Spider-Man: No Way Home spoiler-free review – An amazing, spectacular sequel

It’s been 13 years since the Marvel Cinematic Universe first blasted onto our screens and into the history books, ushering in the age of the shared cinematic universe. Marvel Studios was not the first to tackle this style of interconnected movie narrative (that honour actually belongs to the classic Universal Pictures monster movies), but the comic book movie studio did it with an unparalleled level of sustained commercial and critical success.

The problem though, as has often been tossed up by its critics, is that just like the comic books it is adapting to the screen, the MCU increasingly requires viewers to be in on it all the way. If you’re not watching every release – which now includes several miniseries on Disney+ which aren’t even available in half the world – you will simply not understand why the geeks around you are foaming at the mouth for whatever event just transpired on screen.

And if there’s a point of contention that could be levelled at Spider-Man: No Way Home, that would definitely be it. The trilogy-capping latest entry in director Jon Watts and star Tom Holland’s Spidey franchise, No Way Home tells a story of unmatched interconnected ambition, pulling on and resolving years-old threads from multiple previous Marvel releases – not just the two Spider-Man films before this – all while corralling a huge character roster. It’s the very definition of newbie-unfriendly inaccessibility, but I’ll be damned if it also isn’t one of the best films of the year and arguably the best live-action Spider-Man movie we’ve ever had.

Avengers: Endgame, Marvel’s record-shattering Phase 3 magnum opus, is the only contemporary comparison when it comes to just how well No Way Home succeeds in thrilling audiences. My cinema roared and whooped in delight for every fan-service bomb drop. If you want to nitpick its inaccessibility, you can, but it’s undeniable just how much this film is needed right now, two years into a global pandemic. Not only is this the perfect film to save the movie business, but also to inspire and raise the spirits of those dedicated fans like few things out there.

Of course, a lot of that enjoyment was nearly ruined for those fans, as the last few months have seemingly seen certain corners of the internet on a mission to spoil all the major twists co-writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers threw into No Way Home’s script. This was irritatingly helped along by the trailers put out by Sony itself (as part of the co-production deal with Marvel Studios, Sony handles all marketing), which had no qualms about blurting out certain revelations that would have been mind-blowing to see on-screen for the first time with no pre-warning.

So I’ll try my best to not be like Sony and keep plot details to the minimum: No Way Home picks up immediately after the shocking finale of 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home in which the villainous Mysterio didn’t just frame Holland’s Spidey as his murderer, but also revealed to the world his secret civilian identity as high-schooler Peter Parker. This throws Peter’s entire world into chaos. While not in government interrogation rooms, the young hero now spends his time being hounded by mobs, half of which want to lynch him having believed Mysterio’s lies. Even worse, this madness has ripped apart the personal lives of those closest to Peter – his aunt May (Marisa Tomei), girlfriend MJ (Zendaya), and best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) – simply because of their association with him.

No problem, right? Peter can just get his Avengers teammate Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to cast a spell to make it so that nobody remembers that his Spider-Man? Abracadabra hey presto! Except, thanks to Peter’s own meddling as he tries to change the magical parameters on the fly to enable some people to still remember him, the spell goes massively awry, ripping open the multiverse and sucking in a handful of individuals from other universes.

Specifically, villains from previous cinematic iterations of Spider-Man, such as Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe) and Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina) from Sam Raimi’s early 2000s Spider-Man trilogy starring Tobey Maguire, and Electro (Jamie Foxx) from Marc Webb’s Amazing Spider-Man movies starring Andrew Garfield. Not only does Holland’s Spider-Man now need to put these proverbial genies back in the bottle, but he also finds himself at odds with the more multiversally-focused Strange about just how to do it without ripping apart the very fabric of time and space.

And I know that I just wrote over two paragraphs of plot details when I said I would keep things to a minimum, but this is really the just tip of what transpires over the course of No Way Home’s 2.5 hour runtime. There were so many rumours and leaks before release, and some turn out to be true while others are woefully far off-target, but almost none of it plays out how you would expect.

For a start, Watts and co put your emotions through the wringer here. While there have been exceptions (oh, hey there, “Iron Man’s death scene”), the MCU has mostly become synonymous with big-budget action spectacle and rapid-fire snarky wit. There is plenty of that here, as Watts stages epic action beats – including some mind-bending antics with Doctor Strange and a visceral apartment block fistfight that left me slack-jawed – while the hilarious chemistry between Holland, Zendaya, and Batalon is in full effect. But these are superb young dramatic actors who are now also finally given some seriously weighty scenes to chew on and they knock it out of the park.

What’s even more impressive is that this increase in emotion is not just consigned to the headliners. Some very strong character work for some very unexpected side characters had me misty-eyed in the cinema a number of times; sometimes from heartache, other times from bittersweet joy. Spider-Man has always been billed as Marvel Comics’ heart, and that has never been more true on the screen than in No Way Home. Those more prone to waterworks should definitely not forget the tissues.

This is not just manipulative tear-wrangling though. This is truly the culmination of Holland’s arc as Spider-Man thus far, directly addressing all of the more iffy prior decisions for the character, resolving beats set up in his debut, and relaunching him into the future of the MCU in a state that is arguably the closest he has been to his comic book roots in ages. That is a LOT to ask of a film, but amazingly No Way Home sticks the landing. Given that this is a character most well-known for crawling on ceilings, I guess sticking anything shouldn’t have come as such a surprise.

PS: Oh and of course you should stay seated throughout the credits for a mid-credits scene and a post-credit treat to Marvel fans.