter’s parents were super-spies that gave him special blood or something, that all feels like a misstep. Parker is best when he’s relatable. The whole super blood thing is a shame because, otherwise, Andrew Garfield’s run as Parker is really something special. The cast of those movies felt perhaps the most real, the most grounded. Garfield and Emma Stone had such natural chemistry, and Garfield’s Parker (at least in his first movie) feels relate-ably neurotic and anxious. He should be familiar, endearing even. Spider-Man is the ultimate wish-fulfillment character, the sort of hero anyone can dream about becoming.

But Spider-Man doesn’t have it easy. What makes him such a vibrant character is his centrally human struggle. Because Parker wants to be Spider-Man. Being Spider-Man is fun and exciting. But it comes with dangers. Raimi’s movies constantly have Toby McGuire’s Parker-as-Spider-Man at odds with Parker’s daily life. While Spider-Man is an almost unambiguously heroic figure, it costs him simplicity, and often dramatically affects his relationships. He misses MJ’s recital, it strains his friendship with Harry Osborn. But at the end of the day, he always goes back to the mask. He sets out yet again into the streets of New York, being the hero that nobody else will, and hopefully inspiring people along the way. For those of you following along, to be clear, I think Garfield is the better Parker and McGuire is the better Spider-Man. McGuire’s Parker never feels quite real, as pitiable as he often is. And Garfield’s Spider-Man, despite how much “funnier” he is than McGuire’s (and it’s not much – McGuire makes way more jokes than people seem to think he does), is never quite as heroic and optimistic as the Spider-Man of Raimi’s movies. But the question is, where does Tom Holland stack up?

Very hot take, but this is the best live-action Spider-Man suit. Or at least it would be if they stopped painting over it in CG.

Holland was immediately praised for his performance in Civil War, with people praising a Peter Parker who actually looked young. In hindsight, I’m not sure high school is really the most exciting period of Parker’s life (most of the Raimi movies focus on young adulthood, after all), but that’s definitely an aspect that Holland’s movies have done smashingly well. The whole John Hughes dynamic is very fun, and the high school setting is played for a lot of genuinely good humour. However, Holland’s take on the character also received a lot of criticism, mostly for his place in the surrounding MCU. Marvel rebranded Spider-Man to have Tony Stark as a sort of mentor figure, sourcing Stark Industries for a lot of Spider-Man’s suits and equipment. In Homecoming, Spider-Man even has a JARVIS-like AI voiced by Jennifer Connolly who gives Peter advice and helps him with his technology (who, notably, never appears again). The biggest frustration people have with this is the way it muddies Peter’s everyman characterization. The Peter Parker of the MCU is funded by a billionaire, which drastically takes away from how much he’s characterized by his poverty. When Tony Stark pulls his support partway through Homecoming, it’s a monetary problem for Parker as it may have been in Spider-Man 2, Peter isn’t about to lose his apartment or anything, it’s just a problem because it means he loses his suit. There’s a decent amount of synecdoche happening, to be fair, but the daily problems of Holland’s Parker still feel obscure.

This tension is exacerbated by Far From Home, wherein Parker is passed down a piece of powerful technology that gives him free access to a drone network. The magic sunglasses are a weird plot point in general and rubbed the wrong way with a lot of people. For many, Far From Home only doubled down on Peter’s characterization as an irresponsible rich kid rather than a friendly neighborhood hero with a rough home life. It’s noteworthy that there is a pretty genuine beat in Infinity War where Parker defends his relevancy to the mission because “you can’t be a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man if there’s no neighborhood,” but there’s a clear pick-up in order to spin the line into a joke where Peter backpedals, saying “that didn’t make sense.” It did make sense! Let Peter Parker have opinions on things! But at this point, one begins to think that the MCU has made a distinct movement away from a poorer Peter in order to fit him in with all the billionaires of the Avengers cast. There’s also been a weird choice to move him away from NYC – the coolest part of Spider-Man visually is that he’s a New York hero, but all five of the MCU movies featuring Spider-Man prior to No Way Home go out of their way to take him out of the city.

I would not have expected in 2016 that Doctor Strange would be the character to keep cameoing in everything.

However, I don’t think Holland’s Peter Parker is entirely flawed. While he’s not as endearingly relatable as Garfield’s very human Parker, and he’s not as explicitly heroic or strained as McGuire’s Spider-Man, Holland has a lot of potential. I still really like Far From Home, largely because the movie is a lot about Peter dealing with the consequences of his choices. He doesn’t believe in himself yet and doesn’t believe he deserves the power that Stark has bestowed upon him. Both Homecoming and Far From Home feature a younger Peter Parker still coming into his own. Homecoming is explicitly smaller in scale than most MCU entries, and Far From Home does feature a Peter dealing with how his superheroic life is clashing with his desires to be a teenager and hang out with his friends. It feels less operatic than Raimi’s movies, but it’s still there! The movie ends with Holland’s Parker beginning to take responsibility, to become his own character rather than Iron Man’s protégé. I stepped out of Far From Home excited to finally get a take on Holland’s Spider-Man that would be able to move out of the shadow of Stark. …and then the rumours for No Way Home started to come out.

To avoid going into details, the summary for No Way Home seemed incredibly stuffed. A take on the Sinister Six, a significant role for Doctor Strange, and the likelihood of huge cameos that would likely distract from Holland’s centrality as a character. What this story needed was a movie that could really solidify what makes Holland’s take on Spider-Man unique, but instead, it was sure to be a bloated movie built entirely around hype. I spent the entire promotional run of No Way Home convinced the movie was going to be a disaster. People would probably claim that it was brilliant, but it seemed destined to be a hollow “event” movie without anything of substance for Holland’s character.

To my utter shock – No Way Home is so much better than that!

This whole scene is so raw.

I don’t think it’s a masterpiece and it’s certainly not the best Spider-Man movie, but it’s pretty impressive in the same way that Endgame is impressive for wrapping up a network of character arcs while still maintaining hype. As much as I long for smaller, more stripped-back films, the MCU has gotten good at this sort of balancing act. While there is a lot going on in No Way Home and there’s certainly a lot of crowd-pleasing, this film still feels centrally about Tom Holland’s Peter Parker. Everything revolves around clear choices, choices that feel thought out and that have clear consequences. Speaking of consequences, No Way Home is a movie that in many ways seems to be responding directly to the criticisms people had of Holland’s Parker. This film is rough, it beats Parker down and strips him of a lot of the glitter that these movies have had.

No Way Home picks up immediately off the heels of Far From Home, where Parker’s identity as Spider-Man is exposed to the world. It strangely cleans up some of the implications of this claim very quickly, but it still lets the weight of it linger. The fallout especially lands on Parker’s surrounding friends and family. As the consequences pile on, Parker tries to act against this expose, not because it is inconvenient to him but because of the way it affects those closest to him. Maybe his biggest choice in the movie is one done wholly sacrificially, choosing to believe in the inherent goodness of others even if it places him in certain danger. No Way Home really defines Parker as a character who is holding the world on his shoulders, someone who would rather take the blame of the world than seeing his friends get caught in the crossfire. Holland’s Spider-Man isn’t the heroic icon that McGuire’s is, but his Parker is quietly sacrificial in a way that no other live-action rendition of the character has achieved.

There's a great sense of verticality to the final fight that was missing in a lot of Holland's previous movies.

Moreover, this movie finally puts Holland in New York! Rather than keeping him in suburbs or shipping him to Europe, we finally get to see Holland’s Spider-Man in relationship with the city around him. JK Simmons returns as J. Jonah Jameson, and his character plays a vital role in depicting the growing resistance to Spider-Man. This Jameson is less explicitly humorous in exchange for being a more dramatic counter to Parker, which works for this movie. And the whole public court of appeal vibe really keeps up the heat as we explore the choices that Parker is making and how they affect everything. Unfortunately, the massive scale of the movie means we don’t get a lot of time devoted to Spider-Man swinging through New York and saving people, but I’m willing to take the loss on that for what else this movie does to the character.

Most impressively, No Way Home sticks the landing. It would be easy for a movie like this to focus in on the hype and forget to stress the characters first. But this one is borderline Raimi-esque in its drama. More than any of Holland’s other movies, this one feels like it understands the core struggle of being Spider-Man. Spider-Man doesn’t have it easy, but Peter suits up just the same because it’s the right thing to do. The movie strips back the character and brings him down to his core, elemental aspects. In a way, this “trilogy” really feels like it’s just been an introduction for Holland’s Spider-Man in the MCU. After this movie, we know what he’s about. We’ve seen him genuinely go through the wringer and come out the other side. I’m a little nervous that we’re exactly where I thought we were after Far From Home, finally ready to see a proper Holland solo flick, but I get the sense that we’re closer to that now than ever.

"May God help us all."

Holland’s Peter Parker has been on a whole ride, and while I’m not sure we’ll ever get him to the iconic status that some of these movies have achieved, I am excited for his next step. There’s a lot of real potential in the direction they’re taking him here. He’s more than just “Spider-Man in the MCU!” he’s someone who’s had to live with the fallout of his choices, and chosen to keep going. I’ve never thought he was bad in this role, but he really feels defined now in a way he didn’t in Homecoming and Far From Home. What makes a good Spider-Man movie? Choice, consequences, and the responsibility of acting when you have the ability to. And this movie is all about that.

…of course the perfect Spider-Man movie is still Into the Spider-Verse. And it’s not even close.